Pioneer Information
Born in Gloster, Mississippi, Washington attended Amite County Training School in Gloster and worked several jobs as an adolescent. In 1938 he was engaged as an assistant art instructor at the Vicksburg Baptist Academy where he curated a Federal Works Progress Administration sponsored showcase of African American artists. Four years later he moved to Little Rock, Arkansas, working as a shoe repairman at Camp Robinson. He married Janie Rogella Miller (1908-2000) in 1943. The following year the couple moved to Bremerton, Washington where Washington worked as an electrician at the Bremerton Naval Base (now Naval Base Kitsap), transferring to Fort Lawton in Seattle the following year. In 1945 the Washingtons purchased a home in the city’s Central District, which James Washington used as a studio.
Washington became immersed in the city’s art community, exhibiting publicly and taking painting classes under the mentorship of Mark Tobey. In 1947 Washington received certificates in landscape design and landscape gardening from the National Landscape Institute, an accredited home study program based in Los Angeles. Traveling to Mexico in 1951 he met artists Diego Rivera and David Siqueiro and became inspired by the pyramids of Teotihuacán. Washington began to experiment with sculpture and continued to sculpt the remainder of his career, exploring themes of nature, humankind, and spirituality.
Several of Washington’s sculptures are publicly accessible throughout Seattle, including Coelacanths (1978) and The Fountain of Triumph (1994). The former is exhibited in the Ballard Avenue Landmark District, flush with the ground plane, and the latter was rehabilitated and relocated to the Central District in 2022. Additionally, his work can be found on the grounds of his former residence (now the Dr. James & Janie Washington Cultural Center).
Washington received an Honorary Doctorate from the Center of Urban Black Studies in Berkeley, California (now The Black Church/Africana Religious Studies program at the Graduate Theological Union) in 1975. He died in 2000 at the age of 91 and is interred in Evergreen Washelli Cemetery in Seattle.
Photograph of Dr. Washington, Jr., courtesy of The Dr. James W. Washington Jr. & Mrs. Janie Rogella Washington Foundation.
