James Washington Jr. (1911-2000) was a sculptor and painter who became associated with the Northwest School of artists in Seattle. He grew up in Mississippi and moved to Seattle in 1944 to work for the Navy during World War II. Washington was largely self-taught and he believed this lack of formal training was essential to his artistic success. In the 1950s, Washington became interested in making sculpture from stone after being inspired by a piece of volcanic rock he found among the ruins of the pyramids at Teotihuacan in Mexico; he later carved it into his first stone sculpture, “Young Boy of Athens.” Washington’s work in both mediums often expressed spiritual feelings and used symbols from Christianity, freemasonry, and the animal world.

This image shows James Washington Jr. presenting his sculpture “Flame of Enlightenment,” commissioned by the Central Area Civil Rights Committee as a tribute to Alfred Cowles. Cowles was a former Seattle School Board president and the head of the Center for Dispute Settlement, which encouraged arbitration and mediation to resolve debates before violence broke out. Pictured left to right are James Washington Jr.; Seymour Kaplan, head of B’nai B’rith in Seattle; Donald Haley, head of the Seattle NAACP branch; and Alfred Cowles.

Caption information source: Washington, James Jr (1911-2000), HistoryLink.org Essay 5328, reprinted from Deloris Tarzan Ament's Iridescent Light: The Emergence of Northwest Art, 2002.
Caption information source: "Top arbiter offers idea for survival," Seattle Post-Intelligencer, December 4, 1973, page B8.