African American Construction workers and activists began to take direct action against the unjust institutional barriers to African American employment. The United Construction Workers Association (UCWA) was founded by Tyree Scott in order to organize a grassroots movement to make historically all-white unions open to marginalized workers in the Seattle area.
Tyree Scott
Tyree Scott
Tyree Scott is the founder of the UCWA. He was born in Texas before moving up to Seattle with his father in 1966. Scott was a Seattle civil rights and labor leader and he was dedicated to his work to improve the conditions and opportunities for workers in the construction industry. He was known as “a quiet, gracious and personable man, totally lacking any capacity for self-inflation” and “more interested in results than rhetoric.”
When and Why Was It Founded?
In the 1960’s, trade unions that controlled jobs in Seattle’s construction industry were off limits to Blacks, and this limited their ability to compete for large contracts.
In 1969, Seattle’s Model Cities Program was attracting large federal construction contracts. Walter Hundley, its director, encouraged Black contractors to organize in order to gain access to the contracts.
By December 1969, debate within the Central Contractors Association (CCA) over how to negotiate with unions, contractors, and government officials divided the organization between those who wanted to advocate for more jobs for black workers and those who wanted more federal contracts to go to black contractors.
In 1970, the Seattle Branch of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) invited Tyree Scott to found the United Construction Workers Association (UCWA). This prompted Scott to leave the CCA despite being a construction worker. With the AFSC’s financial and organizational backing, Scott shifted his attention away from contractors’ issues to make black construction workers’ struggles against union racism his sole focus. The UCWA was put into motion in 1970.
What Was the Purpose of the UCWA?
The UCWA’s original mission was to support black workers through the embodiment of multiple tasks of fused activism, Social work, and political advocacy. It took to negotiate with parties on the behalf of black workers, initiated lawsuits, lead non-violent protests, and facilitated worker support and study groups
A group known as the Court Order Advisory Committee (COAC) was in charge of the implementation of the UCWA. However, Scott believed that the COAC allowed union hiring halls to undermine affirmative action. This led the UCWA to hold protests that closed down I-90 and other areas. Due to the protests, the UCWA gained two representative positions on the COAC, gaining power and leverage over union apprenticeship programs.
UCWA march, 1972
Because the Federal Government did not enforce affirmative action, this newly found power allowed the UCWA to act as both the implementer and the enforcer of a federal court order to desegregate an extremely powerful cluster of labor unions in Seattle. This gave black workers in the UCWA a voice and opened up opportunities for black workers in the UCWA to attain leadership roles in civil rights struggles.
The Scope and Legacy of the UCWA
When he began the United Construction Workers Association, Tyree Scott’s main goal was to aid in the struggles of black construction workers against racism from unions, which caused unemployment for many skilled African Americans, furthering the systematic poverty and oppression of African Americans. Before the Federal Government imposed affirmative action on King County for Construction Trade Unions, the UCWA played a large role in demanding enforcement themselves. After successful protests and admission into the Court Ordered Advisory Committee, Tyree Scott was able to ensure the health and longevity of affirmative action from a place of power and authority.
In 1971, the UCWA expanded its reach to and mobilized black workers in Denver, C.O. With a federal grant, the UCWA was able to further expand into Oakland, C.A. in 1973 and create the Southwest Workers Federation in Little Rock, A.K. Tyree Scott, along with Todd Hawkins, tried to unite minority construction workers in eight more cities in Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Texas with varied results.
In 1973 a group of Filipino youth activists founded the Alaskan Cannery Workers Association (ACWA) after working in solidarity with the UCWA. They also sought to fight racial segregation and inequality within their industry. Seattle’s UCWA provided them with training, seed money, and a model for their organization.
A long-lasting impact of the UCWA is in its partnership with the ACWA and the Northwest chapter of the United Farm Workers (UFW) to create the Northwest Labor and Employment Law Office (LELO) in 1973. This office brought legal resources and support for lawyers working on Title VII lawsuits pro bono. The creation of this office supports grassroots labor movements by people of color like the UCWA. One LELO lawsuit went to the Supreme Court in 1989.
Despite the United Construction Workers Association’s gradual disbandment in the late 1970s, its spirit of improving the lives of workers of color by bringing them together to fight against systemic racism lives on through its numerous other organizations.
