Kevin Castle Papers, approximately 1983-2020

Kevin Castle was born in 1952 in Coos Bay, Oregon. Her family had moved there during the McCarthy Era "red scare" when progressive trade union organizers and a members of the Communist Party like here father, Del Castle, were being targeted by the US government for special scrutiny and persecution. Labor organizations and their leaders alike were systematically harassed and surveilled by the FBI. Due to this political context, Kevin's family was living under an assumed name in Coos Bay. When it was safer, the family emerged from hiding and moved to Seattle. Kevin attended some of the few integrated schools in the city, graduating from Garfield High School in 1970. She became involved in anti-Vietnam War activities, and took a year off from school to travel throughout South America before attending the University of Washington. During her time at the UW, Kevin continued her anti-war activism and co-founded the Seattle Tenant Union before graduating in 1979 with a BA in history.

During summers in college, Kevin had begun working as a casual waterfront worker. In 1980, she was hired along with a group of twelve other women who were the first to work in the Port of Seattle. After gaining enough seniority to train, she became the first woman cargo crane operator in Seattle, and worked as a crane operator until her retirement in 2005. Kevin worked on many of these stories and poems after her retirement.