Pacific Northwest

Chuck Sams's Nomination to Head Parks Service is Helping Correct a Big Lie of Western History

by Blaine Harden

Memorialized as a godly champion of manifest destiny, Marcus Whitman was in fact "a mediocre missionary whose most significant contribution to history was getting killed."

From Red Finn Halls to The Lincoln Brigade: Class Formation on Washington’s “Red Coast”

by Jerry Lembcke

If the current crisis revives interest in class as an analytical concept, a recent book on union organizing on the Washington state coast offers a model for reconstructing the work, community and social life of a community. 

Reckoning with Marcus Whitman and the Memorialization of Conquest

by Cassandra Tate

The same period that saw the public affirmation of the Confederate Lost Cause myth saw a proliferation of monuments that portrayed the conquest of the indigenous people of the west as virtuous pioneering. The case of Marcus Whitman shows a national reckoning is in order.

Scapegoating Antifa for Starting Wildfires Distracts from the Real Causes

by Steven C. Beda

The idea of left-wing radicals starting wildfires in the Pacific Northwest dates back to timber companies blaming the Industrial Workers of the World for blazes as a way to discredit demands for workers' power through unions. 

What A 1924 KKK Gathering in Tacoma Tells us about White Nationalism in the U.S. Today

Managing director of the Tacoma Historical Society Michael Lafreniere never expected to unearth a glimpse into the Klan’s history in Washington state, and more particularly Tacoma.

Why Portland? The City's History of Protest Takes an Exceptional Turn

The "Portlandia" image -- of 1990s slackers driven by liberal ingenuity -- isn't entirely true to the city's history, says former professor Randy Blazak.

Greater Idaho and the Ugly History of Northwest Secession Movements

The impulse to separate and redefine the region is as old as the Euro-American settlement of the Northwest, and has roots in so-called “rural values” and racial exclusion that date back to before, during and after the Civil War.

Yes, there were black slaves in the Pacific Northwest. Historians are making the region confront it.

An Oregon author is exploring little-known chapters of the region's ugly, racist roots.

Researchers uncover Northwest secrets in Spanish shipwreck

But for quirks of colonial competition, the troubles with managing empire, and the shifting fortunes of international commerce, the Pacific Northwest could have been part of the Spanish Empire.