DOCUMENT A
“Racial Restrictive Covenants on Chicago’s South Side in 1947”
from Encyclopedia Chicago
From 1916 until 1948, racially restrictive covenants were used to keep Chicago's neighborhoods white. In
language suggested by the Chicago Real Estate Board, legally binding covenants attached to parcels of land
varying in size from city block to large subdivision prohibited African Americans from using, occupying,
buying, leasing, or receiving property in those areas. This map stems from one used in a lawsuit (Tovey v. Levy,
1948) that was brought to enforce covenants. It shows that in 1947 covenants covered large parts of the city and,
in combination with zones of nonresidential use, almost wholly surrounded the African American residential
districts of the period, cutting off corridors of extension. Many of the neighborhoods encumbered with racially
restrictive covenants were subsequently settled by African Americans once the covenants had been declared
unconstitutional.
DOCUMENT B
“How We Got Here: The Historical Roots of Housing Segregation”
from “The Future of Fair Housing: Report of the National Commission on Fair Housing and Equal
Opportunity”
December 2008
How We Got Here: The Historical Roots of Housing Segregation
During the last century, the residential segregation and isolation of most African Americans has been an almost
permanent feature of housing patterns in the United States. No other ethnic group in America’s history has been
isolated to a similar extent. Most immigrants to the United States live in ethnically diverse areas, and even areas
considered "ethnic enclaves" contain a wide variety of nationalities and serve only as a fleeting, transitory stage
in the process of assimilation.[25] Our nation’s highly segregated housing patterns did not occur by accident;
they are a product of a complex web of decisions made since the beginning of the 20th century.
Until the end of the Civil War, slavery dominated the landscape for African Americans. During that time,
however, there were small pockets of African Americans living in "free" states in the North and increasingly
moving to the new American West. Cities were relatively small and compact, with the bulk of the population
still living in rural areas, with much more dispersed populations. Following the Civil War, Jim Crow and the
Black Codes made economic, and thus residential, choice nearly impossible for Blacks in the South. In the
North, the numbers of Black residents remained small.
However, the Industrial Revolution pushed the cities across America to grow and to become new, bigger and
more powerful economic centers. The rise of industrialization was accompanied by a migration of African
Americans from farms to cities.
The 20th century brought with it social, political, and economic forces that directly led to the highly segregated
housing patterns visible today. Many smaller communities, particularly throughout the Midwest, but also in the
West, had begun practices that systematically excluded people of color in overtly discriminatory ways. Dubbed
"sundown towns" for their implicit — and sometimes explicit — rules that people of color were required to
leave their borders before sunset, these communities posted signs warning African Americans to leave before
sunset or not enter at all, enacted racial ordinances, encouraged racially restrictive covenants, conducted
"freeze-out" and "buy-out" campaigns, and participated in overt intimidation often accompanied by violence.
The effects of these exclusionary policies are still prevalent today, as nearly all of the Midwest’s sundown
towns remain virtually all-White. [26]
The rise of industrialization was accompanied by a migration of African Americans from farms to cities to help
meet the demand for labor.[27] However, various "legal" measures were taken in response to the rising numbers
of African Americans in cities. For example, a number of cities in the South adopted ordinances that established
separate neighborhoods for White and African-American residents. After the Supreme Court held one city’s
residential segregation law unconstitutional in 1917,[28] "racial segregation in southern cities was accomplished
by the same means as in the north: through violence, collective anti-Black action, racially restrictive covenants,
and discriminatory real estate practices."[29]
Prior to the New Deal, direct governmental support for segregation "consisted primarily of the judicial
enforcement of privately drawn restrictive covenants."[30] Frequently included in property deeds, racially
restrictive covenants controlled how property could be developed or used, or who could live on the property. By
the 1920s, deeds in nearly every new housing development in the North prevented the use or ownership of
homes by anyone other than "the Caucasian race."[31] Many new homes still recorded racially restrictive
covenants even after the Supreme Court held them unenforceable in 1948.[32] As a result, people of color were
excluded from many communities, limiting where they could settle and beginning the trend toward increased
segregation. During the 1920s, property values became tied to race "as a means to legitimize racial exclusion
and protect racial boundaries."[33]
By the 1930s, most cities had well-defined boundaries within which African Americans and other people of
color were allowed to live. This discrimination was racial, not economic, and even middle class and upperincome African Americans were confined to segregated areas. To accommodate the growing population of
African Americans in these increasingly overcrowded areas, single family homes were subdivided into
multifamily homes with high cost rentals.[34] By 1940, spatial isolation had become a permanent fixture of the
residential structure of African-American community life, and that isolation only increased during the next 30
years.[35]
Beginning in the 1930s, a number of government agencies were formed that affected housing patterns in the
United States. The U.S. Housing Authority ("USHA") established a public housing program to improve housing
conditions for low-income Americans, but nearly all of this affordable housing was in segregated public
housing projects. Public housing programs were segregated by law in the south and nearly always segregated in
the rest of the country in deference to local prejudice, with housing projects for African Americans usually
adjoining segregated neighborhoods or built on marginal land near waterfronts, highways, industrial sites, or
railroad tracks.[36] As one historian noted, "The most distinguishing feature of post-World War II ghetto
expansion is that it was carried out with government sanction and support."[37]
Other federal agencies were developed during the New Deal to increase homeownership rates among
Americans, but in practice these programs generally benefited Whites only.[38] These agencies provided
"crucial financial support to the housing industry"[39] and facilitated the movement to the suburbs by making
the purchase of suburban homes cheaper than renting in the cities.[40] For example, to "assist" with lending
decisions, the Federal Housing Authority prepared "neighborhood security maps" that were based largely on the
racial, ethnic, and economic status of residents.[41] Indeed, a national trade association explicitly stated that
minorities caused adverse influences upon a neighborhood.[42] The American Institute of Real Estate
Appraisers began using a ranking system that assessed risk based on the racial composition of the community,
with English, Germans, Scotch, Irish, Scandinavians ranked at the top of the list and "Negroes" and "Mexicans"
ranked at the bottom of the list.[43] Lending institutions and the federal government employed underwriting
guidelines that favored racially White, homogenous neighborhoods and led to the creation of a separate and
unequal lending and financial system.[44]
Because federally-backed mortgages were rarely available to residents of "transitional," racially mixed, or
minority neighborhoods, lenders began "redlining" those neighborhoods, circling on a map the areas where
people of color lived to denote that mortgage lending would not be available.[45] Redlining significantly
contributed to segregation by encouraging White Americans to purchase homes in stable White communities
and discouraging any investment in communities where people of color resided.
In addition, federal agencies "endorsed the use of race-restrictive covenants until 1950" and explicitly refused to
underwrite loans that would introduce "‘incompatible’ racial groups into White residential enclaves."[46] These
government policies were also adopted by the private sector. For example, from the 1930s to the 1960s the
National Association of Real Estate Boards issued ethical guidelines that specified that a realtor "should never
be instrumental in introducing to a neighborhood a character or property or occupancy, members of any race or
nationality, or any individual whose presence will be clearly detrimental to property values in a
neighborhood."[47]
Together, these federal agencies financed almost half of all suburban homes in the 1950s and 1960s, helping the
American homeownership rate to increase from 30 percent in 1930 to more than 60 percent by 1960.[48]
However, these discriminatory lending policies resulted in the widespread use of race to determine eligibility
for housing credit.[49] Consequently, Whites received essentially all (98 percent) of the loans approved by the
federal government between 1934 and 1968.[50]
The 1950s and 1960s saw the migration of three million African Americans from the South.[51] With the largescale departure of White Americans from cities to the suburbs came an unprecedented increase in the physical
size of the areas in which African Americans lived.[52] This expansion was also facilitated by individuals
looking to make a profit, who brought about rapid racial transitions in neighborhoods through the practice of
"blockbusting." These individuals sold one or two houses on a block to carefully selected African Americans
and then capitalized on the other residents’ fear of declining property values, inducing them to sell their homes
at low prices. These homes were then sold to African Americans at higher prices, effectively resulting in a
block-by-block expansion of African-American residential areas.[53]
Housing patterns for low-income Americans also changed during the period. By the mid-twentieth century,
federal housing legislation was focused on eliminating substandard living conditions through the clearance of
"blighted" areas and provided federal subsidies for cities attempting to fix the serious housing shortage in
American cities.[54] However, federally-assisted urban renewal projects demolished 20 percent of central city
housing units occupied by African Americans during the 1950s and 1960s, and 90 percent of the low-income
housing units destroyed by urban renewal were never replaced.[55] People of color made up more than 60
percent of those displaced by urban renewal.[56]
For many of the displaced, public housing became the only option. But as Commission Co-Chair Henry
Cisneros testified before Congress in 1995, HUD had been "complicit in creating isolated, segregated, largescale public housing" and "HUD has traditionally been part of the problem."[57] Most of the public housing
built from the 1950s to the 1970s was comprised of large, densely populated "projects," often consisting of
high-rise buildings located in poor, racially segregated communities.[58] Public housing became, in effect, a
"second ghetto" subsidized by the federal government, where "government took an active hand not merely in
reinforcing prevailing patterns of segregation, but in lending them a permanence never seen before."[59] Over
time, the extent of segregation in public housing has only increased as the demographics of cities and public
housing have changed, with fewer Whites and more African Americans living in public housing.[60]
All this activity resulted in intensified residential segregation of African Americans. Between 1950 and 1970,
the African-American population doubled in most large Northern cities, but residential segregation was
maintained as White Americans put into effect a "policy of containment and tactical retreat before an advancing
color line."[61] After the urban riots in the 1960s, the Kerner Commission Report famously noted that the
United States was becoming "two nations — one White, one Black — separate and unequal."[62]
The Fair Housing Act was passed in 1968 to address this continued segregation and prohibit discrimination in
housing. It prohibited discrimination based on race, color, religion, and national origin. Importantly, Congress
declared that "it is the policy of the United States to provide, within constitutional limitations, for fair housing
throughout the United States."[63] The Fair Housing Act is rooted in both the 13th and 14th Amendments to the
Constitution. It prohibits not only intentional discrimination, but also policies and practices that have a
discriminatory effect or perpetuate segregation. It also includes a provision that is unique in civil rights laws – a
requirement that HUD and other federal agencies and their grantees "affirmatively further" fair housing to
assess and address the racial impacts of official actions and to affirmatively promote residential integration in
federal policy.[64]
In 1988, Congress amended the Fair Housing Act to add persons with disabilities and families with children to
the list of protected classes. In addition, the enforcement mechanism of the Act was greatly strengthened by
providing an administrative enforcement process at HUD in which HUD findings of reasonable cause and
charges of discrimination could be heard by a HUD administrative law judge or in federal court. In addition,
HUD and the Department of Justice were authorized for the first time to seek monetary damages for victims of
discrimination and civil penalties.[65]
“Forty Years After the Passage of the Fair Housing Act, Housing Discrimination and Segregation Continue”
from “The Future of Fair Housing: Report of the National Commission on Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity”
December 2008
The continuing levels of racial and economic segregation in America’s metropolitan areas result from a long
history of public and private discriminatory actions. Segregation is rooted in historical practices but is
maintained and sometimes worsened by continued discriminatory practices, including: present-day
discrimination and steering in the private rental, sales, lending, and insurance markets; exclusionary zoning,
land use, and school policies at the state and local governmental level; continuing government policies affecting
the location of subsidized housing; the limited choices provided to those who receive federal housing
assistance; income and wealth differences; and bank and insurance disinvestment in minority neighborhoods.
