New books by 91̽�� faculty members include a pair of children’s works profiling STEM researchers and a personal memoir of an immigrant’s journey to freedom. Also, several 91̽��faculty and staff members are featured as 91̽��Press looks back on a century of publishing — and a book on British colonialism is honored.

Work of Quintard Taylor, Bill Holm featured as 91̽�� Press looks back at 100

Marking the 100^th birthday of 91̽�� Press, its staff chose “10 pivotal titles” from its history — including three books by 91̽��faculty members — in an essay for the website LitHub titled “.”

The list represents books, the staff wrote, that helped define their fields. “Mirroring the innovative spirit of research and inquiry at the 91̽��, the press developed a reputation for publishing at the forefront of many fields … from natural and environmental history to Native and Indigenous studies, and from African American and Asian studies to literature in translation.”

The list includes “,” by , 91̽��professor emeritus of art history and curator emeritus of the Northwest Coast Indian art at the , calling it “a foundational reference work and study guide for contemporary Native carvers, painters and weavers.” 91̽��Press put out a 50^th anniversary edition of the volume in 2014.

Also featured is 91̽��history professor emeritus ‘s chronicle of “the growth of the neighborhood at the city’s heart that shaped its urban history.” “” was published in 1994.

“Seattle’s journey to world-class status has been closely tied to the vibrant culture that blossomed in this community,” the 91̽��press staff wrote, “nurturing such talents as Ray Charles, Quincy Jones and Jimi Hendrix along with the first Black Panther Party chapter outside of Oakland. The book’s call for economic justice remains as relevant and urgent as ever.”

Also noted is “,” published in 1973 with a new, updated edition in 2018. The book — called the bible of botanists and gardeners in the region — is by C. Leo Hitchcock, who was a 91̽��professor of botany; with botanist Arthur Cronquist. The new edition was revised by David Giblin and Peter Zika of the and 91̽��biology professor , with Ben Legler of the University of Idaho.

Also on the list was John Okada’s novel “No-No Boy,” with fair consideration for the author’s family by 91̽��English professor .

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Faisal Hossain of civil & environmental engineering publishes children’s books on STEM

, 91̽��professor of civil and environmental engineering, has published two books for young readers: “The Secret Lives of Scientists, Engineers, and Doctors,” volumes and , from Mascot Books.

The books will showcase “the struggle, growth and success” of 12 professionals in STEM fields, including a geneticist, a biologist, a cancer researcher and a scientist at the National Institutes of Health, among others. They will be written especially for readers from second to fifth grades.

With more volumes planned, the book series is a spin-off from a National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine effort called aiming to widen access to science education. Read an on the Civil & Environmental Engineering website.

Published in September, the book is available for order and will be in stores soon. To learn more, contact Hossain at fhossain@uw.edu.

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Affiliate dentistry faculty member publishes memoir of escape from Iran

, a part-time affiliate faculty member of the 91̽��School of Dentistry, has published “,” a memoir of her solo journey from Iran to the United States as a Baha’i refugee.

The book tells of Khajavi-Harvey growing up in Tehran during the Islamic Revolution and the Iran-Iraq War, and of her escape on her own at age 15 across the Iran-Pakistan border. Khajavi-Harvey is a Seattle dentist and human rights activist.

One reviewer wrote that the story “is a vivid reminder that immigrants bring with them deeply rooted values of family, loyalty, hard work and perseverance. We are richer for their presence.”

The memoir is available through eBook platforms, online retailers and bookstores. To learn more, contact Khajavi-Harvey at zkharvey@gmail.com.

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Historian George Behlmer’s book ‘Risky Shores’ honored by conference on British studies

91̽��history professor emeritus ‘s 2018 book “Risky Shores: Savagery and Colonialism in the Western Pacific” was co-winner of the 2019 from the North American Conference on British Studies.

The prize, which comes with $500, is awarded each year to “the best book published anywhere by a North American scholar on any aspect of British studies since 1800.” Behlmer’s was published by Stanford University Press, and was this summer in the journal American Historical Review.

The other Stansky Book Prize winner was “Trust Among Strangers: Friendly Societies in Modern Britain,” by Penelope Ismay of Boston College.

Four decades of teaching and research have brought a lifetime achievement award from the Washington State Historical Society.

Taylor is the Scott and Dorothy Bullitt Professor of History at the 91̽��, now emeritus, with additional appointments in the and the . He is also the founder of the 13,000-page website , which celebrates its 11^th anniversary this year.

He has received the Washington State Historical Society’s for 2017, recognizing his career and “far-reaching commitment to researching, preserving and promoting the history of African-Americans in the Pacific Northwest.”

