Wing Luke

Wing Chong Luke (; February 18, 1925 – May 16, 1965) was a Chinese-born American lawyer and politician. He served as an assistant attorney general of Washington for the state civil rights division from 1957 to 1962. He was later a member of the Seattle City Council for position 5 from 1962 until his death in 1965 in a plane crash.

Luke was the first Asian American to hold elected office in the state, he was cited as an inspiration by Gary Locke, the first Chinese American governor of Washington. When Luke was five, his family moved to the United States, but he did not settle in Seattle until 1931, at the age of six. Luke was the oldest of six children. The artist-turned-Hollywood actor Keye Luke was one of his cousins.

While in school, Luke was often teased for his Chinese origins and on multiple occasions got into physical confrontations with bullies. After the outbreak of World War II, Luke's family was evicted from their apartment by their landlady for looking Japanese, which would instill in Luke a fire for social activism for the rest of his life. During a furlough, he supported his family after they were evicted from their apartment, when they were lumped in with Japanese Americans as "enemy aliens", an incident which would inspire his later activism.

Higher education Following his service, Luke entered the University of Washington. As in high school, Luke was a prominent leader. He was President of his sophomore class, the U.W. YMCA, the Baptist-Disciples' Student Center, the U.W. Red Cross, U.W. Young Democrats, and the committee chairman of A.S.U.W. Publications. He graduated from the university with a B.A. in political science and public administration. He did graduate work in the same fields at the American University in Washington, D.C. He then attended the UW School of Law to earn an LL.B.

As a Councilmember, Luke focused on urban renewal, historical preservation, and civil rights. The latter focus proved controversial, and Luke's open-housing ordinance (created to prevent discrimination in the sale or rent of Seattle real estate) faced heavy resistance, though it eventually passed. For support in his community renewal efforts, Luke turned to a variety of local organizations he was active in, such as the Urban League, the Chinese Community Service Organization, the Japanese American Citizens League, and the Jackson Street Community Council.

The Seattle school South Van Asselt School was renamed the Wing Luke Elementary School in 1969. In 2015, the Washington state attorney general's office created the Wing Luke Civil Rights Unit to investigate issues related to discrimination and civil rights.

Gary Locke, the first Chinese-American governor of Washington and U.S. Ambassador to China, has cited Luke as an inspiration.

Views Luke saw many of his contemporaries forced to live in racialized pockets of Seattle like Beacon Hill (largely Asian Americans) and the Central District (largely African Americans), and felt strongly that the ability to decide where one lived should be a basic right of all citizens. Having firsthand awareness of the effects of racial discrimination, Luke was instrumental in Seattle's passing of an Open Housing Ordinance in 1963 with punitive provisions against racial discrimination in the selling or renting of real estate.

He also fought for civil rights, Indian fishing rights, urban renewal and historic preservation. Luke was particularly concerned with the preservation of Seattle's Central Waterfront, Pioneer Square, and Pike Place Market.