Since 1980, the level of Latino segregation has remained constant. Although there have been moderate declines
in the degree of African-American segregation during that time, the rate is still very high, especially in
metropolitan areas with the largest Black populations.[16] According to Professor John Logan, the racial and
ethnic makeup of neighborhoods experienced by the average White American is starkly different than those
experienced by the average Black or Latino American.[17]
The degree of economic segregation facing families of color is even starker. Although there are more poor
Whites than poor Blacks and Latinos, high poverty neighborhoods (30 percent poverty and higher) are
disproportionately Black and Latino; the higher the poverty concentration, the more likely that the
neighborhood will be racially isolated. For African Americans and Latinos, relatively high incomes are no
protection against segregation, as "disparities between neighborhoods for Blacks and Hispanics with incomes
above $ 60,000 are almost as large as the overall disparities, and they increased more substantially in the
[1990s]."[18]
The harms of racial isolation and concentrated poverty are well-documented and represent a dark reverse image
of our positive vision for an inclusive, diverse society. As Professor powell summarized in his Commission
testimony:
Fifty years of social science research has demonstrated that racially isolated and economically poor
neighborhoods restrict employment options for young people, contribute to poor health, expose children to
extremely high rates of crime and violence, and house some of the least-performing schools. A vast research
literature documents the ways in which social opportunities, and the advantages they confer, cluster and
accumulate spatially. Neighborhoods powerfully shape residents’ access to social, political, and economic
opportunities and resources. A number of studies have linked segregation to an increased likelihood of
perpetrating and being victimized by violence and crime. The level of stress experienced in high-poverty,
isolated neighborhoods contributes substantially to this risk. When people face a high level of stress, child abuse,
neglect, and family breakups are more likely....In addition, a voluminous literature has examined the "spatial
mismatch" between predominantly African American, older urban neighborhoods and the employment
opportunities in the suburbs and exurbs. And new research is emphasizing the importance of access to a diverse
social network and workforce intermediaries to overcome the social dimension of the spatial
mismatch....Researchers have also found that the poverty rate of a school influences educational outcomes far
more than the poverty rate of an individual; and that impoverished students do better if they live in middle-class
neighborhoods and/or attend more affluent schools.[19]
Housing segregation and school segregation are also intertwined, creating a vicious cycle of a lack of
opportunity and a lack of education.[20] The shifting demographics of America’s cities are consequently
making our public schools increasingly more segregated,[21] a trend that is further exacerbated by recent
Supreme Court decisions restricting the options available to achieve greater diversity within schools.[22] These
circumstances perpetuate racial inequality, as African Americans and Latinos are more likely to be educated in
schools where students experience more health problems, and in schools that have fewer resources, higher
dropout rates, less experienced teachers, and lower rates of college attendance among graduates.[23] Unless
efforts are made to increase diversity within schools and improve the diversity of neighborhoods, segregation in
schools and housing will only worsen.[24]
DOCUMENT C
“History of Housing”
from University of Chicago’s South Side Project
A Short History
Built on the flat, prairie shores of Lake Michigan, Chicago has expanded mostly unchecked by the sort of
natural terrain features that hem in many American cities. Even the lakeshore has been filled in over time. The
result is an urban geography shaped less by nature than by man—a landscape sculpted, at least in part, by a
series of historical (and ongoing) struggles for space and territory among Chicago’s diverse citizens.
Chicago neighborhoods have often been identified by their ethnic composition. In the city’s early history,
recent immigrant groups and longer-settled ethnic communities scrambled for space. University of Chicago
sociologists studying the city in the 1920s divided Chicago into seventy-five community areas, most of which
roughly approximated social borders dividing the city. Inspired by the often-tense rivalries these scholars
observed in the city around them, they theorized that competition between groups for scarce urban resources—
mostly land—drove urban development in a predictable, natural manner. Although the borders were
increasingly fuzzy and rule-breaking exceptions were common, Chicago’s ethnic quilt was more or less stable
by the turn of the century: Germans lived on the North Side, Irish on the South and Northwest Sides, Jews on
the West Side and in Hyde Park, Bohemians and Poles on the Near Southwest Side and Near Northwest Side
and a very small number of blacks in the South Side Black Belt. Despite this ethnic segmentation, scholars
postulated that eventual assimilation would eventually result.
But observing the situation in 1945, University of Chicago-trained sociologists St. Clair Drake and Horace
Cayton noted that assimilation had been less likely for the city’s black community. While most ethnic enclaves
tended to eventually break up, Drake and Cayton argued that “with the passage of the time the Negro are
becomes increasingly more concentrated.”
The Great Migration of African Americans from the rural South to the urban North strained Chicago’s urban
fabric in new ways. Attracted by the promise of more equitable political rights, the possibility of earning an
industrial wage and the excitement of urban life, black Southerners came north in droves. The Great Migration
eventually brought over half a million blacks to Chicago.
Initially, the combination of sporadic anti-integration violence and the legal mechanism of racial restrictive
covenants confined black Chicagoans to a small and increasingly overcrowded strip on the Near South Side
known as the Black Belt. Although blacks contested the borders of their segregated community, territorial gains
were incremental and orderly expansion, let alone integration, was constrained by the racial assumptions of
surrounding communities, political leaders and financial institutions—including the University of Chicago,
which funded the legal defense of restrictive covenants. Finally in 1948, with the Black Belt straining under
unprecedented demographic pressure, the Supreme Court in Shelley v. Kraemer declared the enforcement of
racial restrictive covenants unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment.
Even with restrictive covenants gone, however, white Chicagoans used a variety of extra-legal mechanisms to
restrain the expansion of black settlement. Most dramatically, white residents of integrating communities
sometimes used violence to intimidate new black neighbors bold enough to break the residential color line.
Meanwhile, powerful institutions and politicians looking to placate their white constituents used state and
federal funds and the machinery of public policy to maintain a segregated Chicago. Most simply, many white
Chicagoans spoke with their feet, leaving their increasingly black neighborhoods and moving to the city’s
outskirts and surrounding suburbs.
At an institutional level, urban renewal programs—pioneered by the University of Chicago in Hyde park—
capitalized on the expansive eminent domain powers contained in a set of bills passed first by the Illinois
legislature and later by the federal government in the 1940s and 1950s, to slow the pace of neighborhood
change. Such efforts displaced many new black residents and raised the socioeconomic profile of certain
neighborhoods even as they foisted the costs of renewal onto other, less politically connected communities.
Meanwhile, large public works projects—especially the strategic placement of highways and enormous, multistory public housing developments—hardened racial borders and constrained residential opportunities for many
black Chicagoans.
Beginning in the 1960s, activists attempted to expose and contest the inequities of life in Chicago—with notable,
if limited, success. In the summer 1966, Martin Luther King led supporters in a series of open-housing marches
through hostile, exclusively white communities on the city’s Southwest Side and Northwest Sides, eventually
securing a vague and ultimately meaningless promise from city leaders to promote open-housing efforts. In the
same year, public housing residents charged that projects built in exclusively black neighborhoods perpetuated
segregation. The case, Gautreaux v. Chicago Housing Authority, resulted in a federal judicial order to build
new public housing units in non-black neighborhoods.
Today, the legacies of racial segregation still plague Chicago. Though formal and informal barriers have
seemingly disappeared, blacks have become more concentrated in all-black communities and some
communities remain mostly, though not exclusively, white—even as young and professional neighborhoods
have integrated. The Chicago Housing Authority’s ambitious Plan for Transformation, approved in 2000, led to
the demolition of large, segregated public housing projects and proposed to replace them with scatter-site,
mixed-income developments. But with the Plan already behind schedule, housing activists remain skeptical of
its eventual success. Meanwhile, renewed interest in urban life among professionals of all races has brought
significant development to many of Chicago’s neighborhoods. Whether this development—and the elevation of
land values and rents it brings with it—will improve the quality of life for neighborhood residents or displace
(“gentrify”) poor communities remains an open question.
DOCUMENT D
“Was your Seattle neighborhood racist?”
By Vanessa Ho
Published in Seattle PI Big Blog
May 11, 2014
Ever wonder why Ballard, Green Lake and other north Seattle neighborhoods are so white, and the Central
District and the Rainier Valley are so diverse? Blame housing prices for a start; whiter neighborhoods tend to be
more expensive, and white people tend to have more money than African Americans, Hispanics and some Asian
groups.
But also blame history.
Racist housing covenants once restricted where people of color could live in Seattle, largely in the northend.
Ballard didn’t want “Ethiopians” (blacks), Magnolia had a problem with “Malays” (Filipinos), and Broadmoor
shut out “Hebrews” (Jews).
Popular in the early 20th century, such contracts – once enforceable by a developer or homeowners’ association
- have long been illegal. But one look at the colorful, racial “dot maps” going around online shows that Seattle
is still largely segregated.
“The covenants themselves have left a lasting imprint on the city,” said James Gregory, a University of
Washington history professor who researched the covenants with students as part of his website, the Seattle
Civil Rights & Labor History Project.
‘This is not history’
“North Seattle is still very largely white,” he said. “And that certainly can be traced to the restrictive covenants
that kept African Americans and Asians from buying, renting or inhabiting houses in most North Seattle
neighborhoods.”
Many people of color ended up living in the Central District and what’s now the International District.
The U.S. Supreme Court invalidated racial covenants in 1948, but white neighborhoods still excluded minorities,
by refusing to sell to them. Or they used subtle intimidation; many older African Americans who grew up in
Seattle can remember being afraid in areas north of the Lake Washington Ship Canal after dark.
It wasn’t until the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1968 that housing discrimination became illegal.
Although racism has faded over time, economic barriers have not. Seattle’s disproportionate number of blacks,
Hispanics and many Asians who are low-income means wealthier neighborhoods that were once “whites only”
have continued to remain largely white. (Check out the map below).
Also, a few years ago, a city of Seattle investigation uncovered a pattern of modern-day discrimination against
African American renters.
“Racial discrimination is still a significant problem today in housing,” said UW history professor Gregory.
“This is not history.”
Racial covenants by Seattle neighborhood
Was your neighborhood racist? Check out the slideshow above for a look at racial housing restrictions by
neighborhood, based on research by Gregory and UW students who combed through more than 400 housing
deeds in King County. Racial covenants may no longer be legal, but they still exist in many original deeds.
And guess which Eastside neighborhood didn’t just like things white, but white supremacist and “Ayran”? The
answer is in the slideshow.
More info here at the Seattle Civil Rights & Labor History Project.
Race in Seattle today: Where people live
This City of Seattle map shows a city still segregated by race, in a pattern fuzzily similar to the days of racial
covenants. To see a bigger version of the map, based on 2010 U.S. Census data, go here.
DOCUMENT E
“Racial Restrictive Covenants”
from the Seattle Civil Rights & Labor History Project
What's In Your Deed? The language of segregation still haunts Seattle. It lurks in the deeds of tens of thousands
of homeowners living in neighborhoods outside of the Central Area and the International District. Look deep in
the fine print. Many Queen Anne residents, for instance, have this clause in their deeds: "No person or persons
of Asiatic, African or Negro blood, lineage, or extraction shall be permitted to occupy a portion of said
property."
Racial deed restrictions became common after 1926 when the U.S. Supreme Court validated their use. The
restrictions were an enforceable contract and an owner who violated them risked forfeiting the property. Many
neighborhoods prohibited the sale or rental of property by Asian Americans and Jews as well as Blacks. In
1948, the court changed its mind, declaring that racial restrictions would no longer be enforced, but the decision
did nothing to alter the informal structures of segregation. It remained perfectly legal for realtors and property
owners to discriminate on the basis of race. Only after Congress passed the Housing Rights Act in 1968 were
there measurable openings in Seattle's system of housing segregation.
See Racial Restrictive Covenants: Enforcing Neighborhood Segregation in Seattle by Catherine Silva
Below is part of our database of racial restrictive covenants. Combing through the files of the King County
Recorder's Office, we have uncovered 416 deeds and covenants containing racial restrictions that apply to
scores of neighborhoods in Seattle and the suburbs north, south, and east of the city. This is just a sample of the
restrictions that once shaped the housing options for King County residents.
Look at the list of neighborhoods. North of the ship canal most neighborhoods were restricted, as was Capitol
Hill, Madison Park, Queen Anne, and Magnolia. We have found a few restrictive deeds in Beacon Hill and
Rainier Valley, more in the lakeside neighborhoods from Madronna to Ranier Beach. Racial restrictions were
still more common in the suburbs. People of color had little chance of finding housing except in the central
neighborhoods of Seattle.
Look also at the language of restriction in these deeds. Some specify that neighborhoods are reserved for
"Whites," while others enumerate the prohibited racial groups. And the wording is curious. In the terminology
of the 1920s-1940s "Hebrews" meant Jews; "Ethiopians" meant African ancestry; "Malays" meant Filipinos.
Most shocking is the "Aryans only" restriction imposed on a subdivision in Clyde Hill. That racial concept,
favored by Adolph Hitler, was written into deeds as late as 1946.
The simplified database is below. You may also explore the full database of 416 deeds. Here is how to read the
table below. When a neighborhood or subdivision is highlighted in red, it means that we have found multiple
copies of a restriction and have reason to believe that it covered all properties in an area. Seattle neighborhoods
are followed by Eastside, North King Co, South King Co. and Vashon Island neighborhoods.
