SPOKANE, Wash. — This week for Black History Month, KREM 2 goes back in time to 1981, the year Spokane’s first and only Black mayor was elected.
This is the story of Spokane's first and only Black mayor. James Everett Chase, also known as Jim Chase.
Mayor James Everett Chase was born in 1914. He arrived in Spokane from Texas in 1934. He came to Spokane in a boxcar, started as a shoe shiner, and ended up in the city’s highest office.
“He never had a high school diploma. He learned because he was a ferocious reader and that's where he got his knowledge from,” said the first Black Spokane City Council President, Betsy Wilkerson.
The man broke barriers when he became the first black city councilman in 1975.
Chase also became an overwhelmingly popular mayor at a time when the Aryan Nation headquarters were just 30 minutes away in North Idaho.
“171,000 people live in this city, but only 1.6% make up the Black population. I didn’t think I would get 62 percent of the vote,” said Chase.
Maybe it was his tall stature, his magnetic personality, or the fact he married Eleanor Barrow, a renowned civic leader whose father founded Spokane’s first black church. Whatever it was, people seemed to gravitate toward Jim Chase.
“When he walked into a room, everybody applauded or clapped or talked to him. It’s been so long, 30 years, but he just had such a pleasant demeanor, always,” said Sheri Barnard, former Spokane Mayor.
One of Chase’s crowning achievements, the Youth Commission, came at the end of his term when his health was failing.
In 1987, less than a year and a half after he left office, Jim Chase lost his battle with cancer. More than 1,200 people attended the former mayor's funeral.
As the decades passed and new residents moved in, Chase faded into the background of history, but Jim Chase served his community, and his legacy will live on for years to come.
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