Residents of the Salishan neighborhood on the eastside of Tacoma shared their stories with the Tacoma Public Library last month.
There were stories from a Cambodian refugee, a new homeowner who said the neighborhood reminded him of South Central L.A., and a local pastor, Tony Martin.
"You had people that really cared about one another and there was a sense of, you know, freedom," Martin said.
Martin fondly reminisced about memories from the neighborhood where he grew up. Even after he moved away when he was younger he said he'd still come back to Salishan to play basketball. Martin said that the community is special and it always will be.
Anna Trammell, who manages the library's archives and special collections, noted a common thread she heard from the stories:
"While everybody's story is unique there, they kept coming back to some of these same themes...the theme of this close knit community and people looking out for each other."
After putting out an open call to the public for stories, the library ultimately collected ten of them during the event. The event and archive project are part of the library's Community Archives Center, which launched last year with a grant from the Institute for Museum and Library Services.
The goal of the center is to provide a historical record of Tacoma that's reflective of the people who've lived there. They wanted to fill in the "gaps" in local history, through projects like the Salishan Story Fest and another digitizing images of Black, Native and Asian people from early 20th-century Tacoma.
Trammell said one of the first things they did as a part of the project was asking the community where they felt there were gaps in local history and then working to fill them in.
"We heard that feedback and began to examine our collections and really identified, you know, Hilltop and the Eastside as being areas that are underrepresented in our collections," Trammell said.
The Salishan (SAL-ih-SHAN) neighborhood was one of the first intentionally integrated neighborhoods in Tacoma, according to Trammell. It started off as housing for workers during World War II and turned into low income housing in the '50s. Because of this, the neighborhood has continued to be a diverse community. But also one that has historically been underserved.
Trammell explained that when budget cuts came in 2011, it was the Eastside and Hilltop neighborhoods — two of the most diverse communities with affordable housing — that lost their library branches.
"None of the other areas of Tacoma had to face that same loss. I think now we really have to think critically about how can we correct this? What can we do now to invest in these areas that maybe have been neglected in the past," Trammell asked.
The Tacoma Public Library are already planning for another story fest next spring in the Hilltop neighborhood to collect stories. You can listen to the stories they collected from Salishan, online.
