Portrait of Spokane’s first Black mayor unveiled in art gallery that bears his name

A large portrait of Jim Chase, the first Black mayor of not only Spokane but any major city in Washington, was unveiled Wednesday by City Council President Betsy Wilkerson, who is today the city’s only Black elected leader, during a ceremony in the city hall art gallery that bears his name.

“The era that he led the city, even though it had challenges, he was a man of civility, he was a man of honor, and he earned the respect of this community,” Wilkerson said. “We are so proud of him, and Jim will remind us of what we’re all talking about today, that we all belong.”

Born in East Texas in 1914, James “Jim” Chase was the youngest of seven children. He arrived in Spokane with two friends in the midst of the Great Depression, working as a porter and shoe shiner at a local hotel. In 1953, he opened an auto body shop that he operated with his East Texas friends until it was sold to the Spokane School District in 1981.

He served in many key community roles before his first run for office, including serving as president of the NAACP during the entirety of the 1960s, during which he led efforts to fight discrimination cases in employment, housing and accommodations. He was also elected to become the 27th Grand Master of the Prince Hall Grand Lodge of the Freemasons.

Chase was considered “arguably the most popular politician to serve in Spokane city government in recent years,” The Spokesman-Review reported the day he left office. From 1973 to 1981, only one city council member won more than a single term – Chase, who won re-election by a startling three-to-one margin in 1979 and was elected mayor in 1981 by 24 percentage points, a landslide by the standards of today and of the time.

In his time, Chase was best known for his advocacy for Spokane’s youth, campaigning for free swimming for children at city pools, threatening to resign from the Spokane City Council in 1979 as the council considered cutting the Spokane Area Youth Council’s budget, and serving as a fierce advocate to bring that body representing the interests of young people inside the walls of City Hall.

Chase was widely beloved for his contributions to Spokane’s youth, and local and state leaders found myriad ways of honoring him for that service quickly after he passed to torch by his successor, Mayor Vicki McNeill. He left office at the start of 1986, having decided due to failing health not to run for re-election – by Jan. 10, then Gov. Booth Gardner honored Chase at a packed community dinner inside the East Central Community Center.

In 1986, three weeks after Chase left office the city created the Chase Youth Commission named in his honor. That organization today acts as a government liaison for the youth of not only the city of Spokane, but also the county.

Sheri Barnard, then a city councilwoman and later mayor of Spokane, was named one of the Chase Youth Commission’s first six commissioners, having been interviewed for the role by Chase, who was asked to help during the selection process.

Thirty-eight years later, Barnard attended Wednesday’s unveiling, recalling her initial days on the Spokane City Council.

“The first day I came down and walked into the office, and there was Mayor Chase,” she recalled. “And he goes, ‘Oh, Sheri, I am so glad you’re here now – we’re going to start bringing the youth into this community.’ ”

Chase was also a champion for the arts, implementing a 1% rule for the arts system that set aside a portion of large city construction costs to go toward public art.

The Chase Gallery outside city hall was named in his honor in 1986 four weeks after his departure from City Hall, but today relatively few know the story of the man whose name graces the gallery, the Chase Youth Commission and Chase Middle School in the Lincoln Heights neighborhood.

“All the locations that carry his name, and I don’t think many people know why or how that name came to be,” Wilkerson said.

Chase died in 1987 at the age of 73 after a battle with cancer. More than 1,000 people filled St. John’s Episcopal Cathedral for his funeral services. Three months later, Eastern Washington University established the Chase scholarship. Two years later, the Chase Youth Commission created a grant program in his honor, providing funds to county residents 19 years old or younger to help them get the last few dollars they needed to go to a camp, or file a college application fee, or afford the equipment for a school sports league.

Editor’s note: This story was updated on Aug. 29 to clarify that Jim Chase was the first Black mayor of a major city in Washington. Former Roslyn Mayor William Craven was the first Black mayor of any Washington city, having been first appointed in 1975 and elected to that position later that year.