The UCWA’s support of black workers and families was one of the first visible acts of affirmative action in America’s workplace. This looked like the intentional hiring of black workers, who had previously been excluded from construction sites and federally funded projects in Seattle.
The purposeful inclusion and selection of black construction workers became the top goal of the UCWA, after the 1969 lawsuit filed against unions in Seattle. This lawsuit found that Seattle’s building trade unions hiring strategies and practices were unlawful and discriminatory against black workers. Because of this, Tyree Scott and the UCWA were put in a position to desegregate Seattle’s largest collection of labor unions.
Separate Peace
No Separate Peace was a left-wing monthly publication created by the UCWA for, “the third world poor.” The publications encouraged its readers to actively build up their diverse communities. It unified marginalized communities in the struggle against racism, sexism, and imperialism.
African American Studies 101 Group Profile Project
by: Liv, Albert, Ingrid, Ryan, Sami
What is Northwest Tap Connection?
Northwest Tap Connection is a social justice oriented dance studio located in Seattle, Washington that specializes in rhythm tap. The studio’s philosophy is that dance enriches the lives of the students, while developing self-discipline, instilling self-confidence, and encouraging achievement and goal setting. The organization provides an environment where dancers can grow artistically and technically, while simultaneously developing leadership skills and social responsibility. The primary mission of Northwest Tap Connection is to provide dance and job opportunities to under-served communities, and to raise a generation of socially conscious artists who produce work that fosters change. Their goal is to bring the art of dance to multi-cultural and inter-generational audiences through dance instruction, cultural events, and arts education programs locally, nationally and internationally.
Founder and Artistic Director – Melba Ayco
The founder and the Artistic Director of Northwest Tap Connection is Melba Ayco, fondly known as Ms. Melba. She is a tap dance historian, choreographer, and storyteller. Ms. Melba was born into segregation in a small town near New Orleans, and she survived integration by pursuing enlightenment through cultural diversity. Ms. Melba’s goal in founding the Northwest Tap Connection is to define and share the African American experience through the performing arts. She has received numerous accolades including the 2009 Mayor’s Art Award, the 2017 African Town Queen Award, and the 2017 Martin Luther King, Jr. Medal of Community Service Award for District No. 2 of the City of Seattle.
Not only is Ms. Melba the founder of Northwest Tap Connection, but she is also a 31 year veteran of the Seattle Police Department. A part of why she founded the dance studio was to give the underprivileged youth in the area an alternative to being on the streets. And she was successful in doing so – if students were involved in the dance studio, they didn’t come across her desk at the SPD. Through her endless dedication to the community and desire to offer opportunities for growth and enlightenment to people of all ages and backgrounds, Ms. Melba has made a lasting, positive imprint in the Pacific Northwest.
Goals and Objectives of Northwest Tap Connection
The Northwest Tap Connection aims to “close the gap” for people of color in the dance community. In this context, closing the gap means making classes that are affordable and accessible to all. In the dance world, beginning levels of dance are easier to access because they require minimal hours. However, beyond this when dancers become more advanced and require more hours and practice at a competitive level, accessibility becomes more difficult. While families may be able to pay for a few hours of dance, once students start to require more hours, families are often not able to pay. This creates the gap. To target this disparity, the Northwest Tap Connection offers classes that get progressively cheaper with more hours. Additionally, if a dancer has siblings in the program, they are offered discounted classes. Beyond classes, the Northwest Tap Connection also offers its dancer’s enrichment programs that combine dancing with education and social justice, where they learn professional and leadership skills.
To fund these classes, the Northwest Tap Connection holds events to raise money. The main event is a yearly auction, for which people purchase tickets to attend and engage in both a live and silent bid for different products and experiences. All the money raised at the event goes directly back to funding children’s dance classes and improving the Northwest Tap Connection. The main goal of the Northwest Tap Connection is to “close the gap,” and events like the auction allow for the funding of dance classes in order to do this.
Membership and Achievements
The members of the Northwest Tap Connection are the dancers enrolled in classes. The organization serves over 150 students on a weekly basis. They’ve had the opportunity to perform at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., Paramount and Moore Theaters in Seattle, and the Museum of Contemporary Arts in Chicago. In addition, dancers have had the opportunity to travel to where they may not have had the opportunity to do so before. Northwest Tap Connection dancers have been able to travel within the United States to places like Los Angeles, Louisiana, Chicago, New York, and Washington D.C and also abroad to Germany and Austria.
