Re’Gena Bell (now Re’Gena Bell-Roberts) grew up in Pasco, Washington, and attended the University of Washington, majoring in drama. As a student, she performed in productions with Black Arts West, and her original play “Eclipse” was produced by Black Arts West in April 1975. The play won Bell a Rockefeller playwright-in-residence grant. Bell was a junior at UW when she was shot in May 1975, leaving her quadriplegic. After her injury, she went on to graduate from UCLA with a history degree, and became a local activist, running twice for a position on the Seattle City Council. She is also a published writer with a memoir, “Walking on Thin Ice,” published in 2015, and a collection of prose and poetry titled “The Blues Don’t Always Last,” published in 2018.

Here, Re’Gena Bell, a member of the Governor’s Committee on Disability and Employment and the Seattle Housing Authority Board of Commissioners, waits in line to file as a candidate for an open seat on the Seattle City Council in 1993. A Black single mother of triplets, raised in public housing, Bell campaigned as a voice for the young, poor, disenfranchised, and disabled. A survivor of gun violence, she also advocated for greater police presence in the city’s neighborhoods, and stricter gun control laws. At the time Bell was also a member of the NAACP, the National Political Congress of Black Women and liaison to the state Division of Vocational Rehabilitation.

Caption information source: "A Voice for All the Young, Poor, and Disenfranchised," Seattle Post-Intelligencer, August 31, 1993, p. B5
Caption information source: Re'Gena Bell-Roberts website at https://regenabellroberts.com/