Taylor is the author of many articles and books, including “” ( 91̽��Press, 1994) and “” (Norton, 1999).

He sat down with 91̽��News for a discussion of his work and this unusual moment in history.

Of all your accomplishments, of what are you most proud?

“I am most proud of Blackpast.org. I have devoted so many hours to it, it almost sounds like an obsession, but the reason I say it is because we have a huge audience. We have just crossed the 4 million mark in visitors in 2017.

“I never would have imagined in 2007 that we’d have any kind of response like that. When we first crossed the 100,000 mark, some of my colleagues in the history department were shocked, because after all, it is simply a website. It is a website, but one that focuses on African-American history and the somewhat radical idea that the history that is normally presented in the university classroom can and should be taken beyond the campus and made available to everybody. And we thought, OK, that’s a cool concept in principle. Let’s see how it works.”

Taylor said the greatest honor he and BlackPast.org received was an invitation for him to address the National Education Association’s annual conference in Florida, where he spoke to an audience of 2,000 people.

Asked about the nature of the BlackPast audience, he said those coming to the site are mostly between the ages of about 40 and 70, two-thirds women and about two-thirds black. About 17 percent of visitors are from outside the country, primarily from Canada and the United Kingdom.

The site also, Taylor added, has links to black newspapers across America and “the most comprehensive list of newspapers on the African continent,” where you can view daily front pages.

You mention that among your goals is to get BlackPast.org into every classroom in the nation.

“Yes, and the big issue is that only 12 percent of the people who use it are teachers, and another 10 percent or so are students. We’d like to see those numbers improved with 50 percent of our clientele as students. We do know students are using it because our numbers go up in the school year and they go down in the summer. But even when we see that impact, it’s small considering the potential numbers.

Taylor added with a laugh, “It surprised me, because in a way this website is made for students. It’s the Wikipedia for African-American history. I resented that at first but now I embrace it. Like President Barack Obama embracing the term ‘Obamacare.'”

He said, however, that BlackPast needs to find a sustainable funding model, so a full-time person can be hired “to what I now do for free.”

How does BlackPast cover the Black Lives Matter movement?

The site, Taylor said, has a page explaining the rise of the movement as well as almost 70 entries detailing other situations “involving police conduct vis a vis unarmed black people. Other entries describe the three founders of the movement.

“You know the first entry that’s on the list? An incident in Seattle in 1938 that involved a black waiter in a hotel in what is now the International District. He was pushed down steps by three white policemen and killed by the fall. At first, they said he just tripped and fell. Nobody questioned that explanation, except that there were some witnesses who reported that he �徱���’t fall, that he was pushed. Three cops were prosecuted by the local authorities and they all they went to jail although the governor would eventually commute their sentences.”

Taylor stressed that there was an organized community in Seattle even then that was smaller and less powerful and influential than today, but that was nonetheless able to get the officers arrested and put in jail.

“As we began to compile the stories for the Black Lives Matter page, we realized every story is different which is another reason for doing it,” he said. “We want those who died to be more than just statistics for either the proponents or opponents of Black Lives Matter.

“The Black Lives Matter page shows how racism, contemporary poverty and poor education help generate the conditions that bring about the murder of black women and men and that this tension between the cops and African-Americans has deep roots in history.

“This kind of angst we’re in now, the moment we’re in, didn’t come out of a vacuum or thin air. President Trump’s not even responsible for it. This is a long, long history that has been going on in this country, north, south, east, and west, and we show that connection at BlackPast.”

Speaking of President Trump, what are your views of his presidency and administration?

“I’m not as concerned as you might expect me to be. Because I’m a historian, I take the long view. I’ve seen this overt racism before. I grew up with it in Tennessee in the 1960s.

“When were growing up, there were local racists, the mayor, the sheriff, the local police force, who make Trump look like a dyed-in-the-wool liberal. I grew up in what political pundits now call the real America, deep red Tennessee, and that’s where the big cultural divide is between the interior, the heartland, according to some historians, and the east and west coasts. That divide goes all the way back to the Civil War. And I don’t know at what point we’ll be over it. Maybe we’ll be over it when there’s a demographic shift, a tremendous demographic shift.

“In some ways, Trump is a bad echo of what has happened in the past. I think a lot of the anger toward Obama wasn’t directed toward his policies; Obama could have been a conservative. I think there were a lot of people who were having a hard time with the huge demographic shift taking place in America today.”

Tell more about this demographic shift.