DOCUMENT F
Seattle neighborhoods:
neighborhood
Alki
subdivision
Williams Alki
Addition
Ballard/Sunset Hill Westhaven
Beacon Hill
Bitter Lake
Blue Ridge
Broadmoor
Broadview
Bryant
Capitol Hill
restriction
The lot, nor any part thereof, shall not be sold to any person either of whole or part blood, of the Mongolian, Malay,
or Ethiopian races, nor shall the same nor any part thereof be rented to persons of such races.
No part of said property hereby conveyed shall ever be used or occupied by any person of the Ethiopian, Malay,
or any Asiatic race, and the grantee, his heirs, personal representatives or assigns, shall never place any such
person in the possession or occupancy of said property
Jefferson Park
No person other than one of the Caucasian race shall be permitted to occupy any portion of any lot in said plat or
Addition, Ladd's 2nd any building thereon except a domestic servant actually employed by a Caucasian occupant of said lot or building.
Addition, Jefferson
Park Addition #2
Quigley's Northend And that the property covered by this contract shall not be conveyed to any other than one of the Caucasian Race;
Tracts
all
No residence property shall at any time, directly or indirectly, be sold, conveyed, rented or leased in whole of in part
to any person or persons not of the white orCaucasian race.
Broadmoor
No part of said property hereby conveyed shall ever be used or occupied by anyHebrew or by any person of the
Ethiopian, Malay or any Asiatic Race...excepting only employees in the domestic service on the premises of
persons qualified hereunder as occupants and users and residing on the premises.
Bonnie Vista
No persons of any race other than the white race shall use or occupy any building or any lot, except that this
covenant shall not prevent occupancy by domestic servants of a different race domiciled with an owner or tenant.
Haggardt's Addition no lot or portion of a lot shall be sold to, leased to or occupied by any person other than that of the White or
Caucasian Race, except this shall not prevent occupancy by domestic servants of a different race or nationality
actually employed in good faith by the owners or tenants.
Northend soundview Further that the property shall not be conveyed to any other than one of theCaucasian race.
tracts
Schroeppel Park
No part of the property hereby platted, shall be used for trade, manufacture or business purposes of any kind, but
shall be used for residential purposes only by white persons, except that servants, not of the white race but
actually employed by white occupant, may reside on said premises.
No one, other than a white person of the Caucasian race, shall own any interest directly or indirectly, in the above
Bonnie Brae
described property, or any part thereof, nor shall the purchaser herein let said premises, or any part thereof, for any
term whatsoever, to one other than a white person of the Caucasian race...(but this clause shall not apply to
bonafide domestic servants).
Elford Park
Tracts or parcels of land in this plat shall be used or occupied only by members of the white or Caucasian race,
excluding Semites, and no other persons shall be permitted to use or occupy said tracts or parcels, except
employees may occupy the premises where their employer resides.
University Gardens The purchaser covenants, and said covenants shall run with said land, that no part of said described premises shall
ever be used or occupied by any person not of the White or Caucasian race.
Viewhome Addition No race or nationality other than those of the White or Caucasian race shall use or occupy any dwelling on any lot
except that this covenant does not prevent occupancy by domestic servants of a different race or nationality
employed by an owner or tenant.
935 properties, 38
That no part of said premises shall ever be used or occupied by or sold conveyed, leased, rented, or given
blocks
to negroes or any person or persons of negro blood,
Central DistrictMinor
Neighborhood
Duwamish
Eastlake
Greenlake
Greenwood
Haller Lake
Hawthorne Hills
Lake City
Lakeridge
Squire Park
The parties hereto signing and executing this instrument and the several like instruments relating to their several
properties in said district, hereby mutually covenant, promise and agree each with the others, and for their
respective heirs and assigns, that no part of said lands owned by them as described following their signatures to
this instrument, shall never be used, occupied by or sold, conveyed, leased, rented or given to Negroes, or any
person or persons of the Negro blood.
Gordon's Addition #2 No person of any race other than the white race shall use or occupy any building or any lot, except this covenant
shall not prevent occupancy by domestic servants of a different race domiciled with an owner or tenant.
Said lot or lots shall not be sold, conveyed, or rented nor leased, in whole or in part, to any person not of the White
Greene's Addition
race; nor shall any person not of the White race be permitted to occupy any portion of said lot or lots or of any
building thereon, except a domestic servant actually employed by a White occupant of such building.
Said tract shall not be sold, leased, or rented to any person or persons other than of white race nor shall any person
Greenlake Circle
or persons other than of white race use or occupy said tract.
Hayes Park No 2
None of said lots shall be sold conveyed, rented or leased in whole or in part to any person not of the white race nor
shall any person not or the white racepermitted to occupy any portion of such lot or of any building thereon except
****to servant actually employed by a white occupant of such building.
Marine Highlands
That neither the said premises or any house building or improvement thereon erected shall at any time be occupied
Addition
by persons of the Ethiopian race or by Japanese or Chinese or any other Malay or Asiatic race save and
except as domestic servants in the employ of person not coming within that restriction.
Winchester Heights None of said lots shall be conveyed, leased, or given to and no building erected thereon shall be used, owned or
occupied, by any person not of the White race.
Golfcrest
No race or nationality other than those of the Caucasian race shall use or occupy any dwelling or lot, except that
this covenant shall not prevent occupancy by domestic servants of a different race or nationality employed by an
owner or tenant.
Huntoon's Haller
No person or any race other than the White race shall use any building or any lot but this shall not prevent
Lake
occupancy by domestic servants of a different race domiciled with an owner or tenant.
North Seattle Heights That no part of said described premises shall be used or occupied by any person not of the white or Caucasian
Division #2
race; except a domestic servant actually employed by a white occupant of such building.
Marine Highlands
That neither the said premises or any house, building or improvement thereon erected, shall at any time be
occupied by persons of the Ethiopian race, or by Japanese or Chinese, or any other Malay or Asiatic race,
save except as domestic servants in the employ of persons not coming within this restriction.
Overland Park
That the said lots or buildings thereon shall never be rented, leased, or sold, transferred or conveyed to, nor shall
the same be occupied by any negro or colored person or person of negro blood, or persons of the Mongolian
Race.
Hawthorne Hills
Said lot or lots shall not be sold, conveyed, or rented nor leased, in whole or in part, to any person not of the White
race; nor shall any person not of the White race be permitted to occupy any portion of said lot or lots or of any
building thereon, except a domestic servant actually employed by a White occupant of such building.
Hawthorne Homes
No person of any race other than the White or Caucasian race shall use or occupy any building or any lot, except
that this covenant shall not prevent occupancy by domestic servants or a different race domiciled with an owner or
tenant.
University Lake
The party of the second part can transfer and sell this contract to any desirable people of the Caucasian race only.
Shore
all
Said lot or lots shall not be sold, conveyed, or rented nor leased, in whole or in part, to any person not of the White
race; nor shall any person not of the White race be permitted to occupy any portion of said lot or lots or of any
Laurelhurst
Loyal Heights
Madrona
Magnolia
Maple Leaf
Matthews Beach
Montlake
building thereon, exc
No person or persons of Asiatic, African or Negro blood, lineage, or extraction shall be permitted to occupy a
portion of said property, or any building thereon except a domestic servant or servants who may actually and in
good faith be employed by white occupants of such premises
Laurelhurst Crest
No property in said plat shall at any time, directly or indirectly be sold, conveyed, rented or leased in whole or in
part to any person not of the White Race. No person other than one of the White Race shall be permitted to occupy
any portion of any lot in said plat or of any building at any time thereon, except a domestic servant actually
employed by a White occupant of such building.
Montlake Tracts,
No person or persons of Asiatic, African or Negro blood, lineage or extraction shall be permitted to occupy a
Montlake Tracts
portion of said property, or any building thereon, except, domestic servant or servants may be actually and in good
Addition
faith employed by White occupant of such premises.
No part of said property hereby conveyed shall ever be used or occupied by any person of the Ethiopian, Malay,
Loyal View
or any Asiatic race…
Said land shall not be occupied by or sold, conveyed, rented or given to negroes or any person of the negro blood.
Buchanan's Addition
McKenzie &
The parties hereto signing and executing this instrument ... hereby mutually covenant, promise and agree each with
Dempsey's Lake
the others, and for their respective heirs and assigns, that no part of said lands owned by them as described
Washington Addition following their signatures to this instrument, shall never be used, occupied by or sold, conveyed, leased, rented or
and Lewis & Fehrens given to Negroes, or any person or persons of the Negro blood.
Addition
Said premises shall not be leased, sold, devised or conveyed to or acquired to occupied by any person than one of
Washington Heights
the white or Caucasian race, provided however, that a person not of the white or Caucasian race may become an
occupant in the capacity of a servant.
Magnolia, Magnolia No person or persons of Asiatic, African or Negro blood, lineage, or extraction shall be permitted to occupy a
View, Magnolia
portion of said property, or any building thereon; except domestic servants may actually and in good faith be
Manor, Carlton Park, employed by white occupants of such premises.
Carlton Park
Addition, Magnolia
View Addition
sec. 22, township 25. That no part of said property hereby conveyed shall ever be used or occupied by the Hebrew, Ethiopian, Malay,
range 3
or any Asiatic race
Maple Leaf addition No portion of the tract shall be sold, leased or rented to any person or persons other than one of the white
to Green Lake Circle race, nor shall any person or persons other than of white race use or occupy said tract.
Lake Washington
Said property or any part thereof shall not be covered, sold rented, leased or otherwise disposed of in whole or in
Addition
part to, or to e occupied by, any person or persons except of the white race, except however, of the case of
servant actually employed by the owner and occupant thereof.
Replat of North Half No lot or portion of a lot shall be sold to , leased to or occupied by any person other than of the Caucasian race,
Lot 1 of Block 4 of
but this restriction does not prevent occupancy by domestic servants of a different race or nationality actually
Lake City
employed in good faith by the owners or tenants.
Montlake Park
Subject to an agreement between various owners of the Montlake District, dated November 9, 1929, and recorded
in Volume 1443 of Deeds, page 89, wherein they mutually agreed with the others, and for their respective heirs and
assigns, that no part of the lands owned by them as described as following their signatures to said instrument shall
ever be used or occupied by or sold, conveyed, leased, rented or given to Negroes, or any person or persons of
the Negro blood, any provides that this covenant shall run with the land and bind the respective heirs and assigns
of the parties thereto, and of the several like instruments in said district, for a period of 21 years, from and after the
Laguna Vista
date of said instrument...
No person other than one of the white or Caucasian race shall use or occupy any portion of said described tract or
of any building thereon, except a domestic servant actually employed by a white occupant of such tract and /or
building.
This property is sold under the express condition that neither the land or any part thereof, nor any building thereon,
Union City 2nd
shall ever be leased, rented or loaned, in any manner whatsoever, to a person or persons of other than Caucasian
Addition
race, nor shall any person or persons of other than a Caucasian race be permitted to occupy said premises, or any
part thereof in any manner whatsoever.
Olympic Hills
Said lot or lots shall not be sold, conveyed, or rented nor leased, in whole or in part, to any person not of the White
Olympic Hills
race; nor shall any person not of the White race be permitted to occupy any portion of said lot or lots or of any
building thereon, except as domestic servant actually employed by a White occupant of such building.
North Beach/Blue WM Twigg's Addition All lots in this plat are restricted to R-1 residence district use including white people only.
to North Beach
Ridge
North College Park Gunderson Addition No person of any race other than the Caucasian race shall use or occupy any building or lot in said addition,
except such persons of another race shall not be prevented from occupancy as domestic servants when domiciled
with an owner or tenant.
Licton Springs Park that no part of the premises herein described shall at any time be leased, mortgaged, or conveyed in law or in
equity to any person of Chinese, Japanese, African or Hindu descent or to any person, company or trustee for
their use and benefit…
Oak Lake Villa, Oak This property shall never be sold to nor occupied by any person of any descent other than Caucasian, not used for
Lake Villa tracts #2
any unlawful or immoral purposes.
Victory Heights
Said tract shall not be sold, leased, or rented to any person or persons other than of Caucasian race nor shall any
Northgate
person or persons other than of Caucasian race use or occupy said tract.
H.E. Orr Park
No persons of any race other than the white race shall use or occupy any building or any lot except that this
Pinehurst
covenant shall not prevent occupancy by domestic servants of a different race domiciled with an owner or tenant.
