Lawrence Edward Gossett is an American politician and activist who served as a member of the nonpartisan King County Council, representing District 10 from 1994 to 2006 and District 2 from 2006 to 2020. Born in Seattle to two former sharecroppers, Gossett graduated from Franklin High School and the University of Washington. As a UW student and activist, Gossett helped create a minority recruitment program and was a founder of the Black Student Union. He also helped organize nearly a dozen high school and middle school Black Student Unions throughout Seattle and was instrumental in bringing about a minority recruitment program on campus. Gossett was a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and was involved in the occupation of the former Seattle public school that became El Centro de la Raza. After working on the successful 1977 mayoral campaign of Charles Royer and serving in the Royer administration, Gossett led Seattle's Central Area Motivation Program (CAMP). He later worked on Jesse Jackson's presidential campaigns. Gossett was a longtime member of the Seattle chapter of the Black Panther Party. Madrona Community Presbyterian Church, as Madrona Grace was once known, was one of a handful of sites for the Panther’s Free Breakfast Program, which existed to address needs of children in Seattle’s Black community. In 1999 Councilmember Gossett spearheaded the campaign to change the King County logo from an imperial crown to an image of Dr. Martin King Jr. The King County Council unanimously adopted the change in 2007.