“Last year for the first time in the history of America, kids of color were the majority in all the public schools. That’s a sign, an indication of what’s going to come in the future.”

Taylor described two arguments in play: One, the need to understand these populations and help incorporate them into American society. The other comes from those who are “frightened” at these demographic shifts and the loss of a national white majority.

“Whether or not Trump is a racist, to me doesn’t really matter. What matters is that Trump has tapped into this angst, this anger, this sense that there are white people who are going to be a minority pretty soon.”

Taylor added that it’s no accident that the greatest racial violence by the state in America has been in South Carolina and Mississippi: “Why? Because those are the places that have black majorities going back to the Civil War.

“I’m not saying that we shouldn’t be appalled by what Trump is doing. I’m just saying that I look at the long haul. I just really think that this is kind of a last hurrah …”

A last hurrah of what?

“Of those who wanted to keep America white, of those who sincerely believed and in some cases still believe that race, nationality, and culture are and have always been linked. If this is the case, they are frightened that this linkage that in their eyes has accounted for the success of the American nation, is somehow going away and that they have to fight back against this extreme shift. As the change proceeds, their voices become smaller but at the same time more angry and shrill.

“I’ll give you a parallel.”

Taylor described how the Ku Klux Klan was powerful at its peak in the 1920s, faded from prominence, then returned less powerfully in the 1960s, and again in the 1980s and 1990s.

“But in each instance it’s an echo of its previous self. That reflects their belief that they are indeed losing the battle. Call it the culture wars or another name, that they are losing control of the United States.”

“And when somebody comes along and says, ‘You can have it all, you’re the greatest people in the world’ — remember talk radio has been saying much the same to this audience for the last 30 years — the ‘let’s make America great again,’ slogan becomes a brilliant appeal to the folks who feel that America is no longer great because it is being transformed.”

Finally, how do you think President Obama will be remembered by history? For the cultural milestone, certainly, but also as among the better presidencies?

“I don’t disagree with that. I think certainly Obama is going to be considered one of the better presidents, though not the best. At the top of my list: Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt because quite frankly they faced much greater challenges than even Trump, and certainly than Obama did. On the other hand, Obama would be in the top five or six, and certainly in the top 10 among presidents.

“I think where Obama becomes important is what we’re discussing. He represents a sea change in terms of the culture of America — that by his very presence he is representing the transformation of American society.”

Academics tend to be comfortable with and even lead such changes, Taylor said.

“But what about people who are not in charge of the transformation, or what if it leads to a society that you feel uncomfortable with? I think Obama represented that to a lot of folks.”

Taylor added that Trump “has actually done the other side a favor because you look at what’s happened with the #MeToo movement and how that’s going to materialize, so to speak, in terms of the coming elections, I think it is going to be absolutely incredible.”

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For more information about Taylor and his work, contact him at quintardjr@comcast.net.

, the online reference guide to African-American history started by 91̽�� history professor , is getting an executive director and a website redesign.

Blackpast’s board of directors has named 91̽��alumna the first executive director of the history website. Phillips has a master’s degree in museology from the 91̽��and comes to the website from several years creating public reflection spaces for the Northwest African American Museum.

The website on African-American history also will receive its largest-ever gift of pro bono work in the form of a redesign by , a boutique design and digital transformation agency. The redesign will make the site easier to read and allow multiple images for each entry.

Phillips said she looks forward to guiding the site through its redesign, “and experimenting with innovative ways for BlackPast to activate its content for those who use its vast resources.”

“Dr. Taylor has done a tremendous job of growing BlackPast.org’s content,” said Phillips. “It’s a project I couldn’t say no to.”

BlackPast.org was started by Taylor in 2007 with fewer than 100 entries. It now has 13,000 pages of material, with about 4,000 online encyclopedia entries in all. Visitors to the site numbered 3.8 million in 2015, and have already exceeded one million in 2016.

“We intend to have lesson plans with each entry to make it easier to get BlackPast into classrooms,” said Taylor. “The new design will make it much easier for people to post our information on other social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram.”

He said the redesign support from Jackson Fish Market “will help ensure BlackPast.org is around a century from now.”

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For more information about BlackPast.org, contact J. Paul Blake at 206-543-3958 or jpblake@uw.edu, or Phillips at 770-464-6066.

In his Documents that Changed the World podcast series, 91̽�� Information School professor explores the origin and often evolving meaning of historical documents, both famous and less known.

But in his latest installment, Janes might make you wonder how differently American history might have unfolded, had 168 powerful words not been excised from the Declaration of Independence at the last minute.

