Black Girl Magic is a holistic leadership development program that supports Black female students at Franklin High School. We are focused on empowering and fostering a deep and genuine relationship with African American and East African girls by providing them a safe space to gather and build engagement. We strengthen connection by volunteering at the Esperanza House, an assisted living home located in South Seattle. We focus particularly on African American, Latina, and Indigenous women and those who are living in low-income environments. 

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The 2025 season marks the twenty-fifth for FIRST Robotics Competition team XBOT #488, led by FHS alumni parent Donna Lew (Ryan Lew 2005). She established a nonprofit to support this year-round STEAM afterschool program.

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The more I work on this newsletter the more I become aware of the gift that Franklin was for me. In part, this awareness arises out of the terrific camaraderie of working with alumni friends old and new – those known from Franklin, Asa Mercer, and John Muir, and those more recently made.  It also comes from appreciating Franklin's long history, from its inception, of being at the center of diverse public education in Seattle, and how the values created still permeate the walls. 

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Growing up in Seattle, born in China, Keye Luke knew that he wanted to be an artist. To his surprise, he also became a movie, television, and stage star. In the 1930s, he played teenager Lee Chan, Charlie Chan’s “number one son” in a series of popular movies. In the 1970s, he became just as famous as Master Po, a blind sage in the hit television series Kung Fu. In a screen, stage, and television career that lasted more than a half century, Luke racked up more than 150 credits as a movie, television, and voice actor. A founding member of the Screen Actors Guild, he was honored in 1991 with a star on Hollywood Boulevard’s Walk of Fame. In May 2015, Luke was inducted into the Franklin High School Hall of Fame in a ceremony at the Mt. Baker Community Clubhouse. In attendance were his niece Myrna Luke Tsukamoto and several other family members.  

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Duane Pasco was part of a group of committed non-native artists, historians, linguists, and cultural scholars who shared an overpowering passion for Northwest, US, and Canadian peoples and cultures.

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Mark arrived in Seattle with his family when he was three,  in the early 1940s during World War II. The Dedomenico family, second-generation Italian immigrants, had moved north from California after their pasta factory burned down, and reestablished it in Seattle.  They  lived above the Golden Grain Macaroni factory in Georgetown while the business produced rations for the military.  A few years later the family settled in Seward Park.

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