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Hagin, Wallace (Wally), Jr.

Last Name: Hagin, Jr.
First Name: Wallace (Wally)
Dates:
1915 - 2006 (Life/Active Dates)
Biography/History: Wallace (Wally) Hagin was born in Great Falls, MT, 1915, and moved to Spokane with his family in 1918 where his father helped re-establish the Calvary Baptist Church. Wally graduated from North Central High School and studied to become a mortician at the University of Minnesota. When no Spokane funeral homes would hire him, he found work in Seattle before joining the Al Freeman Big Band as a trumpeter. After a year with the band, Hagin became one of the few black students at Gonzaga University. His physics professor encouraged him to take up flying, and he became the region’s first African American to earn a commercial pilot’s license. The military would not accept a black man in the pilot’s seat, so he spent World War II in Spokane in the Civilian Air Patrol. After the war, Hagin worked at the Bon Marché and J.C. Penney stores and operated a photography business for five decades. He captured slices of local life that fell outside the notice of his white counterparts and his photographs show a sweeping panorama of Spokane’s African American history.
Related Participants:
Related Objects:
4125.4 (Trumpet, Wally Hagin's Trumpet and Case)