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Spring 2026

History

Black and white photo of a dance at Hanford during World War II
Spring 2026

Latinos at Hanford in World War II

In 1944, Richland hosted a jitterbug contest. A photo of the winners, Victor V. Valdez and Billie Carey, appeared in the Hanford Engineer Works weekly newspaper, The Sage Sentinel.

The dance contest was a light-hearted moment in the Tri-Cities amid the Manhattan Project’s focus on plutonium production for the nation’s first nuclear weapons. But the photo caught Drew Gamboa’s attention for other reasons.

“The Tri-Cities were segregated during World War II,” says Gamboa, a doctoral student in history at Washington State University. “But in these types of social spaces, you see people of different backgrounds interacting.”

Valdez, a Latino serviceman, was … » More …

TalkBack
Fall 2025

Talkback for Fall 2025

 

New way of thinking?

It is not entirely correct to say that George Washington founded the town of Centralia alone (“Black history in the Northwest,” Spring 2024). He filed the plat with his wife, Mary Jane Cooness Washington, whom he married in the 1860s. Together, they platted the town. It is said that it was she who realized the strategic and central location of the homestead when news of the railroad being built reached them.

As mentioned, George was a mixed-race child with a Black father and a White mother. So was Mary Jane, who was of African American and Jewish descent. As … » More …