Helen Beck Stafford (1899-2002) was a community and civil rights activist in Tacoma. Stafford attended Kansas State University, where she was not allowed live in the dorms, swim in the campus pool, or use other facilities required by her course work because she was Black. Despite a college experience rife with discrimination and racial insults, she excelled and graduated in 1920 with a degree in Home Economics and a teaching certificate. She spent the next several years teaching in colleges and elementary schools, though she was only permitted to teach at Black colleges in the Midwest.

While on a trip to Tacoma, Washington to visit her brother in 1926, Stafford met her future husband and moved to Tacoma permanently. She applied for work with the Tacoma school district but was rejected because of her race. While at home raising her daughter, Stafford became involved in community affairs. She later returned to the work force, spending 23 years as a public assistance case worker, then supervisor. Stafford was the first Black case worker for the Pierce County Department of Social and Health Services.

Helen Stafford was actively involved in many local civic and cultural organizations. She was the first Black woman in the Tacoma League of Women Voters chapter, and a president of the Tacoma chapter of the NAACP. She worked for dozens of volunteer organizations and has received many awards for her humanitarian work.

This photo was taken as part of a profile on Helen Beck Stafford published by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in 1987.

Caption information source: "Lifelong activist helps give Tacoma a conscience" by Martha Friedman, Saettle Post Intelligencer, August 9, 1987, p. F4
Caption information also derived from captions written by Post-Intelligencer staff and attached to the back of the photograph.