Lillian & James Walker

Lillian Walker (1913-2012) & James Walker (1911 – 2000)

Lillian Allen grew up on her family’s small farm in Carrier Mills, Illinois. She and James Walker married in 1941 and settled in Bremerton, where James found work at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard. Thousands of Black workers came to wartime Bremerton, where they encountered discrimination in local businesses and daily life. The Walkers helped build Bremerton’s NAACP branch, with James as its second president and Lillian as its secretary. James was once told a barber would cut his hair only after closing, with the shades drawn; Lillian later described the Bremerton of those years as “a white supremacist town.” The couple campaigned for the state’s Fair Employment Practices Act, passed in 1949.

When the Triangle Cafe near the shipyard gate refused to serve Lillian, her protest led the police chief to broker an end to its whites-only rule. In 1954 the couple pressed a civil rights complaint until a Bremerton drugstore agreed to serve everyone. Lillian was also a founding board member of the Bremerton YWCA. The city’s Lillian A. and James Walker Park honors them both.

Sources and further reading: Kate Kershner, “Walker, Lillian (1913–2012),” HistoryLink.org Essay 9912 (2011, updated 2013); John C. Hughes, “Lillian Walker: Civil Rights Pioneer,” Legacy Project oral history, Washington Secretary of State (interview, June 2009); Steven Gardner, “Bremerton civil rights pioneer finally gets her due,” Kitsap Sun, October 5, 2010; “Celebrating Women’s History Month in Washington,” NWSidebar, Washington State Bar Association, March 15, 2016; City of Bremerton, Lillian and James Walker Park.