Gene Cash This is Me

Education

 Web References

1. 1. The Seattle Times: Local News: 40 years after march, a dream endures

   seattletimes.nwsource.com/html - [Cached]

   Published on: 8/26/2003   Last Visited: 8/26/2003

   Gene Cash, the principal at Sacajawea Middle School in Federal Way, was part of Martin Luther King Jr.'s March on Washington, a day that changed his life. In his Sammamish home are many reminders of black history and the struggle for civil rights.
   ...
   From loudspeakers along the route, Gene Cash - then 18 and fresh out of high school and today the 58-year-old principal at Sacajawea Middle School in Federal Way - heard Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous speech, "I have a dream."
   
   On that day in 1963, 40 years ago Thursday, Cash adopted that dream as his own, and has since crusaded for equal rights inside and outside the classroom.
   
   At Sacajawea, he walks the hallways, greeting kids by name, asking how it's going. He's soft-spoken but firm, not hesitating to step in if he sees a student - any student - being mistreated by another.
   
   When new students who stand out for their ethnic differences arrive at the 900-student school, he tells kids to seek them out, to be kind and inclusive. "They have a right to an education ... They do not want to be bullied or treated with disrespect."
   
   King was for all Americans, Cash said, "and we shouldn't just celebrate his birthday but practice his ideals."
   
   Those ideals include mediation as a means for resolving conflict - at Sacajawea, when members of the racially mixed student body are at odds, he sits them down and asks one party to hear the other out and vice versa.
   ...
   Gene Cash, the principal at Sacajawea Middle School in Federal Way, points out letter-to-the-editor clippings he's collected over the years dealing with race.
   ...
   Cash and his friends were not allowed to go in. To get close, they agreed to shine the shoes of the white teenagers who were allowed inside.
   
   "I think we finally threw snowballs onto the set," he said. "But it was a moment of realization that we had to be different than what we were to be accepted." The show eventually changed its policy but that, like other changes, was slow to come.
   
   As Cash was coming of age he heard about the slowest and most violent of civil-rights struggles - the effort to desegregate schools. He heard news reports about assaults on "freedom riders" who rode buses in 1961 to challenge segregation and were taken from buses, beaten and jailed.
   
   By 1963, he was living with his father in Cincinnati and wanted to make a stand.
   ...
   A short time later, Cash joined the Army and was sent to Vietnam. He said he began questioning the war and the disproportionate numbers of young black men he saw in combat.
   
   He saw parallels between armed soldiers and powerless villagers, whom he likened to African Americans.
   
   Once he was discharged, he returned to the service as a master sergeant to teach soldiers headed overseas how to treat people and "what to do if you go into a village."
   
   "King made me want to be nonviolent," Cash said. He believed he could best carry forward his belief in equality and acceptance by teaching it to troops. "We owed it to our country."
   
   After he left the service, he became a student at Western Washington University in Bellingham, where he earned an undergraduate degree.
   
   He wonders where he would be today had he not participated in the March on Washington, one of two or three events - including his marriage - "to shape my life."
   
   "As a black person, it gave me a lot of pride," he said.