That neither said premises nor any interest therein shall at any time be leased, sold, devised or conveyed to or
Queen Anne
Gilman Addition
inherited by or otherwise acquired by, become property of, used of occupied by any person other than one of
the White of Caucasian Race, provided however, that persons not of the Caucasian Race may be kept thereon by
such a Caucasian occupant strictly in the capacity of servants of such occupants
Queen Anne Park
No person or persons of Asiatic, African or Negro blood, lineage, or extraction shall be permitted to occupy a
portion of said property, or any building thereon; except domestic servants may actually and in good faith be
employed by white occupants of such premises
The parties hereto signing and executing this instrument do for themselves and with each other mutually covenant
Queen Anne, lower Comstock
Supplemental
and agree with each other and for their personal representatives, heirs and assigns as follows: That the said
Addition, Northern
property herein described shall not be sold, conveyed, leased or given to any person or persons other than of
Addition and G.
the Caucasian race, nor shall any person or persons other than of the Caucasian race be permitted to occupy or
Kinnear's
use the property excepting only employees in the domestic service on the premises of persons qualified hereunder
Supplemental
as occupants or users and residing on the premises.
Addition
Queen Anne, North Prosch's Queen Anne No person or persons of Asiatic, African or Negro blood, lineage or extraction shall be permitted to occupy a
portion of said property or any building thereof, except domestic servants or servant may be actually and in good
faith employed by white occupants of such premises.
Other than Caucasian Race, any of the land or property, the description of which appears after their respective
Rainier valley
C.D. Hillmans City
signatures hereto.
Addition
North Broadway
Addition
near Columbian way
Ravenna
Hayes Park
Homeacres
Sandpoint
Weshthaven Division
#2
Aviation Heights
Sheridan Beach
Sheridan Beach
Victory Heights
Victory Heights
Division 2
Sand Point Country
Club
View Ridge
Wedgewood
View Ridge, Norris
Sandpoint Addition,
Rose May Addition
Fir Crest
Wedgwood Rock
Addition
West Seattle/ High High Point
Point
Windermere
Rayvilla
Windermere
(unrecorded plat)
Said property shall not be conveyed to or occupancy thereof given to any person other than of the Caucasian
Race.
No person other than one of the white race shall be permitted to occupy any portion of any lot in said plat or of any
building thereon, except a domestic servant actually employed by a white occupant of such building.
No person of any other than the White or Caucasian race shall use or occupy any building or lot, except that this
covenant shall not prevent occupancy by domestic servants of a different race domiciled with an owner or tenant.
No part of said property hereby conveyed shall ever be used or occupied by any person of the Ethiopian, Malay,
or any Asiatic race...
No race or nationality other than those of the White or Caucasian race shall use or occupy any dwelling on any lot
except that this covenant does not prevent occupancy by domestic servants of a different race or nationality
employed by an owner or tenant.
It is a condition of this sale that above described property shall be used for residential purposes only and cannot be
resold to aliens, disorderly persons, or persons not of the Caucasian race.
Said tracts shall not be sold, leased, or rented to any person or persons other than of Caucasian race nor shall any
person other than of Caucasian race use or occupy said tract.
No tract shall be sold, conveyed, rented or leased, in whole or in part, to anyHebrew or to any person of the
Malay, Ethiopian or any other negro or any Asiatic race; or any descendant of any thereof, except only
employees in the domestic service on ht premises of persons qualifies as herein provided as occupants.
No race or nationality other than those of the White or Caucasian race shall use or occupy any dwelling or lot,
except that this covenant shall not prevent occupancy by domestic servants of a different race or nationality
employed by an owner or tenant.
No race or nationality other than white or Caucasian shall use or occupy any building on any lot, except that this
covenant shall not prevent occupancy by domestic servants of a different race or nationality employed by an owner
or tenant.
No persons of any race other than the white race shall use or occupy any building or any lot except that this
covenant shall not prevent occupancy by domestic servants of a different race domiciled with an owner or tenant.
The purchaser covenants, and said covenants shall run with said land, that no part of said described premises shall
ever be used or occupied by any person not of the White or Caucasian race.
No person or persons of Asiatic, African or Negro blood, lineage, or extraction shall be permitted to occupy a
portion of said property, or any building thereon except a domestic servant or servants who may actually and in
good faith be employed by white occupants of such premises
Said property shall not be conveyed, sold, rented or otherwise disposed of, in whole or in part, or otherwise
occupied by any person or persons except ofwhite and Gentile race, except, however a domestic servant actually
employed by the lawful owner or occupant thereof.
DOCUMENT G
“No gentrification in Seattle? A new study makes the case”
By Gene Balk
Published in the Seattle Times
December 10, 2014
It’s a familiar story in Seattle: Well-paid young professionals move into the neighborhood, property values and
rents spike, and suddenly everything goes upscale.
As the character of our neighborhoods transform — and just last week we learned that Capitol Hill’s beloved
art-house cinema Harvard Exit is closing, sold off to a developer — the topic of gentrification has stirred debate
and even protests in Seattle.
But is it possible that we’ve been debating the wrong thing — that the changes under way in some Seattle
neighborhoods don’t add up to gentrification?
A new study from the Portland-based think tank City Observatory contends just that: Seattle hasn’t experienced
any significant gentrification — and in fact, the phenomenon of gentrification is far less pervasive in U.S. cities
than commonly thought.
It comes down to to what you mean by gentrification, of course. It’s a tricky term, with no hard-and-fast
definition.
“Some people see gentrification happening when someone richer than them moves into the neighborhood” says
economist Joe Cortright, one of the authors of the new study. “But if our concern about gentrification is the
displacement of poor people, the fact is it has not had much of an impact.”
The study uses census data to examine patterns of poverty in 51 U.S. cities, including Seattle, between 1970 and
2010. For a census tract to be considered gentrified, it had to start out at a high level of economic distress, with
at least 30 percent of residents at or below the poverty line (roughly double the national average). If, at the end
of the four-decade period, the tract rebounded to a poverty rate below 15 percent, it had gentrified.
Remarkably, Seattle does not have a single census tract that meets this threshold for gentrification.
To be fair, the data show that neighborhoods like Ballard and Capitol Hill have experienced displacement, with
declines in the percentage of residents who earn poverty-level wages. But these neighborhoods weren’t
extremely blighted to begin with. In central Ballard the poverty rate was just 16 percent in 1970. In the heart of
Capitol Hill, it was 19 percent.
Belltown comes closest to meeting the standard of gentrification in the study. In 1970, the neighborhood’s
poverty rate was 29 percent. By 2010, it had dropped to 12 percent. The Central District (east of 15th Ave.) and
the High Point neighborhood in West Seattle are other near misses.
Seattle is not unique in this regard. Most cities in the study experienced little or no gentrification. Only a
handful — New York, Chicago, New Orleans, Washington, D.C., and Memphis — saw a significant number of
urban neighborhoods rebound from high poverty.
Despite all the media attention it receives, gentrification is “strikingly rare,” Cortright says. Most
neighborhoods that were impoverished in 1970 remain so today. And many others have fallen into deep poverty
in the past several decades.
Seattle fits this pattern, even though we have less poverty here than many cities. As illustrated on the map,
Seattle had six areas with a poverty rate exceeding 30 percent in 1970. Four of those six still do. Additionally,
eight newly-poor neighborhoods have passed the 30-percent mark.
Our focus on gentrification is misplaced, Cortright says, since the spread of concentrated poverty is a much
larger trend, and has a far more negative impact on the lives of poor people.
“If we just mean some re-arranging of nonpoor neighborhoods when we talk about gentrification, that’s a
different issue,” he explains.
So perhaps we need a new name for the type of gentrification we’re witnessing in Seattle neighborhoods like
Capitol Hill. Because let’s face it — is it really gentrification when an art-house cinema gets pushed out of the
neighborhood?
DOCUMENT H
“Gentrification, Integration, or Displacement?: The Seattle Story”
By Henry W. McGee, Jr.
From BlackPast.org
In the following article, Henry W. McGee, Jr., a Seattle University Professor of Law and Central District
resident, discusses the recent dramatic transformation of the area from a predominately working class African
American community into an area of high income white, Asian American and African American professionals.
His article suggests implications for black communities across the United States.
In 2006 former Seattle mayor Norm Rice, the city’s only African American to hold that position, summarized
his frustration over the paradox of gentrification at a community forum in Seattle’s Central District. “I’m
concerned and I am frustrated because I don’t know what the alternatives [to gentrification] are. [This process]
clearly isn’t racist, it’s economic. The real question you have to ask yourself is: Is this good or bad?”
The transformation of Seattle’s Central District and its African American residents is not unlike the story of
many American cities. New York City’s Harlem, Chicago’s South Side, South Central Los Angeles, and San
Francisco’s Fillmore District, to name but a few, have all seen once-shunned black districts populated by the
children of “white-flighters” who now crave the proximity, convenience, and “hipness” of living close to
downtowns where they work and play. This process commenced ironically as the 1960s Civil Rights
Movement wound down but is increasingly a reality of 21st century urban America. Traditionally one of the
most concentrated of all of the nation’s inner city groups, many African Americans are moving out of the urban
core and into the suburbs.
But unlike the cities in which African Americans reside in significant numbers, Seattle, and Washington State,
have relatively small black populations. Moreover, African Americans are not the largest population of color in
Washington State. The 2000 U.S. Census reported that 190,267 African Americans resided in the state whose
total population was 5,894,121. Seattle had 55,611 African Americans. The census also reported the statewide
Latino population as 412,509 with 29,719 living in Seattle. The Asian American population was 395,714 and
84,649 respectively.
In King and Pierce Counties, Washington’s most populous counties which also have the vast majority of the
states’ African Americans, the percentage of whites dropped considerably between 1990 and 2000. Seattle,
Federal Way, Renton, and Kent, the four King County communities with the largest black populations,
remained predominantly white. The three suburbs saw huge black population increases over the 1990-2000
decade, and continue to experience heavy growth. The percentage of blacks in Seattle dropped in the same
period.
There was also a dramatic shift in the racial landscape of the Central District, Seattle’s traditionally African
American community. In 1990, there were nearly three times as many black as white residents in the area, but
by 2000, the number of white residents surpassed the number of blacks for the first time in 30 years. The overall
racial shift in the Central District is clearly in favor of white in-movers, with a concomitant number of blacks
moving out.
Looking beyond the gross numbers the Census reported subtle but significant changes within the Central
District community. The overall percentage of households reporting incomes of $50,000 or more has risen
substantially. Most black families in the area report incomes of less than $15,000 and these low income families
comprised a smaller percentage of the total households in 2000 than in 1990. In 2000 most of the area’s
residents between 22 and 39 were white or Asian. Most blacks, in comparison, were either under 22 or over 60.
These percentages suggest that there are fewer blacks in the District in prime income earning years. The white
and Asian American residents of the community are also generally better educated. Their presence, and the
presence of their children in Central District schools, has increased the “education gap” between black and
white children and adults. The Central District, for blacks at least, is increasingly becoming a community of the
very young or the very old with many better educated, working class African Americans moving southeast into
Seattle’s Rainier Valley or beyond into Renton and other inner suburbs.
Ironically the promulgation of anti-housing discrimination legislation has encouraged this movement. In 1977
Washington passed two anti-discrimination statutes, the “Mortgage Disclosure Act,” and the “Fairness in
Lending Act.” These measures made the trickle of blacks into the suburbs in the 1960s a flood by the early
1980s. At the same time younger European Americans, concerned about rising gasoline prices and attracted by
the urban lifestyle their parents had fled a generation earlier, began to seek out the Central District which in the
1980s was made even more attractive by depressed housing prices, a consequence of decades of redlining that
was finally on the decline. Young European American childless couples, or those with young children, now
purchased properties in Central District neighborhoods their parents, with few exceptions, would have regarded
as racially contaminated.
Anecdotally, I have lived literally on the northeast boundary line of the Central District since 1994. I can affirm
that the passengers on the bus I’ve taken to work each day over the past decade have become whiter and whiter
as it traveled through the community. Indeed during rush hour when office workers and professionals take the
20 minute bus ride downtown or back to their homes, I am often the only African American on board.
Although working class and moderately affluent African Americans have abandoned the Central District for
housing bargains elsewhere, there is little doubt that continued racial discrimination has also played a role in
their displacement. In a 2003 study of discrimination in home mortgage lending, the Association of Community
Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) discovered that Seattle African American loan applicants were 2.56
times more likely to be denied a conventional mortgage loan than white applicants in 2002. And a national
study by the Center for Responsible Lending indicated in a 2005 study of data released by lenders themselves
showed that people of color were more likely to pay high rates for mortgage loans. Such loans require
borrowers to pay tens of thousands of dollars in additional interest while building less equity. Borrowers who
fail to repay these loans lose their homes, ruin their credit, and damage neighborhood stability. Viewed for
decades as a prime example of institutional racism, redlining has unquestionably declined. It has also morphed
into more subtle and arguably even more insidious forms. .
