Members of the Tumwater City Council met on the evening of Tuesday, Feb. 17, for their second regular meeting of the month at Tumwater City Hall.
Tumwater Mayor Leatta Dahlhoff started the meeting by making a proclamation officially declaring February as Black History Month. She welcomed New Life Baptist Church Rev. David Reaves and National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) of Thurston County President Larry Jefferson to give speeches.
Councilors approved the hiring of two new city staff positions; an executive assistant for the Tumwater Police Department and an assistant payroll technician to aid the city’s payroll officer.
Also approved was the purchase of a building and property to be converted into new offices for the Tumwater Parks and Recreation Department.
Tumwater’s Black History Month proclamation
The proclamation touched not only on the historical roots of Black History Month — when Dr. Carter Woodson, the son of former slaves, founded the Association for the Study of African American Life and History and pushed for a Negro History Week in 1926 to encourage studying African American history — but also Tumwater’s historical roots as it was co-founded by an African American settler named George Bush.
Previously, historians attributed Tumwater’s founding to Michael Simmons, a white settler who came in 1845. He was credited with founding the first permanent American settlement north of the Columbia River — but he didn’t do it alone.
Bush was a prominent member of the 1845 Oregon Trail settling party Simmons came in, and he was the first Black settler to receive a land grant in the Washington territory. The son of an African American and Irish couple originally born in Pennsylvania in 1779, Bush served in the U.S. military during the War of 1812, even fighting alongside General Andrew Jackson in the Battle of New Orleans.
He went on to become a fur trapper, buying land in Missouri, and he became known for his generosity. In fact, he was the one who purchased six wagons along with a year’s worth of provisions for Simmons and the other settlers in their wagon train to make their Oregon Trail trip.
Originally, the group of settlers wanted to stay in Oregon upon arriving, but Oregon’s provisional government had just passed laws barring Black settlers from purchasing land, so the group went north of the Columbia instead.
Jefferson stated it was Bush’s generosity that endeared him to his fellow settlers and helped him secure land for a farm and a hotel between Cowlitz Landing and Puget Sound, which Bush and his family let travelers stay at for free.
“He helped other pioneers no matter what their circumstances were, he gave to them,” Jefferson said.
Just like his fellow African American settler George Washington, who founded Centralia some 20 miles south of Tumwater, Bush prioritized taking care of those around him rather than making money. Washington, who arrived in the region shortly after Bush in 1850, purchased rice, flour and sugar by the ton and gave them away to anyone in need during an economic crisis.
According to historian Elizabeth McLagan, one year when wheat was in short supply, Bush was offered an outrageous amount of money for his entire crop.
He declined the offer, telling the prospective buyer, "I'll just keep my grain to let my neighbors who have had failures have enough to live on and for seeding their fields in the spring. They have no money to pay your fancy prices and I don't intend to see them want for anything in my power to provide them with."
Jefferson emphasized Bush’s care for his community and neighbors, and retold a story he heard the late Reverend Jesse Jackson tell decades ago when Jefferson was still a child and Jackson was running for president.
“He talked about when his grandmother made a quilt out of all this material, but threaded together,” said Jefferson. “And separate, it was nothing. But threaded together, it’s magical. And I think together … we’re more.”
He also talked about his own experiences with racial prejudice growing up in Tumwater, along with Dr. Thelma Jackson who helped him through those times and who he now works alongside with at the NAACP of Thurston County. Additionally, Jefferson thanked Dahlhoff and the city for making the proclamation.
“Let it be said on this 17th day of February, that it’s much more dangerous to give a microphone to the president of the NAACP, than it is to a Black Baptist preacher,” Reaves said jokingly, starting his own speech.
Reaves then shared some of his own family’s history with the council.
“Decades ago, there in Mount Olive, North Carolina, a local newspaper printed these words, ‘Negro child dies after being hit by a stray bullet.’ Beneath that headline was the name John Lewis Robertson, he was 14 years old. He was walking home from school with his sister and was almost home when a stray bullet struck him,” Reaves said. “Doctors removed that bullet from his head, police searched for the rifle and conducted ballistics tests hoping to find answers, but my uncle never recovered. He died that night at the hospital.”
Ultimately, whoever killed Robertson was never found.
“My grandmother grieved for years. She kept school books still stained with blood, not out of bitterness, not out of revenge, but because love does not know how to throw away what it has lost. Those books sat in her home as a quiet testimony,” said Reaves. “This student mattered, this life mattered. This is not ancient history, this is within my family’s lifetime.”
He added Black History Month was not just about famous historical figures or distant struggles, but also stories like his uncle’s, among others.
“My great-uncle Sam, when he was a little boy, was denied a drink of water because of the color of his skin — just water. Because of that moment, he carried a small, folding, mechanical cup for nearly seven decades, in his pocket. Every time he reached for it, it was a quiet reminder, ‘you’re not fully welcome here,’” Reaves said. “Two boys, one denied water, one denied a future, and yet, here we are.”
Reaves stated he stood before the council not out of bitterness, but out of the responsibility he now carries as a pastor in the community, and as a father himself.
His eldest daughter is in the midst of choosing which full-ride scholarship to accept, “not because she’s Black, but because she’s brilliant,” his son had the highest GPA in his class last semester, “not because he is Black, but because he is disciplined and intelligent, and my youngest daughter is an honor roll student and a state-level student athlete who finished second-best in the state of Washington in gymnastics, not because she’s Black, but because she’s gifted and blessed.”
“This is the arc of progress, and Black History Month is about telling the truth — the whole truth,” Reaves added. “It’s about remembering students like my Uncle John, it’s about honoring the grief of a grandmother who held onto blood-stained books, it’s about recognizing resilience without forgetting the cost.”
To view the City of Tumwater’s Black History Month proclamation, visit the city’s Facebook page at https://tinyurl.com/5fk52jue.
Other council business
During the rest of the meeting, the Tumwater City Council unanimously approved the hiring of additional city staff, including an executive assistant for the Tumwater Police Department and an assistant payroll technician.
According to city staff, there was only one payroll officer on staff. Hiring an assistant payroll technician will reduce operational risks in the event of the payroll officer in the event of an unexpected absence, extended leave or if the officer is fired or quits.
The assistant payroll technician will also act as a second set of eyes on payroll to ensure city employees are paid timely and accurately, and payments are in compliance with state and federal regulations among other payroll-related duties.
The Tumwater Police Department new executive assistant will assume executive administrative tasks, as currently the department’s leadership must take care of those tasks themselves. City staff explained Tuesday the executive assistant would take over those duties, freeing leadership to concentrate on force operational readiness, community safety and support.
Depending on the new hires’ experience, the assistant payroll technician will earn a monthly salary between $6,259 and $8,387, and the police department executive assistant a salary between $6,571 and $8,807 a month.
City finance staff added the city can afford to hire the two additional employees as the city has not been spending as much as predicted in the previous year’s budget expenditures — with expenditures coming in at an estimated $5.7 million below what was originally expected in the budget.
While revenues also slightly decreased, finance staff stated the city still had around $4.6 million in budget funds left over which they did not anticipate.
Also approved by the council was the purchase of the building and 1.8 acres of property located at 4315 Tumwater Valley Dr. SE. to serve as the new Tumwater Parks and Recreation Department office. Parks and Recreation staff like the location due to its proximity to the city’s golf course and the proposed site of the Deschutes Valley Trail.
Total cost of the property was $1,850,500, and funding for the purchase came from the city’s Park Impact fees and metropolitan park district, along with money from the general fund, according to the council’s agenda report.
