Brazill, Earnest S.

Reverend Earnest S. Brazill (1910-2000) was the longtime pastor of the Shiloh Baptist Church and a leading civil rights activist in Tacoma, Washington. Born in Albany, Georgia, Brazill moved to Washington State in 1949, settling in Bremerton, where he was pastor at the Sinclair Baptist Church. He was the first pastor to serve Shiloh, which was established in the Hilltop neighborhood in 1955. The church relocated to larger premises in 1964. Brazill and other other local African American ministers formed the Tacoma Ministers Alliance, which, along with other community groups and activists, organized protests against discriminatory hiring practices and housing discrimination during the 1950s and 1960s. Brazill continued to work on civil rights issues throughout his lengthy career. A street in Tacoma is named in his honor.

Reverend Joseph A. Boles was the pastor of the St. John Baptist Church in Tacoma, Washington from 1952-2000 and a prominent civil rights advocate and community activist. Boles, who grew up in Tennessee, founded his Tacoma church in 1952 and became deeply involved with the civil rights struggles of the 1950s and 1960s. He joined with fellow African American pastors, Earnest S. Brazill (of Shiloh Baptist Church) and Reverend E. Byard Wilson (of the Bethlehem Baptist Church), to form the Tacoma Ministers Alliance, which confronted unfair employment and housing conditions in the city. Boles was later instrumental in getting Tacoma's K Street renamed Martin Luther King Jr. Way.