Moreover gentrification which has increased home values has also increased property taxes. Many African
Americans who had paid off or paid down their mortgages after twenty or thirty years in their homes saw
spectacular increases in the value of their properties, particularly in the 1990s and the first years of the 21st
Century. One three bedroom, one bath, 1,200 square foot Central District home assessed by King County as
valued at $1,280 in 1938 was worth $5,000 in 1960, $190,000 in 2001, and $355,000 in 2005. Those on fixed
incomes or those with modest incomes often found themselves with tax bills larger than their annual mortgage
payments. Yet their low incomes prevent them from acquiring loans to repair or upgrade their properties,
forcing them to sell to younger, more affluent, and credit eligible buyers who in many instances were white.
Not surprisingly the percentage of black Central District homeowners has been steadily declining for the past
three decades.
The Central District, which took seven decades to achieve its racial identity as a predominately black area, has
in the last two decades become much more racially diverse as European Americans have discovered its
attributes. Yet this is not simply a story of whites replacing blacks in a community. First, many black residents
who can, stubbornly remain. There is also a growing population of other people of color, including substantial
numbers of recent arrivals from Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
The ultimate question then is not the fact of change, but the nature of it. Will the Central District become an
urban rarity, a viable, vibrant interracial community, or will it do a reverse “flip” and become an essentially
nearly all-European American area? The “flip” argument is predicated on the pattern of racially segregated
neighborhoods which remain the national norm.
Yet, there are indications that racial attitudes are in flux and that racism itself is no longer the primary bar to
residential integration. A recent study in the American Sociological Review noted that:
“A powerful interracial tide has transformed friendships, dates, cohabitations, marriages and adoptions in
just one generation. If the wave continues to grow, it could sweep away racial stereotypes and categorizations,
as well as the rationale behind affirmative action and other broad minority protections. For now, the interracial
trend – while evident everywhere – is hard to gauge because young adults and children are at its vanguard . . . .
[T]he wave is so far-reaching that the average American today, young or old, is 70 percent more likely than
Americans were a generation ago to count a person of another race among his or her two or three best friends.”
This development suggests that the chances for a permanently viable interracial community will turn more on
economics than on pressure from any racial group. Social class, more than race, may determine the urban
demography of Seattle and other cities throughout the nation. As one writer recently observed:
“[P]laces like New York and San Francisco appear to be richer and more dazzling than ever.... But middle
class city dwellers are being squeezed out by the rich as much, or more so, as by the poor, [they are] a casualty
of high housing costs and the thinning out of the country’s once broad economic middle. The percentage of
middle-income neighborhoods in metropolitan areas like Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington has dropped
since 1970. In New York, the supply of apartments considered affordable to households with incomes like
those earned by starting fire-fighters or police officers plunged by a whopping 205,000 in just three years,
between 2002 and 2003.”
The loss of middle-income city residents has more impact on the poor who remain behind, making it harder for
them to become homeowners, send their children to better schools, and make the kind of personal contacts that
can be a route to better jobs.
Seattle is a prime example of this trend of middle class decline. Recently it was reported that Seattle had but
one “affordable [middle class] neighborhood left,” the remote Georgetown- South Park area. Very few middle
class European Americans or African Americans will be able to survive the upward soar of Central District
housing prices. Instead, the community will be increasingly populated by high income “techies” and
professionals of every race.
This ever-increasing concentration of wealth could mean Seattle will become the gilded city of the uppermiddle and upper classes. Seattle has recently been called a “superstar city” by urban demographers. It’s not
quite in the same league as San Francisco and New York, but census data shows that Seattle housing prices
have grown faster than the national average for the past half century from 1950 to 2000. In these superstar
markets, including Seattle, the price of housing is driven by the incomes of its wealthiest citizens, not middle
class residents. This means that house prices can grow faster than the incomes of existing residents if there are
enough new affluent residents from outside the metro area who can afford purchase homes.
Seattle has become the domain of high-earners. Between 1990 and 2004, households earning more than 150
percent of median income ($90,000 in 2005) expanded faster than any other income category and now comprise
250,000 households, one-third of Seattle’s total. In King County, first time buyers in 1995 had 65.6 % of the
income needed to purchase a low-priced home. By 2005 only 44.7% were in that category. Moderate and low
income renters face a similar challenge. In 2005, some 2,000 Seattle rentals units were lost to condominium
conversion. Another 681 units were lost to demolition.
Most observers in Seattle and across urban America have been concerned about the racial displacement that
seems to inevitably follow gentrification. Those concerns miss the mark. The gentrification of the Central
District, and much of Seattle, is much more about class than race. What is clear is that thousands of African
Americans have been displaced from the city’s oldest identifiably African American community. Who will
ultimately replace them is at the moment far less clear.
DOCUMENT I
“The Intersection of Gentrification and Neglect”
By Mark D. Fefer
Published in Seattle Weekly
May 13, 2008
The effort to "improve" poor parts of town is always a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't proposition.
When government leaves a neighborhood to languish, it's accused of neglect. When it tries to spruce things up,
it gets ripped for promoting gentrification. The double-edged dynamic has been playing out in the Rainier
Valley for years now, ever since Sound Transit came up with its plan to run light-rail trains down the center of
Martin Luther King Way. A dingy thoroughfare more welcoming to tractor-trailers than people, MLK has since
been beautified with new trees, sidewalks, and streetlights. Once the light-rail line is running next year, MLK
riders will have the easiest access—there will be multiple stops and you'll be able to access them at street level,
without descending a mile underground as you'll need to do on Cap Hill. But many in the Valley, especially
business owners along MLK, opposed this plan as racist. They correctly observed that if the Valley were white
and affluent, the government could never have gotten away with massively redeveloping a miles-long
boulevard, condemning dozens of properties and disrupting travel for years. Up north, of course, Sound Transit
tracks are being laid down in tunnels, leaving the surface less disturbed. Tearing up the street wasn't the only
issue. Opponents and supporters alike saw light rail along MLK as sweetening the pot for developers, especially
as new zoning invited clusters of transit-hugging "urban villages." Light rail was a deliberate government
strategy of urban renewal, intended to draw private investment to unpalatable neighborhoods where subsidized
housing has long dominated. And it seems to be working: A recent Seattle Times story toted up "more than
1,500 condo and apartment units" currently proposed by private, for-profit developers within a 10-minute walk
of an MLK rail station. Of course, everyone from public officials to the developers themselves insists that
maintaining the Valley's "diversity" is a top priority. According to the Times, developers have said they might
even be persuaded to forgo the wealthiest common denominator and offer "workforce" housing (which basically
means middle-class)—provided the city offers up some nice tax breaks. But to visit the intersection of MLK and
Othello Street, where a bright light-rail station sits finished and empty, is to see a commercial district both
thriving and utterly doomed. This motley collection of herb shops, video stores, markets, and bakeries serves a
mostly Southeast Asian clientele in retail environments that make no concession to English-speaking outsiders.
Mind you, a certain amount of piquant diversity can be a valuable selling point for the developers' target
customer. As any reader of StuffWhitePeopleLike is aware, the presence of ethnic shops where you can try out
your Spanish, and a general feeling of being a neighborhood "trailblazer," all carry high appeal among educated
strivers. But at MLK and Othello you can almost hear the coming rumble from hundreds of new residents at
Othello North and Othello South—twin developments planned alongside the rail line—as they engulf and
displace these shops with their buying power and taste for Odwalla Bars. How could they not? Valiantly
struggling against this outcome is the Rainier Valley Community Development Fund. It was set up a decade ago
by local pols and Sound Transit board members who were feeling a bit abashed at how this 'hood was to be
reamed by a massive public-works project. The city agreed to put up about $50 million to help offset the effects
of construction on the hundreds of small businesses that line MLK, and generally preserve the neighborhood's
character. Construction has mostly come to an end now (after taking twice as long as planned), and the Fund
has paid out about $17 million to cover losses suffered while MLK was an unnavigable war zone. But the real
test is ahead, says Martina Guilfoil, who recently became executive director of the Fund. The trains won't be
running until next summer, under the most optimistic projections. Meanwhile, "car traffic left and hasn't come
back yet," she says. And in a worst-of-all-worlds scenario, everyone's rents are climbing, she says, because of
the "intense speculation and private investment" all along the light-rail line. At the Western Donut near Graham
Street, for example, rent has tripled to $3,500 a month, Guilfoil says. The Development Fund has another $26
million at its disposal to help out businesses and other Rainier Valley groups with loans. And Guilfoil says her
staff will be going door-to-door along MLK, offering advice to business owners on "how to enjoy the
prosperity" and "expand their goods and services to serve a broader clientele." But to really have a shot at
preserving the texture of the street, the Fund would need to be able to buy land outright, she says. That way it
could keep rents at a reasonable level. However, being a landlord isn't in the Fund's current job description, and
Guilfoil would need approval from the city council, where rent suppression is likely to be none too popular with
developer lobbyists. So unless the city steps in with some kind of regulatory limits, it all seems like a pretty
hopeless task. Only the friction of a slowing economy can oppose the forces of gentrification. To be kind is to
be cruel when it comes to urban improvements, and it's hard not to believe that the Rainier Valley Community
Development Fund will be remembered for only briefly staving off the inevitable. mfefer@seattleweekly.com
DOCUMENT J
“Changes in the Central District Affect the African-American Community”
By Naomi Ishisaka
Published in Seattle Magazine
March 2014
The changing streetscape at 23rd Avenue and Alder Street, in a part of the Central District that some residents
would like to be known as Africatown
When Mount Calvary Christian Center pastor Reggie Witherspoon was growing up in the Central District in the
1960s and ’70s, the neighborhood was tight-knit and largely African-American. But today, it’s another story.
“It’s radically different,” he says. Now, he can visit the neighborhood and not see any African-Americans. “I
never thought I would see the time when I am driving through and white folks would look at me strangely. I’m
like, ‘I grew up in this area, what are you looking at me for?’”
Witherspoon’s experience mirrors that of the neighborhood as a whole. The number of African-Americans in
the Central District has steadily declined over the past decades, with the percentage dropping from 64 percent in
1990 to 28 percent in 2010. The number of white residents increased in nearly inverse proportion.
His own life tells the story. Born in Seattle in 1958, Witherspoon attended Garfield High School and was raised
in a Central District that was predominantly African-American. After decades in the C.D. and then South
Seattle, he purchased a home with more space in Renton, a decision he now regrets. “I can’t afford to move
back to the Central Area,” he says. The congregation of his church, near 23rd and Union, is seeing the same
pattern. Today, he estimates only 40 percent of his predominantly African-American congregation lives in the
neighborhood, down from 85 percent before. Parishioners now spread out across the southern suburbs, such as
Renton, Federal Way and Auburn.
Witherspoon says that with the exodus went the sense of community. “When I grew up here, everyone knew
each other. In the 1970s, you didn’t even have to lock the door when you left the house. It was an extendedfamily kind of concept; that part is completely gone.” (Photo: Pastor Reggie Witherspoon at Mount Calvary
Christian Center, on 23rd near East Union. After growing up in the Central District, Witherspoon bought a
home in Renton. A decision he regrets, since he can’t afford to move back to the neighborhood)
The shifting demographics in the Central District are not just numbers on paper. The neighborhood, bordered by
Madison Street to the north, 12th Avenue to the west, I-90 to the south and Martin Luther King Way to the east,
has long held a special place for black Seattleites. Its main artery is the 23rd Avenue corridor, home to
businesses and restaurants spanning the African diaspora and beyond. The district also includes, at 23rd and
Jackson, the Starbucks Community Store, a hub of the East African community, and at 23rd and Cherry, the
community’s heart and soul, Garfield High School. For many, the demographic shift marks a loss of culture and
community—and some are hoping to stem the tide.
A community takes action
One effort to preserve some of what makes this neighborhood unique is coalescing at City Hall, through the
23rd Avenue Action Plan. This “city-community collaboration” to create “a shared vision and action plan to
improve the health and equity” of three Central Area hubs—23rd and East Union, 23rd and East Cherry, and
23rd and South Jackson—is led by the Department of Planning and Development’s senior planner Quanlin Hu.