Cipher Goings, 18, is one of the members of the Northwest Tap Connection and has been dancing with them since the age of 7. He was named a National Young Arts Foundation Dance Finalist of 2019, a competition between young artists in different realms across the U.S. This is an example of the achievements that the Northwest Tap Connection facilitates for their dancers.
NWT’s Significance to Communities of Color
In order to understand the importance of the work that NW Tap Connection and Ms. Melba have, we must look at the history of tap, and how it is intrinsically tied to the African American community. Historically, many African tribes utilized drums not only as a means of creating music and facilitating important events, but also as a form of communication; they were often the primary source of correspondence between neighboring tribes, and could transmit messages across immense distances. When slaveholders discovered this, the use of drums by slaves was banned in the U.S. South. African music is closely integrated with dance, and without drums to create the rhythm, slaves used other forms of percussion to accompany their dancing – their hands, feet, and thighs all became instruments.
Tap is often thought to be a fusion of several percussive dances with roots in many different countries: African tribal dances, Spanish flamenco, English clog dancing, and Irish jigs. Tap gained popularity after the civil war as part of traveling minstrel shows, where performers (both white and black) wore blackface and played into negative racial stereotypes about African Americans; that they were dumb, lazy, and a great source of entertainment. Early tap shoes had wooden soles, which sometimes had pennies attached to the heel and toe to create the signature brassy sound that identifies tap. As jazz and Ragtime become more popular throughout the late 1800’s, tap absorbed many of the rhythms of these new music styles and popularized syncopated step. This is nowhere more apparent than in the 1898 musical, Clorindy, written by Will Marion Cook and Paul Laurence Dunbar,which became the first Broadway musical to employ an all-black cast. However, within other popular forms of entertainment such as Vaudeville, black people were only allowed to perform under certain conditions, including the “two-colored rule” which forbade black people from performing solo, ensuring that the majority of Black tap dancers danced in pairs, preventing them from achieving the kind of stardom that solo white tappers could. Even so, some of the most famous tap dancers, the ones who revolutionized tap, are Black people. Some of the tap dancing greats are described below.
William Henry Lane (1825-1852) – also known as “Master Juba” – was possibly the only African American man to perform in minstrel shows before 1858, and the only one of the era to perform with a white minstrel group. Charles Dickens saw him perform in 1842, and described his dancing as “resembling the noises of the fingers on a tambourine” – one of the earliest records of tap dance.
Bill “Bojangles” Robinson (1877-1949) started his craft in his minstrel shows and vaudeville, and was one of the first black men to go solo, as well as the most highly paid African American entertainer in the early 20th century. He went on to star in many Hollywood films, most famously in The Little Colonel, where he danced with Shirley Temple – the first interracial couple to dance on screen. World Tap Dance Day (May 25), which was signed into law in 1989, was chosen to honor his birthday.
Famous stair dance from The Little Colonel
Eleanor Powell as Bill Robinson in Honolulu 1939 – he taught her the routine, and it is meant to pay “respectful tribute” to his work.
John “Bubbles” Sublett (1902-1986), often considered the father of rhythm tap, performed in the Vaudeville duo “Buck and Bubbles,” made up of himself and pianist Ford “Buck” Washington. They popularized the polished tuxedo and cane look of tap. They were the first black artists to perform at Radio City Music Hall, and the first black artists in a television program. Sublett gave tap lessons to Fred Astaire in 1920; Astaire considered him to be one of the best tap dancers of his time and paid homage to him and Bill Robinson in a number from Swing Time; unfortunately, it was in blackface.
Fred Astaire, Bojangles of Harlem
Buck & Bubbles – Varsity Show (1937)
Although some of the most famous tap dancers throughout history have been black, it is still an inaccessible dance form – in the same way as ballet – due to racial biases of what dancers should look like and rising costs of lessons and equipment. Northwest Tap Connection gives black people the ability to participate in a form of dance that has been historically used to disparage them; “as a result of tap dance’s affiliation with minstrelsy and thus its ties to caricatures of blackness, tap dance on its own has come to signify not only “blackness” but a national identity that creates space for the white body through the exclusion of the black” (Shiovitz 11). They seek to close that gap and to allow African Americans to learn a form of dance that is deeply rooted in their heritage, and to bring dance to a community that is often under served and underrepresented in the arts.
