Bremerton Patriot, September 02, 2011

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PATRIOT BREMERTON

Blackberry Festival: Labor Day weekend is chock-full of berry loving fun. B-1

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 2, 2011 | Vol. 13, No. 34 WWW.BREMERTONPATRIOT.COM | 50¢

Eyes on the prize

DADT ends, stories remain Service members tell of experiences BY TOM JAMES TJAMES@BREMERTONPATRIOT.COM

Kristin Okinaka / Staff photo

Local civil rights activist Lilian Walker sits at her kitchen table in the home she and her husband James bought in a predominately white neighborhood in 1943. With the opening of the Washington D.C. memorial to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Walker said the work towards racial equality is never done.

Looking back Local civil rights icon says never give up BY KRISTIN OKINAKA KOKINAKA@CENTRALKITSAPREPORTER.COM

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ever give up. For nearly 98 years, it’s been Lillian Walker’s motto. “You can’t overcome anything by giving up,” she said. “And I don’t go into anything expecting to lose.” Being African-American and living in Bremerton since the early 1940s, Walker has seen the community change and evolve from within – she was at the center of it. In 1944, Walker and her husband helped found the Bremerton branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Despite criticism from many, they purchased a house in a predominantly white neighborhood. She was also a charter member for the YWCA in Bremerton. If it had to do with ensuring equal rights or providing social services, she probably had a hand in helping with it. Walker said

she’s always been a firm believer of treating others the way you want to be treated. “I don’t believe in hate or the mistreatment of one person against another,” the 97-year-old said. “Whenever I saw racism, I tried to correct it.” With the 48th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I have a dream” speech last Sunday, some parts of the nation — and some parts of Kitsap County — have come far since the days of King, the movement and the signing of the 1964 Civil Rights Act by President Lyndon B. Johnson. A four-acre memorial dedicated to King featuring the 30-foot high granite relief of the legendary civil rights leader called the “Stone of Hope” recently opened to the public on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. The Aug. 28 dedication ceremony was postponed due to Hurricane Irene. The memorial is situated on four acres on the northwest corner of the Tidal Basin next to the Roosevelt Memorial, according to the National Memorial Project Foundation. The cancellation came one day before the sixth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, a

21st century reminder that the totality of King’s dream has not yet been realized. Walker thinks positively of the King Memorial but in terms of racial equality, “work is never done.” The local civil rights pioneer was born on Oct. 2, 1913 on a 20-acre farm in rural Illinois. She and her siblings learned from a young age to work hard and helped their parents with the ploughing, planting, cooking and other household tasks. Her father instilled in her the attitude of “if anyone else can do it, I can do it better.” And, her father’s words still resonate with her. “Even if it’s a game of marbles, I go in as if I’m going to win,” Walker said. She married James T. Walker in 1941 — one of his first jobs in Bremerton was as a chauffeur and she as a maid. For a time, Walker worked as the postmaster for recently demolished Sinclair Park, the segregated housing project in Bremerton. In 1943, the couple purchased a house in Bremerton in a day when the SEE WALKER, A7

Medical corpsman Josh Masters didn’t decide to give up his career in the Navy until the second time the Navy tried to dishonorably discharge him for being gay. The first time, he was just back from the war in Iraq, and his first-line leader, a Marine corporal, told the inquiry board convened that he didn’t care if corpsman Masters “was as gay as butterflies and rainbows,” and that he’d take a hundred more Marines just like him. That time, the Corps went after him after a fellow service member informed on Masters’ after reading an email over his shoulder. The informant suspected the “I love you” on the screen came from another man, and reported him to command. Fortunately for Masters, his team leader’s words of support on his character were enough and the investigation stopped there. “My marines that had to trust me with their lives basically didn’t care,” said Masters. “The only thing that they cared about was whether I could do my job or not.”

Don’t ask At its heart, Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was a development upon previously enacted Department of Defense regulations making homosexuality punishable by discharge. It didn’t change the permissibilSEE DADT, A8


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