"If anybody in this town ever sells property to a nigger, he's liable to be run out of town."

- A statement made by a Kennewick police official in 1948 to the American Civil Liberties Union.

Hanford's black workers who decided to stay in the Tri-Cities at the end of World War II didn't exactly find a welcome mat waiting.

In 1947, Pasco attorney Florence Merrick called in the American Civil Liberties Union's Seattle chapter to investigate living conditions for the Tri-Cities' 2,500 black residents.

The ACLU investigated in 1948 and issued a report in 1949.

The report concluded racial discrimination was extensive.

The report noted most of the Tri-Cities' black population lived in "weed-ridden, dust-choked" east Pasco, mostly in trailers and cabins.

East Pasco was originally white with a handful of black families.

But the whites moved out as the blacks moved in, said Katie Barton, Pasco first black woman on the city council, who moved to Pasco from Texas in 1947.

"Pasco accepted blacks. Kennewick didn't," Barton said.

In one Pasco trailer camp, 380 people lived in 60 cabins and trailers, served by six showers and eight toilets.

"One colored woman pays $20 a week for a small broken-down trailer in which she can't even stand up straight," the report stated.

Pasco threatened to shut the trailer camp, which did not have water or sewer lines. The black community and city government eventually hammered out a utilities plan where both sides put up some money.

The ACLU noted other problems - blacks were unable to get housing loans and a black dentist had been refused office space in Pasco. Also, most Pasco restaurants, taverns, cigar stores and the bus depot would not serve blacks.

Barton remembers signs all about Pasco's businesses stating, "We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone."

The ACLU report quotes a Franklin County commissioner talking about a black murdering a black, saying: "If we give them all guns, maybe they'll kill themselves off and save us the trouble."

On the other hand, Franklin County Prosecutor William Gaffney "is sympathetic with the Negroes," the report stated. Gaffney would refuse to prosecute blacks caught in mass raids for gambling and minor crimes.

A black officer was added to the Pasco police after the ACLU report surfaced.

Meanwhile, blacks "steered clear of Kennewick," the report stated. No blacks lived there until the 1960s.

Barton said the jail in Kennewick would not even hold black prisoners.

She remembers a black man arrested on a misdemeanor in Kennewick in the 1950s. The Kennewick police tied him to a post at the corner of Washington and Kennewick streets and called the Pasco police to pick him up, she said.

Barton said: "Richland was the least prejudiced of all. That was because it was a government town."

Segregated trailer camps and barracks existed for black Hanford workers in north Richland and Hanford.

Blacks could start businesses in Richland, the ACLU report stated.

But the report added no recreational facilities existed for Richland's blacks.

One movie theater and the main recreational building in Richland barred blacks.

They could go into drug stores but could not get soda fountain service, the report stated.

The blacks' struggle for acceptance in the Tri-Cities took decades.

-- In 1945, the foundation for the Tri-Cities' first black church, Morning Star Baptist Church, was set.

Joe and Velma Williams (now Velma Ray) and Luzell and Etta Bea Johnson sang gospel music as a quartet in their homes. J.L. Stewart, a minister without a congregation, heard about the singing and asked to participate.

The sessions with Stewart led to prayer meetings and then to a church in their homes. Ray can still remember the first time a woman was filled with the spirit and sang out "hallelujah" in her living room.

The church formally organized in 1946 in the Johnson home. It then moved to a Lewis Street location, then to the corner of Butte and Wehe streets, and then to the present building at 631 S. Douglas Street in 1953.

-- In 1953, the Pasco chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was formed. It changed its name to the Benton-Franklin chapter in 1977.

-- In 1957, C.W. Brown, a basketball star at Columbia (now Richland) High School went with four friends from Pasco to the Kennewick Social Club for a school dance.

The club barred them from entering because they were black. That prompted a petition drive in protest by the Columbia students. Eventually, a lawsuit was filed against the club.

Barton's then 15-year-old daughter, Carolyn, was one of the barred students.

"It was advertised as a public dance ... They weren't going over there to put anyone to a test," Barton said.

"We sued. We didn't get any money. But there's no more social club," she said.

-- The NAACP led a protest march against housing and job discrimination through Pasco in 1960. About 40 marched.

-- In a 1963 hearing, the Washington State Board Against Discrimination found no illegal discrimination in Kennewick.

"But we heard again and again there is something in the air in Kennewick, and that Negroes know they can't come and live here," said board chairman Ken MacDonald.

Still no blacks lived in Kennewick. Sometime in the 1960s, the first blacks moved to Kennewick.

-- In 1965, east Pasco's Whittier elementary school closed as the black community pressured the Pasco School Board to integrate the city's schools.

At the time, 8.5 percent of Pasco's students were black. The school system had one black staff member.

-- A 1966 Atomic Energy Commission study showed that 25 of Battelle-Northwest's 2,095 employers were black and 82 of Hanford's other 8,000 workers were black.

About 1,900 blacks lived in the Tri-Cities at the time.

A federal directive went out to boost minority hirings.

The number of black Pasco school teachers was up to eight.

-- Art Fletcher of east Pasco became Pasco's first black city councilman in 1967. He resigned in 1969 to become assistant secretary of labor in the Nixon administration.

In 1968, Fletcher, a Republican, lost the lieutenant governor's race by a 635,000-to-587,000-vote margin.

In 1989, he was named chairman of the U.S Civil Rights Commission.

Barton was appointed to fill his city council slot in 1969.

-- Columbia Basin College and the Washington State Board Against Discrimination signed a 1968 order - the first of its kind in Washington - governing the recruitment and housing of black athletes.

That stemmed from complaints that black athletes were housed in a motel on the fringe of east Pasco, five miles from CBC.

Also several black athletes had been cut from CBC teams for "bad attitude," including wearing "Afro" haircuts, the Herald reported.

The order contained several rules regarding housing, recruiting and counseling for athletes.

-- In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Pasco underwent several studies and endured several disputes involving the strained relationship between its black community - mostly in east Pasco - and the Pasco schools and government.

-- In 1970, Joan Turner was appointed the first black Pasco School Board member. Ellenor Moore became the first elected black board member in 1973.

-- In 1972, construction began on the East Pasco Neighborhood Facility, which is now the Martin Luther King Jr. Center.

-- In 1983, Lonnie Daniels become the first black to become a Franklin County District Court judge.

-- In 1984, Joe Jackson became Pasco's - and the Tri-Cities' - first black mayor.