How Does Northwest Tap Connection Relate to the Course?
Self-Organization
Because of institutionalized racism, the American system has largely failed over the years to provide equal opportunities to African Americans. In result, the Black community, and other marginalized groups, have needed to provide opportunities for themselves through self-organization. One way that these communities have provided opportunities is through local organizations that focus on providing services to marginalized individuals in the area.
The programs offered By Northwest Tap Connection continue the long history of self-organized sports and recreation by the African American community. Before the organized play movement of the early 1900’s brought playgrounds and recreation centers to African American communities, community sports and recreation were self run and organized. This self-organization sparked creativity, expression and above all else a sense of unity among the African American community. While the organized play movement brought new facilities to the African American community these often failed to meet the needs of the community. As a result the 1920’s through the 1940’s were highlighted by the efforts of independent Black social clubs organizing competitions and other recreational opportunities. The impetus for much of this self organized competition was the Jim-Crow segregation that dominated organized sports and even dance. The self-organization of the Black Community has often been sparked by systematic inequalities, and a need to provide to the community what the system cannot. This phenomenon is demonstrated by the Free-Breakfast programs instituted by the Black Panther Party. This program provided breakfast for schoolchildren who would otherwise be unable to afford and eat breakfast, similarly Northwest Tap Connection provides arts programs for students who would otherwise not have this access.
While dance is often thought of as an apolitical art form, Black artists have in fact used dance throughout history as a form of protest. Pearl Primus was one of the mainstays of Black concert dance in the 1940’s, she used her background in dance and anthropology to construct “protest dances” which called for racial equality and an end to racial terrorism. One of the most notable of such performances was “Strange Fruit,” featuring poetry of Lewis Allan, which condemned lynching. Northwest Tap Connection has continued this tradition, following the shootings of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling, dancers from the studio were filmed dancing in the streets among unrest and protest. This sparked the interest of directors, Joseph Webb, Denzel Boyd, and Tyler Rabinowitz who have partnered with Northwest Tap Connection to produce the short film “Hell You Talmbout.” The film is a protest to the modern day lynchings by police shootings of African Americans.
Inequality and Underfunded Schools
Due to economic inequality, schools with more students of color are under-funded. For instance, the top 10% of school districts “spend nearly 10 times more than the poorest 10 percent” (p. 31, Allen). Students in the poorest districts receive $1,000 less on average when compared to wealthier districts. With a lack of funding more diverse schools are then forced to remove funding from arts programs and focus on courses that teach directly to Common Core Standards. One can see this lack of funding specifically in dance. In the school year of 1999 to 2000 20% of schools funded dance programs, but in the school year of 2009 to 2010 only 3% of schools funded dance. Dance has essentially been removed from public education. The removal of such programs has a dramatic effect on college admission. One study found that students who took four years of art classes scored on average 91 points higher on SAT tests. The removal of arts programs then has a disproportionate effect on African Americans because their schools are the ones most underfunded and, therefore face the largest cuts to the arts. School districts serving majority African-American or Hispanic students are twice as likely to lack art programs as school districts serving predominantly white students.
Programs like Northwest Tap Connection are then a major, and often overlooked, option to combat educational and future economic inequality. Northwest Tap Connection is able to provide an opportunity that can help to lower educational inequality by supplementing an education in the arts that was lost in many public schools. Ultimately, by evening the educational playing field there is a greater potential for educated African Americans to transcend the institutionally racist barriers put before them. Just as Cipher Goings proves, Northwest Tap Connection moves beyond just a center for dance by helping students get an education in the arts, an important factor to overcoming educational inequality. According to 2008 data, African-American and Hispanic students were two times less likely to have access to art programs in their school districts in comparison to their white peers.
Works Cited
Allen, Donald W.R II, “What are the ways K-12 public school systems and teacher training programs contribute to the exploitation of black educators; what political, cultural and economic ends does this serve? How does the current treatment and deployment of black educators hamper rather than further black educational progress?” (2018). School of Education Student Capstone Projects. 186. https://digitalcommons.hamline.edu/hse_cp/186
Dance Studio | United States | Northwest Tap Connection. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.nwtapconnection.org/
Gates, H. L. (2009). Harlem Renaissance: Lives from the African American National Biography. New York: Oxford University Press.
