Title: Interview with Fred Haley - #2

Original format: Umatic

Item Id.: spl_ds_fhaley_01_02

Description: This is part 2 of 3 of an interview with Fred Haley. This interview was conducted by Willmott Ragsdale on May 2, 1986 at Haley’s Tacoma office.

Fred T. Haley (1912-2005) was the president of Brown & Haley, the confectionary company  founded by his father in 1912 that became well known for manufacturing Almond Roca. Haley was heavily involved in civil rights and education issues in Tacoma and nationwide. He served on the Tacoma School Board from 1954 to 1965 and worked for school desegregation and increasing diversity among the faculty. He was also heavily involved in establishing a Tacoma campus for the University of Washington. Haley’s deep interest in social causes was further demonstrated by his participation in the 1963 March on Washington. The American Civil Liberties Union honored Haley with their William O. Douglas award in 1985 for his work to promote civil rights and racial equality and protecting targets of McCarthyism in the 1950s. The interview covers the topics of his upbringing, religious background, schooling, military service in the Navy during World War II, as well as his business, recreational and civic interests.

This interview is part of the Donald Schmechel Oral History Collection. Don Schmechel, who was a member of the Seattle Public Library Foundation board, began this project with Seattle Public Library in 1984, with the Museum of History & Industry (MOHAI) brought on board as a partner in early 1985. Schmechel himself worked to raise the funding for the project, and volunteered his time to manage the project, and to conduct interviews along with a crew of volunteers. Originally titled the Videotaping Historic Figures (VHF) Program, the project interviewed 91 people, with a portion of the interviews entering the collections of the Seattle Public Library and a portion of them going to MOHAI. The interviews conducted with these Seattle civic, business and cultural leaders in 1985 are valuable first-hand accounts that provide insight into developments taking place in the mid-twentieth century.

Digitization of this videotape material has been made possible in part by a grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission.

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