In a shift from the city’s regular neighborhood planning process, the team carefully identified community
stakeholders and engaged in concerted outreach to get their involvement in the process. The result was that
during 2013 more than 600 people participated in the public meetings and planning processes. They represented
a diverse array of ethnic and economic backgrounds—including a significant number of longtime residents of
color. In addition to stakeholder meetings, community workshops and community engagement, an advisory core
team (ACT) of 15 key participants was selected to represent community interests. More than half of the ACT is
African-American.
Hu says the action plan represents a move from neighborhood planning to a community development process.
“There are a lot of assets already [in the community] and there are a lot of community organizations doing
wonderful things, but they’re not connected,” she says. “We wanted to connect these people together to share
resources and energize the community.”
In addition to the ACT, five action teams were developed from the planning process, made up of interested
community members. These teams focused on issues from cultural preservation to livable streets.
To assist the process of building participation, the city enlisted the help of Public Outreach and Engagement
Liaisons, a team of well-respected and trusted members of historically underrepresented communities. Mary
Dell Williams, a longtime community activist, served as a liaison for the African-American community. (Photo:
Last summer, Starbucks designated the always-hopping coffee shop at 23rd and Jackson a “community store.”
A portion of this location’s proceeds will go toward the YWCA’s GirlsFirst program and neighborhood
revitalization efforts)
“Unfortunately, with the African-American community, there is still a lot of historical mistrust. There is still a
lot of unhealed stuff,” Williams says. “So when I come to that work, I try to be honest about that.”
Williams knows firsthand the impact of Central District gentrification. “A lot of people I know lost houses,”she
says. “There may be apartments for people like me, but there are not houses. Everybody moved south—to Kent,
Renton.” Williams now lives with her son in Rainier Beach.
Despite the mistrust, community engagement in the action plan has been high. The final product, the action plan
itself, was completed in the fall. The final document, available soon, will lay the foundation for planning
decisions that will involve zoning in the commercial hubs.
For example, in planned development at the current post office at 23rd and Union, the strong community
preference was for multiple smaller businesses versus a big-box store. When the zoning decisions are made for
that parcel, the community input will be factored in. The Central District action plan is the city’s second such
initiative. The first effort started in 2011 in Rainier Beach, a process with fewer participants but one that built a
community-centered road map for the neighborhood to follow as it made development decisions. This includes
zoning and land-use guidelines as well as an urban design framework.
An ethnic hub
One prominent member of the advisory core team is Wyking Garrett, the founding director of the Umojafest
P.E.A.C.E. Center and a member of the leadership team behind the Africatown Innovation Center at the Horace
Mann school building. Before coming to an agreement to leave the Horace Mann building during its renovation,
the Innovation Center operated at the former school on Cherry, offering a space for youth education, technology
access, African-American heritage immersion and a middle school for Muslim girls.
On a visit in October, the center was bustling: African-American youth using computers, community members
creating banners against racism, young people painting a mural in a garden. Throughout the building were
symbols and reminders of a proud black history.
This is one of Garrett’s visions for the Central District: a hub for African-American-centered education and
learning, a safe place for youth to grow their skills. Yet in mid-November, the last holdouts occupying the
school were removed, and four activists were arrested during the eviction. The Innovation Center is now
looking for a new location.
The displacement does not deter Garrett. Another vision he has for the Central District is Africatown itself.
“When [African-Americans] migrated from other parts of the country to make a better life here, they were
forced to live in this area. As a result, it became the cultural and economic hub of people of African descent in
the Pacific Northwest. Africatown represents leveraging the best of the African diaspora and making that a
positive value-add to Seattle.” (Photo: Danyale Thomas Ross (at right, with customer Barbara Brown), owner of
Good Hair Salon on 19th and Yesler, has been active in setting a course for the neighborhood. She was born in
the Central District and graduated from Garfield High School)
Garrett’s vision is to use the model of Seattle’s Chinatown–International District to create a core area for
culture, goods and food of the African diaspora in the Central District. Longtime African-American
neighborhood mainstays, such as Catfish Corner and Ezell’s, are now joined by more recent East African
immigrant restaurants, such as Cafe Selam and Assimba.
“[Asian-Americans] have a Chinatown–International District Preservation Authority—to preserve and develop.
It’s about the past and it’s about the future. This is the only African-American community,” Garrett says. “Part
of the solution Africatown represents is that this is not lower Capitol Hill, this is not west Leschi, not upper
Madison Park. All these different ways they seek to ignore or marginalize, or devalue the people who have
made their lives here and contributed to the richness that Seattle offers to the world.”
Much like in Seattle’s Chinatown–International District and ethnic hubs across the country, Garrett envisions
Africatown as a destination for all people who value the contributions and history of African-Americans. At a
January community meeting, the crowd erupted in applause when after an Africatown presentation by Garrett,
the new-mayor Ed Murray said he felt the city should refer to the area as Africatown–Central District.
Gentrification or progress?
Garrett knows that his vision for the Central District is not shared by everyone, that for some, “gentrification” is
not a bad word. “You have some people on the committee who want to eliminate the black presence;
gentrification cannot happen fast enough for them” he says.
He wonders why in a historically black community, the right for African-Americans to have space and
influence is even in question. “A lot of people ask the question, ‘Are these same type of meetings happening in
Chinatown?’ Or does the pan-Asian community decide what is happening in Chinatown–International District,
and why does the African-American not have the equal respect in their space?” (Photo: Neighborhood activist
Wyking Garrett, outside the Horace Mann school, where the Africatown Center for Education and Innovation
operated until it was shut down for building renovations late last year)
Quintard Taylor, a professor of American history at the University of Washington and the author of The
Forging of a Black Community: Seattle’s Central District from 1870 through the Civil Rights Era, says
transition has been a constant in the history of the Central District.
“We sometimes think that gentrification is new, it’s not new—it’s part of neighborhood secession,” Taylor says.
“Community secession and change has always marked these locales; it’s part of a continuum since Seattle was
born. The Central Area was always a racially mixed area, it was the model of diversity when there wasn’t a lot
of diversity.… But what makes it a ghetto is that blacks couldn’t live elsewhere in the city.”
Redlining and restrictive covenants established in the early 1900s were created based on an area’s ethnic and
economic composition. This practice enforced neighborhood segregation and ensured that African-Americans
would not be able to move outside the Central District. From the segregation, a community was born.
“Black people took that ghetto, which other people said, ‘this is the place you are forced to live, you’re confined
…’ and within the confines of that, they created a rich and dynamic culture,” Taylor says. “That’s the paradox.
Now the question is: how do you maintain that rich and dynamic culture when the ghetto no longer exists.”
While Taylor sees neighborhood transition as inevitable, he knows it brings with it pain. “African-Americans
are displaced from their traditional neighborhoods, there’s a lot of individual tragedy that operates in those
settings; on the other hand, there is a lot of individual opportunity,” he says. “People want to have an anchor,
and they see that anchor being pulled away and they begin to drift. This is our home, but we no longer feel at
home because the neighborhood is changing.”
Examples of these changes abound: the African American Facts newspaper, long a huge landmark on Martin
Luther King Jr. Way and Cherry Street, is now a doggy day care (the paper has moved to a tiny office in
Madrona); a Central District icon, Thompson’s Point of View restaurant, is now a hipster bordello-themed
bar—its patrons, formerly made up of blacks, now almost all whites.
Ryan Curren is the program manager for southeast Seattle’s Community Cornerstones innovative equitable
development project, which is an intentional process to ensure low-income people and people of color are
involved in development decisions. Yet he says that stopping gentrification is not an option he thinks is likely.
“Mitigate? Yes. There is no…case study anywhere in the United States that neighborhoods that were in high
demand either didn’t change or that all existing residents and businesses were able to stay.” In this context, his
project aims to prevent involuntary displacement and create opportunity.
A changing corner
Adding to the development pressures in the neighborhood are several applications to open recreational
marijuana shops around 23rd and Union. This is one of the only locations in the central part of the city that is
far enough from schools, child care, parks, etc., to house a retail pot operation, potentially creating what the
Central District News called a “Little Amsterdam.”
One of the potential pot entrepreneurs is Ian Eisenberg, a longtime Leschi resident and member of the action
plan’s advisory core team. He has applied to open a marijuana shop in the area. For years he had been asking
why someone didn’t fix up the 23rd and Union intersection. There was a boarded-up building where Philly’s
Best used to be, and a vacant lot on the southwest corner. Finally, in May 2010, he decided to buy them himself.
The restaurant space, home to well-known violent tragedies over the years, became Med Mix, a Mediterranean
restaurant. Following exuberant stories about finally ending the “curse” of the Philly’s Best corner, in August,
someone set fire to the Med Mix building. Ruled an arson, surveillance cameras caught the arsonist
intentionally setting the fire and writing “4 Pratt & Trayv” on the wall next to the restaurant, a nod to slain civil
rights activist Edwin Pratt and Florida teen Trayvon Martin. The wall, which once held a mural of Pratt and
Malcolm X, was painted over by a previous owner. It had been tagged too many times to repair.
As to the motive behind the arson? Many theories circulate online, but there have been no arrests. In January,
Med Mix owner Otmane Bezzaz announced he wouldn’t reopen on the corner because the damage is too
extensive, but says he’s looking for another way to keep Med Mix in the C.D., where he lives.
At press time, Eisenberg had just sold the vacant lot on the southwest corner (for $3.8 million) to Lake Union
Partners, which plans to develop a six-story apartment building with retail at street level, starting this spring.
From Eisenberg’s perspective, neighborhood transition is par for the course. “The neighborhood went through
transition, it isn’t going through transition,” he says. “My grandparents moved here, they lived here, then it was
a Jewish neighborhood, then a Japanese neighborhood, [the Japanese] went to [internment] camps and then they
were all gone.…Every group was forced to live here. Jews had to live here; blacks had to live here; they
couldn’t live anywhere else. As soon as that changed, people moved out to wherever they wanted to live.”
But Pastor Witherspoon is not so sanguine. Asked whether the new Central District residents think preserving
the diversity of the community is important, Witherspoon says, “I don’t think they do. They just like the
convenience of being close to everything. That’s a selfish and insensitive approach, in my opinion.”
Other recent events have also given Witherspoon pause. “We’ve been here for 22 years and we have never been
tagged before, up until last year. Surveillance cameras showed the people who tagged us were not AfricanAmerican. I think there are people in the community who do not care for African-American people,” he says. “I
am sad to say it, but now when I am walking to my car, I look around. I didn’t do that when it was AfricanAmerican. We had gang members all around here. I worked with these guys; they respected me. They would
never break into our church. All of a sudden we’re getting tagged with ugly stuff. All of this is showing there is
still racism that is starting to rear its ugly head.”
For Witherspoon, it’s important that newcomers recognize and respect the existing institutions in the area. “I
don’t want to be disrespected, particularly as an African-American church,” he says. “I don’t want people to
feel that we don’t have any regard in this community and that we’re not significant—because we are.…People
keep doing things to keep pushing us out.… All of this development needs to do something to reach out to
people of color and let them know there’s an opportunity for you here.”
DOCUMENT K
“Seattle’s Ugly Past: Segregation in Our Neighborhoods”
By Knute Berger
Published in Seattle Magazine
March 2013
An open housing demonstration at Westlake under the Monorail in 1964
Newcomers to Seattle love the variety of neighborhoods. We’re a counterpane of livable places with modest
and grand homes often tucked together in a green and pleasant landscape. It’s a residential smorgasbord of
cultures, home styles and enclaves, from houseboats to high-rises, bungalows to classic boxes. But that
excitement of choice wasn’t always there for everyone. For most of the 20th century, the city was restricted and
segregated, if not literally gated.
A clear-eyed view of our past reveals a history of racial and ethnic intolerance. In the 19th century, all Native
Americans were banned from living in Seattle, a city named for a local tribal leader. In the 1880s, Chinese
workers were expelled amid riots. The Japanese internment during World War II remains a stain.
But Seattle’s exclusionary practices extend beyond those events, and were in place much more recently. The
city was stitched together with racial exclusions written into property deeds and community covenants. Real
estate agents and lenders used “redlining” to draw racial boundaries. In 1960, Seattle was 92 percent white.
More than 90 percent of Seattle’s black population was pushed into the Central District. In 1964, Seattle voters
soundly defeated an “open housing” ordinance that would have let anyone live anywhere. It lost by more than
2-to-1. The city was segregated, and a large majority wanted it that way.
White Capitol Hill residents went door to door asking homeowners to insert restrictive language into their deeds
to keep blacks south of Madison Street.
