As Centralia marks its 150th birthday and the United States prepares to celebrate its 250th, I’ve been thinking about the past and what it could mean for us in the future.
Living in the moment can be exhausting. Sometimes looking at the big picture can be helpful.
I’ve spent a lot of time looking at the history of Centralia’s founder, an African-American pioneer with the presidential name of George Washington.
I’ve long felt that his life covers so much of the American story.
Perhaps on this Independence Day weekend in the middle of big-number anniversaries, it’s worth looking at how he survived, endured and managed to live a life of bountiful generosity during a time of deep divisions and desperation.
In 2025, when words like fairness, equality and equity are tossed around like hot potatoes, I think about George living in an era of slavery and racist laws. He bumped up against them time and again. How did he manage to meet and overcome them?
As a man of color, he was jailed and effectively banned from owning a business in Missouri. He was technically banned from even setting foot in Oregon Territory. He was prohibited from filing for a homestead.
Even worse, before that, his mom had to give him away to protect him from becoming a slave.
But God’s spirit had worked deeply in a white couple who took George into their family and raised him as their son.
His foster parents taught him pioneer skills like hunting and sewing his own clothes. They taught him to read from the Bible and to sing hymns.
They set George up on the strong foundations of the pillars of American righteousness: to support yourself with self-reliance, to stand up for yourself with confidence and to help your neighbors with generosity.
When George came west, seeking “a decent place,” he was greeted by laws prohibiting black people from living in the Northwest. He found a home anyway, along the banks of the Skookumchuck River. Facing unjust homesteading laws, he worked with his white foster parents to file for land in their name.
These laws weren’t right, but working together, George and his extended family — with hundreds of friends on his side — found a way.
It was the foundation of Americanism that we honor on July 4: Mutual support among independent-minded people.
After founding Centralia, George offered work and guidance to those in need. When people were lost, George gave them the chance for quality work that would set them on firm footing.
George dealt with racist attitudes from his neighbors with resolve, firmness and patience. He won people over through the strength of his humanity.
When a man next door to him built a wall between him and a black man, George’s goodness won out. Soon the man cut a door into the fence to make it easier to see his new friend.
When the town was struggling in the 1890s, George gave people work and food. The only time he truly became enraged was not when he was treated with injustice, but when he saw a man who had let things get so bad that his children were starving.
George accomplished one of the highest callings of life: helping people find their footing and get onto a stable path for themselves and their families.
“If you need food, I have some for you,” he would say. “You can work it out for me. I have plenty you can do.”
Hard experiences hadn’t hardened George. It had steeled him with resolve, wisdom and generosity. He expected people to lift themselves up and he gave them gentle support when they were willing to try.
He believed in people’s potential when they were too despairing to believe in themselves.
George had every reason to be bitter, but he wanted to be better.
As a divided America hits the quarter-millennium mark, we have a strong example in Centralia’s founder, George Washington, to lead us to an ever-more-perfect union, one neighbor at a time.
Brian Mittge is a community enthusiast who has written for The Chronicle since 2000 as a reporter, editor and columnist. He can be reached at brianmittge@hotmail.com.
