Urban Walk - Seattle Central District

Meet shortly before 6pm, geared up and ready to walk,  in the parking area of Dr Jose Rizal Park, 1007 12th Ave South, just west of the PacMed Beacon Hill Center on north Beacon Hill.  Please visit King County Metro Trip Planner for directions.

This up and down night walk criss-crosses East Seattle to follow the southern boundary of a large "redlined" district noted in a Kroll 1936 real estate map. We head south through Beacon Hill then east at S McClellan to return back via  the the I-90 Trail to Jimi Hendrix Park and the I-90 Trail along I-90. We'll look for enduring evidence of 19th and 20th century segregation in our fair city.

March 2013, Seattle Post-Intelligencer:   "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."

The University of Washington Seattle Civil Rights Labor History project provides insights to our history of racial segregation:

 http://depts.washington.edu/civilr/segregated.htm