Seattle Post-Intelligencer Collection, Museum of History & Industry, Seattle; All Rights Reserved
According to MOHAI: "Reverend Samuel B. McKinney speaks through a megaphone at a segregation protest
meeting in front of the Seattle Municipal Building. Listening are Mayor Gordon S. Clinton (left), Reverend
Mance Jackson (right) and an unidentified boy. In response to calls for action on open housing and other issues,
the mayor announced plans to fund a civil rights unit." Photo courtesy of MOHAI.
While there were vocal advocates for integration, it took the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King in 1968
and the resulting Central District unrest to finally get an open housing ordinance passed. The City Council voted
for it unanimously just three weeks later.
The University of Washington has documented the practice of prejudice in real estate as part of the Seattle Civil
Rights and Labor History Project (depts.washington.edu/civilr). If you really want to understand where you live,
check census maps and covenants listed by neighborhood on its website.
Areas ranging from parts of Alki and Ballard all the way through the alphabet to View Ridge and Wedgwood
were restricted to “whites and Caucasians only,” or banned “Jews” and “Hebrews,” “Negroes” or “Ethiopians,”
“Asiatics,” Chinese, Japanese, “Hindus” or “Malays” (Filipinos) from owning property or residing there. In
wealthier enclaves, such as Windermere and Broadmoor, domestic servants were conveniently exempt.
The covenants were mostly a 20th-century phenomenon. Although much of the city had been platted before
they were in vogue, this didn’t deter neighborhood organizers. In 1927, for example, white Capitol Hill
residents went door to door asking homeowners to insert restrictive language into their deeds to keep blacks
south of Madison Street. Eventually, the restrictions covered 183 blocks on the hill.
In the 1930s and ’40s, Boeing Co. founder William Boeing and his wife imposed “white or Caucasian race”–
only covenants on their new North End developments such as Blue Ridge, Richmond Beach and Innis Arden.
Even Seattle’s pioneer public housing efforts had to fight hard to include minorities. The primary mover behind
Yesler Terrace, Jesse Epstein, argued in 1940, “We have an opportunity to prove that Negroes and whites can
live side by side in harmony.” The Yesler Terrace area was already mixed by Seattle standards. Still, a quota of
20 percent for people of color was set. More than that and people feared it would become a “ghetto.”
The current population of Seattle proper is just under 70 percent white and boasts diverse ZIP codes, such as the
Rainier Valley’s 98118. But the legacy of segregation is still apparent on the map and in social patterns: The
Ship Canal continues to be a rough diversity divide between north and south. Seattle public schools are attended
disproportionately by students of color—nearly 60 percent are minorities—while many whites have opted for
private schools.
Today, we’re still building and renewing neighborhoods from Yesler Terrace to South Lake Union. We talk less
explicitly about race, with arguments now focusing on affordability and gentrification. Diversity and
integration, racial and economic, are Seattle strengths, but we can’t take for granted that they will happen on
their own. Our residential temp
DOCUMENT L
“What’s behind the race gap?”
By Vikas Bajaj and Ford Fessenden
Published in the New York Times
November 5, 2007
High-cost subprime mortgages have often been framed as loans that catered to people with blemished credit
records or little experience with debt.
There has been less attention paid to the concentration of these loans in neighborhoods that are largely black,
Hispanic, or both. This pattern, documented in federal loan records, holds true even when comparing white
middle-income or upper-income neighborhoods with similar minority ones.
Consider two neighborhoods in the Detroit area. One, located in the working-class suburb of Plymouth, is 97
percent white with a median income of $51,000 in 2000. To the east, a census tract in Detroit just inside Eight
Mile Road has a very similar median income, $49,000, but the population there is 97 percent black.
Last year, about 70 percent of the loans made in the Detroit neighborhood carried a high interest rate — defined
as 3 percentage points more than the yield on a comparable Treasury note — while in Plymouth just 17 percent
did.
Last year, blacks were 2.3 times more likely, and Hispanics twice as likely, to get high-cost loans as whites after
adjusting for loan amounts and the income of the borrowers, according to an analysis of loans reported under
the federal Home Mortgage Disclosure Act. (Asians are somewhat less likely than whites to take out high-cost
loans.)
Researchers and industry officials agree that there is probably no single explanation for the lending patterns,
though the history of banks' avoiding minority neighborhoods, the practice known as "redlining," is a good
place to start. (Experts have to resort to guesswork because the government does not require lenders to report
information about borrowers' credit scores, down payments and other details used in pricing loans.)
Lenders say that in general higher rates are justified to account for the bigger risks posed by borrowers who
have a poor record at paying bills on time and defaulting on debts. And a recent Federal Reserve study noted
that neighborhoods where people tend to have lower credit scores also tend to a greater concentration of highcost loans.
The study suggests that the concentration of high-cost loans is not caused by an area's racial makeup, though
there is a correlation, said Jay Brinkmann, vice president for research and economics at the Mortgage Bankers
Association.
But the Fed study also suggests that a big part of the reason may have to do with the lenders that minority
borrowers do business with. The biggest home lenders in minority neighborhoods are mortgage companies that
provide only subprime loans, not full-service banks that do a range of lending.
It may be that these borrowers do not have access to traditional banks, because there are no branches near them.
The Community Reinvestment Act, enacted 30 years ago, was intended to address redlining by forcing banks to
make loans in lower-income areas. But the law's provisions do not apply to banks in neighborhoods where they
have no branches.
"You could go into a middle-class area in Queens County that is white and there will be lots of banks on the
shopping street," said Alfred A. DelliBovi, president of the Federal Home Loan Bank of New York and a
deputy secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development in the first Bush administration. "If you
go to an area that is equal income and that is black, you won't see many."
Banks typically locate branches where they believe they will get the most deposits. A lower savings rate and a
distrust of banks stemming from a legacy of redlining may help explain why there are fewer branches in
minority neighborhoods, Mr. DelliBovi said.
A bigger reason may be that in recent years many subprime loans were not sought out by borrowers but actively
sold to them by brokers and telemarketers, said Calvin Bradford, a housing researcher and consultant. A
majority of the loans were refinance transactions allowing homeowners to take cash out of their appreciating
property or pay off credit card and other debt.
Lenders made the risky loans, then often sold them to Wall Street investors. Many borrowers appear to have
been swayed by brokers and lenders offering to look out for their best interests even when they had no
obligation to do so.
"If we turn the clock back 30 years ago, we had redlining," said Nicholas Retsinas, director of the Joint Center
for Housing Studies at Harvard University. "In the last few years, we have had the opposite — an overextension
of credit by lenders and an overextension by borrowers."
The country needs to find a balance, "a way to extend credit at a reasonable cost to people with impaired
credit," he said. The government, through programs like the Federal Housing Administration and the big
mortgage purchasers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, must play a critical role, Mr. Retsinas said, adding that he
worries that the efforts initiated so far are not robust enough.
"There are lots of people trying to do the right thing," he said. "But at this time I'm not very sanguine that we
will deal with this in a concerted manner."
DOCUMENT M
“From Riots to Renaissance: Bronzeville: The Black Metropolis”
from WTTW PBS Chicago
From the 1920s through the 1950s, Chicago's South Side was the center for African-American culture and
business. Known as "Bronzeville," the neighborhood was surprisingly small, but at its peak more than 300,000
lived in the narrow, seven-mile strip.
Chicago's black population stretched along 22nd to 63rd streets between State Street and Cottage Grove. But the
pulsing energy of Bronzeville was located at the crowded corners of 35th and State Street and 47th Street and
South Parkway Boulevard (later renamed Martin Luther King, Jr. Drive). At those intersections, people came to
see and be seen, shop, conduct business, dine and dance, and experience this bustling black metropolis. The
crowds reflected the diverse mix of people living in the black belt: young and old, poor and prosperous,
professionals and laborers.
Bronzeville was well known for its nightclubs and dance halls. The jazz, blues, and gospel music that developed
with the migration of Southern musicians attracted scores of diverse listeners and admirers. In the 1920s, the
Regal Theater opened its doors and hosted the country's most talented and glamorous black entertainers. The
community was also home to many prominent African-American artists and intellectuals, including dancer
Katherine Dunham, sociologist Horace Clayton, journalist and social activist Ida B. Wells, jazz man Louis
Armstrong, author Richard Wright, and poet Gwendolyn Brooks.
Bronzeville's businesses and community institutions – Provident Hospital, the Wabash YMCA, the George
Cleveland Hall Library, Parkway Community House, the Michigan Boulevard Garden Apartments, Binga Bank,
Overton Hygienic Company – were more than alternatives to racially restricted establishments downtown. They
were pillars of the community which helped to instill pride and contribute to the upward mobility of African
Americans.
But Bronzville fell into decline after the end of racially restricted housing. Upper and middle class families
moved away, and over-population and poverty overwhelmed the neighborhood. Today, black heritage tours
guide visitors to the nine architectural landmarks that remain from the historic community, while neighborhood
groups and business interests continue to work toward rebuilding the "city within a city" that was once a
national center of urban African-American commerce and art.
DOCUMENT N
“History of Bronzeville”
from Bronzeville Area Residents’ Commerce Council
A narrow stretch of land on Chicago's south side is often referred to as near south or as mid-south, but is more
commonly known as Bronzeville. With Cermak Road (22nd St.) on the north (the gateway), Washington Park
on the south, Federal Street to its west and Lake Michigan as its eastern border, this area is rich in history and
culture. Before it became Bronzeville its lush green boulevards and stately estates were home to some of
Chicago's barons of industry and entertainment, such as the Swifts and the Marx Brothers.
The Great Migration of the early 1900's from the South brought many African -Americans to the southside of
Chicago. Bronzeville became a vibrant community inhabited by musicians, businessmen, politicians,
entrepreneurs, and millionaires.
Tim Black is a Professor Emeritus of Social Science at the City Colleges of Chicago. Black has spent a lifetime
furthering the cause of social justice and is active in civic and community organizations. He has taught Black
history and sociology at several schools including Columbia College and Roosevelt University.
Bronzeville boasted the first black owned and operated bank and insurance company. This area also played host
to such jazz and blues greats as Louis Armstrong, and Nat "King" Cole. Other noteworthy residents include,
author Lorraine Hansberry, aviator Bessie Coleman, Dr. Daniel Hale Williams, Congressman William Dawson,
and local publishing magnate, the late John H. Johnson.
Following World War II, decades of economic disinvestment and social change, Bronzeville's luster diminished.
Businesses shut their doors and African Americans moved further south due to the elimination of restricted
housing covenants. This resulted in nearly one-third of Bronzeville's housing stock becoming vacant or
abandoned. But by the mid 1990's, signs of revitalization and interest emerged.
Douglas, located on the South Side of Chicago, Illinois is one of 77 well-defined Chicago community areas.
The neighborhood is named for Stephen A. Douglas a famous Illinois politician whose estate included a tract of
land given to the federal government. The Douglas tract later became the infamous Civil War Union prison
camp, Camp Douglas, located in what is now the eastern portion of the Douglas neighborhood. As part of the
Chicago 2016 Olympic bid, the Olympic Village is planned to be located on a 37-acre (150,000 m2) truck
parking lot south of McCormick Place that is mostly in the Douglas community area and partly in the Near
South Side.
The Douglas community area stretches from 26th Street South to Pershing Road along the Lake Shore including
parts of the Green Line along State Street and the Metra Electric and Amtrak passenger railroad tracks which
run parallel to Lake Shore Drive. The community area contains part of the famous neighborhood of Bronzeville,
a very famous center of African-American culture in the city.
Bronzeville is a neighborhood located in the Douglas and Grand Boulevard community areas on the South Side
of city of Chicago around the Illinois Institute of Technology and Illinois College of Optometry. It is accessible
via the Green, Red Lines of the Chicago Transit Authority or the Metra Electric District Main Line.
In the early 20th century, Bronzeville was known as the "Black Metropolis," one of the nation's most significant
landmarks of African-American urban history. Between 1910 and 1920, during the peak of the "Great
Migration," the population of the area increased dramatically when thousands of African-Americans fled the
oppression of the south and emigrated to Chicago in search of industrial jobs.
Douglas (Chicago, Illinois)
Victory Monument
In the early 20th century, Bronzeville was known as the "Black Metropolis," one of the nation's most significant
landmarks of African-American urban history. Between 1910 and 1920, during the peak of the "Great
Migration," the population of the area increased dramatically when thousands of African-Americans fled the
oppression of the south and emigrated to Chicago in search of industrial jobs.