“I wanted to tell the story of the passage itself and the great void its absence left,” said Janes, “and dig a little deeper into the process of its removal by the Second Continental Congress in 1776 and how little we know about it.”

The — beginning with “He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him …” — were a condemnation of George III, “the Christian King of Great Britain,” and his participation in and perpetuation of the slave trade.

“Determined to keep open a market where men should be bought and sold,” the lost passage continues, “he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or restrain this execrable commerce.”

In his podcast, Janes takes the listener through what’s known — and still unknown — about the removal of the passage, which was but one of dozens of edits to the Declaration. Jefferson himself, years later, claimed the words were “struck out in complaisance to South Carolina & Georgia, who had never attempted to restrain the importation of slaves.”

Janes, long interested in doing an episode on the idea of deletion, was reading the website when he was reminded of the lines cut from the Declaration. The site, the creation of 91̽��history professor , is a 13,000-page online reference center dedicated to providing information on African-American history, “and on the history of the more than one billion people of African ancestry around the world.”

Janes also notes Jefferson’s own “deeply conflicted position” on the subject, as the founding father owned 180 slaves at the time, and 87 more by 1822 — none of whom were freed upon his death. “There are few clean hands here,” Janes writes; “at least a third of the signers (of the Declaration) were slaveholders and even in northern states abolition was gradual.”

He said, “It’s not an original thought, but it has always struck me as a dark bargain: Leave the clause in and the Declaration fails (though perhaps not independence itself; that was agreed to two days earlier), take it out and it succeeds but at the cost of a quarter of a millennium of kicking the can down the road — as we still are today.”

The Documents that Changed the World podcast series is also available on , where it has now passed a quarter of a million downloads so far.

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For more about this or any of the Documents that Changed the World podcasts, contact Janes at jwj@uw.edu.

Previous installments of the “Documents that Changed the World” series

Though pioneers settled Seattle and make for colorful storytelling, they had mostly passed from the scene by the time the 20^th century drew near and the area started taking on the urban feel of a city, says 91̽�� historian John Findlay.

Seattle’s past — from its earliest years to the turn of the 21^st century — will be the topic of the Winter 2016 History Lecture Series, “.” The series, sponsored by the 91̽��Alumni Association, will run Wednesdays at 7:30 p.m. from Jan. 13 to Feb 3 in Room 130 of Kane Hall. It will feature presentations by department faculty , , and .

“The pioneers get more than their share of attention, and often they are more or less permitted to tell their own story,” Findlay said. “But paradoxically, to my point of view, pioneers lived in Seattle during its least urban phase.”

Findlay, who speaks first, noted that much of Seattle’s growth came in waves, with population soaring from 1880 to 1910 — “shedding its pioneer remnants” — and again between 1940 and 1960 and as the 20^th century gave way to the 21^st.

“These phases of rapid growth I call pandemonium,” he said. “They are very hard for historians to capture, in part because the overall change and population turnover are so fast.”

• Taylor is a professor emeritus of history and creator of , the 13,000-page African-American history website. He will speak Jan. 20 on “The Peopling of Seattle: Race, Migration and Immigration.”
• Nash is an associate professor of history and director of the UW’s . She will speak Jan. 27 on “Putting People in Their Place: Seattle’s Environmental History.”
• Gregory is a professor of history and organizer of a growing set of digital resources called the . He will speak Feb. 3 on “Left Coast City: The History of a Political Reputation.”

Findlay said, “When going through phases of rapid growth, as we are right now, growth feels threatening and chaotic. Many identify scapegoats to blame — the Chinese during the 1880s, or Amazon.com today — without appreciating the broader picture.

“By contrast to pandemonium moments, pioneer days may seem like a haven of stability.”

Tickets to the 2016 History Lecture Series are available through the 91̽��Alumni Association.

• Also, panel discussion, “The Future of Seattle,” 7:30 p.m. Feb 10: What will the city look like in 20 years? As a complement to the History Lecture Series, the 91̽��Office of External Affairs and Alumni Association will present this discussion moderated by Enrique Cerna. Panelists will be labor leader David Rolf, education advocate Trish Millines Dziko, social benefit entrepreneur Ruby Love and sustainable development innovator Eric Carlson. The discussion will be held in Room 130 of Kane Hall. Free but separate is required.

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For more information about the 2016 History Lecture Series speakers and their work, contact Findlay at 206-543-2573 or jfindlay@uw.edu; Nash at 206-616-7176 or lnash@uw.edu; Taylor at 206-543-5698 or qtaylor@uw.edu; or Gregory at 206-543-7752 or gregoryj@uw.edu.