Now, Mr. Lincoln?

In the summer of 1968, community members of Tacoma, Washington put together a campaign to aid local African American business owners. Dinners were held by community members to raise funds, and seed money loans were given to several business owners in the Tacoma area.

The self-described goals of the project were to:

• Make our community aware of the nature and extent of the blacks’ problems
• Motivate the community to seek solutions
• Encourage personal involvement by every citizen
• Provide basic business education

The spring 2017 and 2016 Honors 401 classes, in conjunction with the Collins’s Library’s Archives and Special Collections, set out to investigate this campaign based on the texts and materials available to us in the University of Puget Sound archive. After spending some time with the materials, we created the timeline, maps and narratives before you now. This project engages issues of economic inequity as well as the history of inclusion and exclusion within the Tacoma community. As you click through and examine the artifacts and data we have assembled we hope you will keep in mind how the myth of the entrepreneurial American Dream shaped the rhetoric of the Now Mr. Lincoln campaign and continues to shape our expectations of economic success today.

Timeline

The following is a timeline containing major events from and surroundign the “Now, Mr. Lincoln?” campaign.