From his quiet Ballard apartment Ed Diaz is the mastermind of a Black History Conference in Seattle that draw presenters and attendees from across the United States (and a few other countries). For the better part of the last year he has been pulling together every detail of the February 5th conference originally created “to give local people information about local African-Americans.”

An independent historian, Diaz founded the Association for African American Historical Research in 2000 and has been putting on the conferences since 2004. Attorney Monique Law, a board member and one-time Keynote Speaker, says of Diaz. “He is an asset to the world in terms of preserving black history.”

Ed Diaz has a passion for the revealing and sharing the past, but over coffee at Blue Dog on 15th NW he will give away virtually nothing about himself, other than to claim, “I’m still a New Yorker” (despite having only visited on leave since adulthood). Born and raised in Haarlem; Diaz won’t reveal his age even to his closest friends or say how long he’s lived in Seattle since retiring from the U.S. Navy as Master Chief Petty Officer.

However Diaz will talk about the upcoming conference to be held Saturday, February 5th at the new Northwest African American Museum. This year’s theme is “Black History at Home and Abroad: Uncovering the Past.” Of this 5th event, Diaz sounds more resigned than proud when he says, “The conference is a train of its own now.”

Over the course of a long and carefully timed day some 40 presenters will be allotted 20 minutes of time as they cover 30 subjects in 12 breakout sessions: from local, “Black Pawns in the Labor Market – Roslyn, Washington,” to international, “Treatment of Blacks in Germany in WW II.” From selecting the venue, the papers, the Keynote Speaker (Tacoma Mayor Marilyn Strickland) lunch for participants and a jazz ensemble for the final reception, Diaz and his Board of Advisors have been planning every detail for the last 12 months.

Having been stationed “in many unusual squadrons” around the world, and on Whidbey Island, Diaz came to settle in Seattle, and subsequently Ballard, in part to set the record straight about a prominent Seattle who was profiled inaccurately a local paper during Black History Month.

Diaz had always been interested in history and was familiar with Horace R. Cayton, a man who was born into slavery, forced to leave his home state of Mississippi and eventually settled in Seattle where he founded a newspaper that was second in circulation to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, “The Seattle Republican.” He later published “The Cayton Weekly.” Cayton’s father-in-law was the first African-American ever elected to the United States Senate. Cayton, his wife and their descendants played notable roles in early Seattle and the labor movement.

The article implied that Cayton’s newspaper “failed;” that he lost his business, due to a downturn in white subscribers after he wrote about a lynching. Now the editor of two volumes of “Horace Roscoe Cayton Sr.: Selected Writings,” Diaz set out to debunk those claims (Cayton was never less than outspoken and had been writing about lynching for years). Between the King County Library System and Special Collections at the University of Washington, Diaz found the local resources to be very rich for a historian. Now Diaz’ legacy will become part of Seattle’s history.

When the 2011 Black History Conference begins at 7:40 a.m. Ed Diaz will make brief welcoming remarks and perhaps introduce King County Council Member Larry Gossett or MOHAI Director Leonard Garfield. “I don’t usually stay up there more than a minute,” he told me. The conference is very much open to the lay person and is often multi-generational and always leads to new areas of inquiry.

After the 2011 conference is over, Diaz looks forward to getting back to his work. With his granddaughter’s assistance he is completing a book, Susie Revels Cayton: Daughter of America’s First Black Senator. His article:"Reexamining the Past: A Different Perspective of Black Strikebreakers in King County’s Coal Mining Industry" is in the anthology More Voices, New Stories: King County’s First 150 Years.

Even in the interest of getting out the word of the upcoming conference there is something Diaz won’t share besides his age – a photograph. “Perhaps if I was younger,” he says, “Standing beside a plane.” Ed Diaz is committed to preserving the role of Black Americans in history, so long as it doesn’t include a photographic record of him.

For more information about AAAHRP 2011 Black History Conference at the Northwest African American Museum (NAAM), 2300 South Massachusetts Street, Seattle on Saturday, February 5th and to register go to: www.aaahrp.org
Peggy can be reached atlargeinballard@yahoo.com