Tag Archives: black history

City backs off landmarks nomination for former Phillis Wheatley YWCA site, ‘a central hub’ in Seattle’s Black history

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The building as it looks today

If 21st Ave’s old Phillis Wheatley YWCA is going to become a protected landmark in recognition of its place in the history of Black Seattle, someone else is going to need to speak up for the property set for demolition to make way for a new housing development.

The City of Seattle quietly withdrew its request to nominate the 108-year-old house for landmarks protections earlier this month ending a rare City Hall-backed foray to win protections for a property.

Edward Lee, director of communications for the Department of Neighborhoods, told CHS only that the application had been “formally withdrawn” and did not provide reasons for the reversal. The property most recently used as transitional housing but lined up to be demolished and redeveloped as a new 49-unit apartment building was scheduled for a hearing on the possible protections earlier this month.

The city had said the 21st Ave property just off E Madison was worthy of landmarks status as “a pivotal location in Seattle’s African American heritage.” It is unusual for the city to pursue landmarks nominations, a process it typically leaves to community groups, developers, or property owners. Continue reading →

The Phillis Wheatley YWCA — How city’s effort to protect ‘a central hub’ in Seattle’s Black history could block affordable housing project

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The building as it looks today

By Ayla Nye/UW News Lab

With an affordable housing project set to demolish the building, a December landmarks board hearing could determine the future of a 21st Ave property the city calls “a pivotal location in Seattle’s African American heritage.”

The Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections has taken the unusual step of delaying the development of a 49-unit apartment building just off E Madison to determine if the 108-year-old building should be protected on the grounds that the property holds historical and cultural significance, according to the SDCI.

The Madison Inn Work Release, formerly known as the Phillis Wheatley YWCA building, is up for a landmark nomination, a designation that could protect the building from demolition and many types of construction.

Stephanie Johnson-Toliver, president of the Black Heritage Society of Washington State, voiced her concern about the planned building demolition.

Johnson-Toliver is a fourth generation Seattleite. Her family moved to Seattle in 1913 and she has owned her house in the Central District for nearly 30 years. In 1945, her mother was a member of the Phillis Wheatley YWCA Girls Reserve.

“The Phillis Wheatley was created to meet the needs of Black women and children,” Johnson-Toliver said. “They helped shape young women’s opinions and attitudes and we’re socially uplifting them with education and recreation,” she said.

“Established from the ‘Culture Club’ in 1919, this site has been a central hub for black intellectual life, community gathering, black social justice and legal defense groups,” the nomination prepared for the city reads. “It initially functioned as a meeting point and community center, significantly contributing to the social fabric of Seattle’s African American community.”

Ben Maritz is the current owner of the Madison Inn property and the founder of Great Expectations, an affordable housing developer. Maritz has been developing the property since he bought it in July of 2020.

“We went through a whole process, including design review, and received the master use permit, I think, over a year ago,” Maritz said. Continue reading →

CHS Classic | The Cayton-Revels House: a landmark to Seattle’s Black history on 14th Ave E

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Susie Revels Cayton and Horace Cayton Sr. with family in 1904 (Vivian G. Harsh Research Collection of Afro-American History and Literature/Chicago Public Library)

Take a walk this Black History Month to visit Capitol Hill’s Cayton-Revels House.

Built in 1902, the Queen Anne Victorian-style house was once the home of Horace Roscoe Cayton, publisher of Seattle Black-owned newspaper the Seattle Republican, and his wife and associate editor Susie Sumner Revels Cayton. The 2021 landmark designation was a significant and necessary acknowledgement of Seattle’s Black history.

CHS reported here on the efforts of the 14th and Mercer structure’s owners to achieve landmark status and protections for the 1902-built house, honor the Cayton-Revels family, and recognize the legacy of the racial covenants that shaped Capitol Hill. According to the landmarks nomination, “the Caytons were one of only three Black American families living in today’s definition of Capitol Hill​ before racial restrictive covenants barred non-white residents in 1927.”

The news business
The Seattle Republican was one of the most widely-read newspapers in the region at that time. In print from 1894 to 1913, the Republican appealed to national and local audiences of all races, but primarily focused on local politics and the Black experience. Horace Cayton, born a slave on a Mississippi cotton plantation and educated at Alcorn University, made his way to the Pacific Northwest in pursuit of greater freedoms in the frontier-era West. As Seattle changed from a frontier town to a growing city with increasingly racist power structures and property covenants, Black families were pushed into the Central District, where the Cayton-Revels eventually relocated.

“The Caytons were one of the most well-known Black American families in Seattle at the turn of the 20th century because of their business and political involvements,” said Taha Ebrahimi, a Capitol Hill resident who researched and wrote the 142-page landmark proposal for the Cayton-Revels house. Continue reading →

After year-long restoration, Soul Pole sculpture makes its return to the Douglass-Truth library

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(Image: SPL)

A symbol of “400 years of African American history and the struggle for justice in the United States” will rise again in the Central District.

Tuesday, the return of the “Soul Pole” to the lawn outside the Douglass-Truth Branch of the Seattle Public Library at 23rd and Yesler will be marked with a press conference featuring Mayor Bruce Harrell and Tom Fay, Chief Librarian of The Seattle Public Library.

A year ago, the pole was taken down from where it had stood for nearly 50 years for a much needed restoration of the 21-foot wooden sculpture.

The library contracted with Artech Fine Art Services to manage the project working with Corine Landrieu, “one of the Northwest’s top conservators.” Continue reading →

Council approves resolution supporting New Hope Community Development Institute effort to create affordable housing, condemn redlining history in the Central District

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The Seattle City Council, urged on by District 3 representative Kshama Sawant’s office, passed a resolution Monday pledging support for a Central District affordable housing project that is hoped to right a wrong in the city’s past actions against Black property owners in the neighborhood.

