Remarkable People: Making a Difference in the Northwest; Pat Wright

i know from all over the world in seven hundred thousand she's a seattle church and she's performed with rachel and she originated the total experience gospel choir he held in his self esteem lot of kids run help break down racial barriers with his spirit so this bill

i'm from carthage texas east texas town just a few miles from st what louisiana my father was the pastor of this church and a mother's good teacher and imam number five eight siblings and we had a big farm raised thirty three acres of rain so we pick it we picked tomatoes and beans and corn in it are the things that form families delivering wonderfully when disco we were dirt poor but we were told i moved to seattle washington in october of nineteen sixty four i looked around when i got off the bus and i said where are the black folks ain't no black folks here and it took me a long time to find the level it was just like the south basically where the blacks and whites didn't mix tonight are only job yes that isn't his job was over the mixing

ceased the churches while black or all white or all asian or whatever it is different now the charges do make so there's a lot of mixed marriages now i don't add philip racism in the pacific northwest has improved its smarter this more subtle libby beason any

energy or is being principal of trouble waters in i hear them sing a gospel song jesus been my grades or

whatever like just tell me i can make over i can fly over that great i can make it so we get to the end of that song i mean mostly wiped out sometimes in tears because i think about it and think about my humble beginnings and how i got over he's been like a bridge over the troubled waters of my life and here i am when i first came to see an old is looking for a job and finally landed a job at a bank at that day they saw my college education and all of the reasons to put me up front it's that they could put me in front because as african american so they gave me a job the basement of the building and they discovered that this girl is so fast gonna give her a promotion so finally after work and their two years they promoted me from the basement to the first floor came to tell her african

americans who came in the bank were shocked absolutely shocked and spent lots of time at my window congratulating me it was like that when you are black person and one does something outstanding by people as a whole feel we are right it's a whole generation it's a whole race of people who say yes at common era in on

the he and when in the union than in delhi and i knew he was lying

people as people speak i've just been judged nieto bothers me don't just me by which they got to be open your heart open minded receive needed to know me before you judge me and so therefore i hate ignorance any fashion just to test it i was hired by the seattle school district to teach gospel music because all these black is when that dissipating in the traditional music program so i decided well ok they won't hire me i will and i started franklin and that is spread out to several other schools in the seattle area after a while when they decided they know on the

wanted this kind of music in the school system on and i worked with all these groups i tell them when it's fine we just go to church i to get to mount zion baptist church so we brought these choirs together and together we called on the total experience gospel choir and so it's then their two years now i inhaled soon any particular kind of gm the thing about me he isn't on the borderline of the conflict zone with would find their way into the military's health why i've never seen a business stand out late next innovation and that in itself is something positive and they enjoy the

company of going to surface davis ch many of those in the first five years ago to express choir and now your doctors and you know years in and to your teachers and your preachers in your builders and educators say they are they're just they've done so well and so few of them ever hit the penal system so proud of that when i was a little girl going up and practiced taxes my mother and father were killed or from my mother was very progressive been an educator woman she was always in charge of the east a play and down on the stage is what they're talented so we would come to the forefront and do a lot of the ethical type things on state well i was that up until nineteen eighty five this one another name of rebecca wells calls me up out of nowhere and says to me i have heard you saying as senior choir perform and i would like to know if you would like to be a part of my new show it

is still oh no i of course wasn't criticized a lot of my peers for being in a play that was not religious mr lat of beer tomorrow and i don't know if it was sober would set the stage for like the ethical situation in seattle i am in the public eye so much it seems that people wondering if i have a family i do have a family i have for years his name is brainy eason also a license an ordained minister

at the present he is the a pitch up and at the juvenile detention center and he's retired after thirty one years of teaching in the public schools have two children julianne patrick who have given me three grandsons my daughter is a speech pathologist my son as a disc jockey it is ma ma the eye he moves to use

potentates isn't that while several presidential candidates who came through the same thing bam and then for a former president bill clinton we have we have been asked to saying at least seven percent on we have been on five continents we have performed in twenty seven countries many things i'll sell your own state for me was that was on russia in nineteen ninety two we were in the sun in this beautiful opera house and they had an alarm bells music of a canny religious music to be done in seventy two years

and we went over there are about sixty five of us and that was the musician from ceo richard stevenson and my son patrick right and the three of us we only have americans in this and to rehearse them with over and what had surrounded the opera house because it took the whole month's wages just to pay do you need to hear the music and people think is a half it's busy

in and i start to say grace

and this one was way up in the balcony and there were these people from the kgb still in uniform and still in the rifles is worth a whole lot better and they were trying to keep her from getting to the state which got to the stage and she puts this will give to the bows and says tears running down her face and she says in russia he used to seek asylum in the us today this area

as the landing indian is isn't are in june aha

just use as i've been asked along with the choir together to several workshops gospel music workshops weekend rock and we can dance at the same time when the league and still singing as i teach people how to do that and out sometime that part's great difficulty jupiter had a dance and clap and sing at the same time and we are always at the end of the workshop i got a we've made it the amazing prize that's it oh

no in the late hours down on a flat steady war know that was called an annuity worth an exception or slavery i'm a saturday so we know how to do this kind of work you know they'll be both and that we know that we just want to get away from the plantations down to the water's edge and that the stars at night slip away just that you know we're seeing i know we are we the people so yeah it obviously a

noble causes an oral history anyway the stories that retailer stores that were given to us mr important to me that when we sing a song that we understand where that song came from he says kate oh nice it

in the life

again off an area and how a household word in europe denis a lot of our earlier stars lisa hughes all those people had to go to europe to get their beginnings because they were not accepted here in hollywood skin to black black face will admit that cagey here it's too big interesting how people go on is don't put in their lives now and in their backsides to imitate what after americans have naturally because as to win which is fine in africa

and i die at it is and i believe i guess i can live with i lead to know that i can i don't have a better system believe that there's nothing too hard for me to do even in the older age that it's sad

on an ohio and la junta is he at the peak

the peak is well yeah