Hill, C. V. (2009). Tap Dancing America: A Cultural History, New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Rees, G. (2011). Tap Dance. Encyclopedia of African American Popular Culture (pp. 1367–1370).
Seibert, B. (2015). What the Eye Hears: A History of Tap Dancing. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. pp. 445–6.
Shiovitz, B. W. (2016). Masks in Disguise: Exposing Minstrelsy and Racial Representation within
The Langston Hughes Performing Arts Center was built in 1915 and is located in central Seattle. It was originally a synagogue, that was sold to the city of Seattle in 1969 and made a part of the Parks Department of Seattle. After it was sold to the city, it became the hub of African American arts and culture in Seattle. It was named after Langston Hughes, who was a black poet known for illustrating the black experience in the United States.
The Langston Hughes Performing Arts Center’s name was changed to the Langston Hughes Performing Arts Institute after a reconstruction from 2010-2013. A few years later, the LANGSTON non-profit organization was created to run the programming and preserve the mission of the institute, and to help it run as an institution independent of the city of Seattle. LANGSTON has a board consisting of 5 members that exists to serve the needs and interests of the community. LANGSTON’s mission statement is “cultivating black brilliance,” and its core values include “Sharing culture, promoting artistic expression, encouraging artistic excellence, facilitating cultural education and possibility, cultivating leaders, practicing radical inclusivity, and thriving as a self-determined community.” LANGSTON’s executive director Tim Lennon has expressed his worry about the changing demographics of Seattle, and specifically the central area where the Langston Hughes Performing Arts Institute is located. He cites this demographic change as further reasoning to preserve the black culture of the area, since there are few arts organizations created by and for black people.
The Langston Hughes Performing Arts Institute hosts many plays, lectures, discussions, workshops, and more. Such events give African Americans a important representation in the local community, encourages them to participate in their local culture, and gives them a voice within their community. Their most popular event is the annual Langston Hughes African American Film Festival, which has been running for 16 years now. It hosts black filmmakers, community leaders, and experts in the field of black studies to “exchange ideas with Black film as a catalyst for discussion.”
Connections to Contemporary Arts and Entertainment:
In contemporary society, the arts and entertainment we have such ready access to, has a clear racial bias and disproportionately portrays black people in a negative way, and stereotypes them. Black individuals in media are expected to be portrayed in positions of inferiority and weakness.
Black participation in theater and drama originated from minstrel shows, meaning that historically, black people (and those portraying them in blackface) were portrayed in a very degrading manner. This demeaning representation of Black people has in most cases become less blatant, but still clearly exists in mainstream media. Contemporary media and entertainment is undoubtedly centered around the experiences and culture of white society, and is inherently Eurocentric. This Eurocentric form of media has no interest in furthering the success of Black artists, whose ideas often directly conflict with the values of white media.
This is a widespread issue, and it has lead to a very skewed perception of black people in American society. It fuels the implicit bias that American society has, and essentially reaffirms the incorrect notions regarding black people that many have. Media which opposes the social expectations and racial roles of traditional media will undoubtedly struggle to gain mainstream popularity and success.
This is why the role of the Langston Hughes Performing Arts Institute is so important to Black artists in Seattle. This institution allows for art, created by and for Black individuals to be engaged with in an environment free from the racial biases of mainstream media. Furthermore, this hub for Black arts provides the Black community with access to media that wasn’t created by the white dominated mainstream media. The Langston Hughes Performing Arts Institute allows the Black community to view art specifically created to express the Black life experience. Not only is it more difficult for Black artists to find acceptance into mainstream media, but it is also more challenging for Black individuals to even begin pursuing art.
Pursuing the arts requires time, money and training. However, the Black community is also forced to deal with significant financial and educational barriers. And these barriers can limit the access that Black people have to the pursuit of art. The Langston Hughes Performing Arts Institute helps to break down these barriers by providing educational events and opportunities to learn from other Black artists in the community.
The Langston Hughes African American Film Festival, in particular, exemplifies the methods in which this institution supports the Black community. This festival exclusively screens films which were created by independent Black filmmakers. In addition, the festival also hosts workshops and discussions with Black filmmakers. This provides the Black community with the ability to engage with and discuss films that accurately portray Black life in America. The workshops and discussion based aspects of the festival provide education to developing filmmakers as well as opportunities to network with other local, Black filmmakers and community leaders.
What Is the UCWA?