Many famous people were associated with the development of the area including: Andrew "Rube" Foster,
founder of the Negro National Baseball League; Ida B. Wells, a civil rights activist, journalist and organizer of
the NAACP; Bessie Coleman, the first African-American woman pilot; Gwendolyn Brooks, famous author and
first African-American recipient of the Pulitzer Prize, actress Marla Gibbs, the legendary singers, Sam Cooke
and Lou Rawls, and Louis Armstrong, the legendary trumpet player and bandleader who performed at many of
the area's night clubs. The neighborhood contains the Chicago Landmark Black Metropolis-Bronzeville District.
Ida B. Wells - Barnett House
Ida B. Wells
Barnett House 47th Street was and remains the hub of the Bronzeville neighborhood and in recent years has
started to regain some of the former glory of years gone by. Gone though for good is the Regal Theater
(demolished in 1973) where many great performers took the stage.
During the 1950s and 1960s, a decision was made to replace the "slums" with several straight miles of high-rise
public housing projects, managed by the Chicago Housing Authority, essentially isolating and simultaneously
concentrating the poor black population in this section of the city. The largest complex was Robert Taylor
Homes.
Origins of the name
The name itself was first used in 1930, by James J. Gentry, a local theatre editor for the Chicago Bee
publication. It refers to the skin color of African-Americans, predominant in that area at that time. It is also
more accurate, because the skin tone of African-Americans is more brown than black. It has become common
usage throughout the decades.
DOCUMENT O
“Housing and Race in Chicago—A Raisin in the Sun”
from Chicago Public Library
Housing and Race in Chicago
Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun chronicles the efforts of an African American family to move out of
the ghetto to a better neighborhood. It draws upon a complicated and difficult part of Chicago’s history. The
play is set sometime between 1945 and 1959, and illustrates many of the conflicts that surrounded the questions
of race and housing during this period in Chicago. Although less well known than The Great Migration of
1910–1930, when large numbers of African Americans first moved to Chicago from the South, the period of
1940–1960 actually saw more African Americans arrive in the city, owing to such factors as the availability of
industrial jobs during World War II and the collapse of the Southern share-cropping system.
The housing market in Chicago was tight even before the end of World War II when veterans returned in need
of housing. African Americans were primarily limited to an area of Chicago known as the “Black Belt,” which
was located between 12th and 79th streets and Wentworth and Cottage Grove avenues. Approximately 60,000
blacks had moved from the South to Chicago during 1940–44 in search of jobs. In an effort to keep the newly
arriving African Americans out of their neighborhoods, whites within a residential block formed “restrictive
covenants,” legally binding contracts that specified a house’s owner could not rent or sell to black people. Such
covenants, by restricting African Americans to the Black Belt, increased overcrowding within this area during
the war. When overcrowding continued into the post-war years as more blacks moved north to Chicago, many
families would often live in one apartment.
Such overcrowding, while difficult in itself, also contributed to generally poor housing conditions for black
families. Because there were so many people living in this one area, demand far exceeded supply, and landlords
would divide apartments into tiny units called “kitchenettes” and charge exorbitant rents. These apartments
often had no bathrooms, with all the occupants of a floor having to share a single hall unit. Buildings sometimes
lacked such basic amenities as proper heating. Residents used kerosene lamps instead, and their improvised
stoves often overheated and caused fires. The partitions used to divide the apartments were flammable as well,
adding to the hazardous conditions. Approximately 751 fires occurred in one year in the Black Belt, many of
them fatal. Despite building codes, landlords were rarely penalized for owning slum housing and the few
landlords who were fined found it was far more profitable to pay the usually small fine than to maintain their
buildings. These conditions of ramshackle and dangerous housing, neglect and indifference from city officials
and poor sanitation resulted in infestation by rats. This is illustrated in A Raisin in the Sun when Travis
Younger and his friends kill a rat as “big as a cat.” Rats reportedly attacked sleeping children, sometimes
maiming and even killing them. Tuberculosis and other diseases spread; the infant mortality and overall death
rates were higher in the Black Belt than in the rest of Chicago.
After the war there was an outward migration from the Black Belt into surrounding neighborhoods. In 1948, the
Supreme Court declared restrictive covenants unconstitutional. A predominantly white housing boom on the
fringes of the city and in the suburbs meant more available housing in the city. An increasing number of African
Americans were moving into the middle class and were finally able to get out of the slums—some were able to
move to better neighborhoods and enjoy a far better quality of life. In other cases, however, the migration of
African Americans only amounted to an expansion of the slums they were trying to escape. Unscrupulous real
estate speculators played a large role when African Americans sought to move into better, primarily white
neighborhoods. In order to increase their profit margin, speculators would play on the white people’s fears of
black neighbors. Working-class whites were especially vulnerable to such practices. Their homes often were
their only asset and owners feared declining property values. Practices known as “block busting,” in which
speculators tried to convince working-class whites that their neighborhoods were going to deteriorate owing to
an influx of African Americans, took advantage of such fears. Thus, when the speculators offered cash for a
house, the white owners often accepted less than the house’s actual value on the assumption that their houses
would be worth even less later.
Taking advantage of patently racist practices by banks such as “red-lining,” speculators were able to make a
handsome profit off of the incoming African Americans, sometimes doubling their money. Banks would draw a
red line around an “undesirable” neighborhood and deny mortgages to the new African American residents. As
a result, although African Americans fought housing discrimination by protesting and filing lawsuits, the first
African American families seeking to move into these areas would have no choice but to work with the
speculators on extremely disadvantageous terms. They could acquire houses for a low down payment, but the
speculators would demand an astronomically high monthly payment. Since the black families would also have
to sign an installment contract that left the title to the house in the speculator’s possession, a family could be
evicted for the smallest violation of the housing agreement. Desperate to make the high payments, African
American families resorted to the practice of taking in large numbers of boarders. This recreated the condition
of too many occupants in too little space. Burdened with the monthly payment to the speculators, they would
not have the money to keep up the property they had sought so desperately and the neighborhood would
deteriorate. Additionally, black neighborhoods did not receive the same quality of city services; and so the area
that had originally looked like the promised land to African Americans became another slum.
Integration of neighborhoods was an extremely charged affair. Riots by white mobs were not uncommon. Most
Chicagoans, however, had no idea of the situation’s volatility. For much of the 1940s the major newspapers, at
the request of the Chicago Commission on Human Relations, would simply not report the occurrence of these
riots. The white families who lived along the border of the “Black Belt,” and could not afford to move formed
neighborhood associations to let blacks know that they were not welcome. In A Raisin in the Sun, Karl Lindner,
of the Clybourne Park Improvement Association, visits the Younger family and states, “Negro families are
happier when they live in their own communities.” Mr. Lindner offers to buy the property back from the
Younger family for more than they paid. More often, efforts to keep African Americans out were not so gentle.
Sometimes, the first African American family to move into a white area would require police escorts in order to
move around the neighborhood. They suffered constant verbal abuse and the threat of physical violence. Their
property was damaged by hurled bricks and explosives were thrown through their windows. African Americans
endured danger and ostracism in the neighborhoods where they were simply seeking a decent place to live.
DOCUMENT P
“Remembering Hansberry v. Lee”
By Alison Shaw
Published on UNC-Chapel Hill’s “Publishing the Long Civil Rights Movement”
On November 12, 1940—72 years ago today—the Supreme Court in Hansberry v. Lee invalidated a racial
covenant, ruling in favor of an African American man who bought a house in a formerly whites-only
neighborhood.
It had been twenty-three years since the Supreme Court had, in Buchanan v. Warley, invalidated a Louisville,
Kentucky, ordinance prohibiting the sale of property to African Americans. But, in the intervening decades,
white supremacists had used racially restrictive covenants to separate African American and white
neighborhoods. The Supreme Court’s refusal in 1926 to hear the case Corrigan v. Buckley had made possible
the continued use of such covenants to promote housing discrimination.
Hansberry v. Lee resulted from a 1937 purchase of property by Carl Hansberry, who was a prominent African
American. A white woman, Anna Lee, who was one of many signatories of a restrictive covenant by the
property owners’ association not to sell lots to African Americans, sued for $100,000. Lee won her case in
circuit court and in the Supreme Court of Illinois, and eventually the case landed in the Supreme Court of the
United States.
Lee claimed that more than five hundred land owners had signed the agreement, which stated that it would be
ineffective unless signed by 95 percent of the owners. She claimed that Hansberry had bought and occupied the
land despite knowledge of the covenant. Hansberry’s lawyer, Earl Dickerson, argued that the required
percentage of residents had not signed the agreement, thus voiding the contract.
Ultimately, the justices reversed the Supreme Court of Illinois’ decision on the basis of the Fourteenth
Amendment’s due process rights, arguing that it was unfair to allow the 54 percent of the neighborhood
landowners who had signed the covenant to represent the 46 percent who had not. The decision read, in part.
It is one thing to say that some members of a class may represent other members in a litigation where the whole
and common interest of the class in the litigation is either to assert a common right or to challenge an asserted
obligation. . . . It is quite another to hold that all those who are free alternatively either to assert rights or to
challenge them are of a single class, so that any group merely because it is of the class so constituted, may be
deemed adequately to represent any others of the class in litigating their interests in either alternative. Such a
selection of representatives for purposes of litigation, whose substantial interest are not necessarily or even
probably the same as those whom they are deemed to represent, does not afford that protection to absent parties
which due process requires.. . .
[W]e think that the representation in this case no more satisfies the requirements of due process than a trial by a
judicial officer who is in such situation that he may have an interest in the outcome of the litigation in conflict
with that of the litigants.
Although the justices’ ruling was based on a legal technicality and did not actually void restrictive covenants,
the decision did represent a significant milestone in the fight against housing discrimination, and in fact opened
up some areas formerly restricted from African American ownership. It would take many more years of legal
wrangling before racially restrictive covenants would finally be declared unconstitutional and housing
opportunity would finally begin to be equalized (see, for example, the 1948 case Shelley v. Kraemer and the
1968 Fair Housing Act), but it was a step in the right direction.
“Housing Segregation in 1950s—South Side Chicago”
from Baltimore Public Schools A Raisin in the Sun unit
Already experiencing a population boom after Reconstruction, Chicago was a popular destination for African
Americans moving from the South to the North in the early 20th century. In the twenty years from 1890 to 1910,
Chicago’s African-American population increased from 15,000 to approximately 40,000 due to the Great
Migration. The majority of African-American Chicago residents settled in the South Side neighborhood and,
due to discriminatory real estate practices and threats of violence in white neighborhoods, one almost entirely
black section of the South Side came to be referred to as the Black Belt. By the mid-20th century, three-quarters
of
Chicago’s African-American population lived in this area. As new African-American inhabitants moved in, the
descendents of prior, mostly Irish, immigrants moved out to the suburbs or relocated to other parts of the city.
Following the Great Depression, new housing structures were rapidly added in Chicago. Most of
these were built on the South Side, and many were quite small and overcrowded. These generally included
bungalows (small, generally one floor houses), studio apartments, and kitchenette buildings that featured units
such as A Raisin in the Sun’s apartment setting. These spaces offered little access to natural sunlight and
required the residents on a floor to share a single bathroom. In the late 1940s, the Chicago Housing Authority
began to build highrise public housing units on the South Side after white residents objected to an earlier
proposal to add the units in less congested parts of the city.
For much of the 20th century, the neighborhood was very racially segregated. During the 1920s and Lorraine
Hansberry’s childhood in the 1930s, white home owners banded together to create racially restrictive housing
covenants, which stated that residents much be of a particular race in order to live in that neighborhood. The
Hansberry family faced one of these covenants in 1938 when they moved into Washington Park, a white section
of the South Side. Due to the existing covenant agreed to by the Woodlawn Property Owners Association, a
state court ordered the Hansberrys to vacate. When they refused, a signatory of the covenant, Anna Lee, sued
Lorraine’s father, Carl Hansberry, and Harry H. Pace, an African-American lawyer who had recently purchased
a building nearby. A circuit court ruled against Hansberry and Pace, but they pursued their case to the United
States Supreme Court, which ruled in Hansberry’s favor on a legal technicality, saying that the number of
signatories the covenant required to make it valid had not been met. The United States Supreme Court would
not rule racially restrictive covenants unconstitutional until 1948. However, even this did not alleviate the
challenges African Americans faced in trying to find affordable housing in Chicago as white neighborhood
associations discouraged their members from selling to black families. The struggles faced by her family and
other African Americans in Chicago had profound impact on Lorraine Hansberry, and clearly inspired her to
write A Raisin in the Sun.