Monday, the council voted 8-0 in favor of the resolution calling for support for funding for the New Hope Community Development Institute, the group working to develop new housing near 21st and Fir’s New Hope Missionary Baptist Church.

Rev. Dr. Robert Jeffrey Sr.’s op-ed in the Seattle Times documents the city’s “urban renewal project” and redlining in the 1960s that ripped away property from the church: Continue reading →

The Cayton-Revels House: a landmark to Seattle’s Black history on 14th Ave E — UPDATE

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(Source: Seattle Landmark Nomination: THE CAYTON-REVELS HOUSE)

Capitol Hill’s historic Cayton-Revels House is up for nomination for landmark designation Wednesday afternoon with the City of Seattle. Built in 1902, the Queen Anne Victorian-style house was once the home of Horace Roscoe Cayton, publisher of Seattle Black-owned newspaper the Seattle Republican, and his wife and associate editor Susie Sumner Revels Cayton. Community members and the home’s current owners say the landmark designation would be a significant and necessary acknowledgement of Seattle’s Black history.

CHS reported here on the efforts of the 14th and Mercer structure’s owners to achieve landmark status and protections for the 1902-built house, honor the Cayton-Revels family, and recognize the legacy of the racial covenants that shaped Capitol Hill. According to the landmarks nomination, “the Caytons were one of only three Black American families living in today’s definition of Capitol Hill​ before racial restrictive covenants barred non-white residents in 1927.”

You can learn more about the meeting and how to provide public comment here.

UPDATE: The board voted unanimously for the house to move on to the designation phase. The big vote will take place in early April.

The Seattle Republican was one of the most widely-read newspapers in the region at that time. In print from 1894 to 1913, the Republican appealed to national and local audiences of all races, but primarily focused on local politics and the Black experience. Horace Cayton, born a slave on a Mississippi cotton plantation and educated at Alcorn University, made his way to the Pacific Northwest in pursuit of greater freedoms in the frontier-era West. As Seattle changed from a frontier town to a growing city with increasingly racist power structures and property covenants, Black families were pushed into the Central District, where the Cayton-Revels eventually relocated.

“The Caytons were one of the most well-known Black American families in Seattle at the turn of the 20th century because of their business and political involvements,” said Taha Ebrahimi, a Capitol Hill resident who researched and wrote the 142-page landmark proposal for the Cayton-Revels house. Continue reading →

A monument of Capitol Hill’s restricted Black history, Cayton-Revels House considered for landmarks protection

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Susie Revels Cayton

Capitol Hill’s Cayton-Revels House, once home to Susie Revels Cayton, daughter to the first U.S. Senator of African descent and a writer, newspaper editor and leader in Seattle’s black community, will be considered for official landmarks protections later this month.

The 1902-built 14th and Thomas Mercer structure now used as a rental triplex is marked as both a historical residence of an important Black family in Seattle history and a manifestation of structural racism.

“Horace Roscoe Cayton, his wife Susie Sumner Revels Cayton, and their family lived at 518 14th 1​ Avenue East from 1902 ​to 1909,” the nomination proposal reads. “The Caytons were one of only three Black American families living in today’s definition of Capitol Hill​ before racial restrictive covenants barred non-white residents in 1927.​”

CHS reported here on the restrictive covenants of the era that shaped the modern Capitol Hill and Central District neighborhoods. Continue reading →

Capitol Hill Historical Society: 109 years ago, Seattle racists tried to stop their wedding so they went to Capitol Hill

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FAME Church

First African Methodist Episcopalian Church, Seattle, 2017 (Image: Josh Holland with permission to CHS)

On this day in 1911, Ed Foster and Clara Miller made headlines in Seattle because one was white and one was black, and they dared to marry on Capitol Hill.

FOSTER: Ed Foster and his siblings were the first literate generation in their family. His handwriting was still bad enough that transcriptions of the wedding records, including contemporary sources, mistakenly name him C. D. Foster. He was born in 1879 in Marion, Alabama, on the farm worked by his parents and grandparents. Marion is in the Black Belt of Alabama, known for its dark, rich soil and the Black slave labor that sowed cotton in it. About sixty miles east of Marion is Montgomery, the first capital of the Confederacy. After the Union defeated them, Ed’s grandfather was paid to work land for the first time in his life. The Fosters were a Black family. Ed Foster was the son of freed slaves. The Fosters were lucky to be in Perry County, the most progressive county in Alabama after the Civil War. That meant they had the chance to improve their futures. Ed and his older siblings Joe and May attended Lincoln Normal School, founded by freed slaves to lift up their children through education. But Perry County was still not a Utopia. As one scholar put it,

“Only a handful of people were hanged, maimed, shot, whipped, or killed on account of prejudice between 1865 and 1874 [in Perry County]”. Bertis English, “A Black Belt Anomaly”. Alabama Review, 2009.

Contrast those deaths to the chaos sowed by the nascent Ku Klux Klan across the rest of Alabama, and Perry County was a relative paradise. His family was trapped in slavery in the South for generations. Freed, and given a basic education, Ed and his siblings made their way to Puget Sound by 1910. Seattle was in national headlines in the lead up to and execution of the Alaska Yukon Pacific Exposition in 1909, a possible explanation for their long move. They might have been drawn by a special edition of the Black newspaper Seattle Republican that circulated from 1907 to 1909. It profiled the success of Black citizens with images of houses, descriptions of businesses, and accounts of farms of 10s or 100s of acres. Continue reading →

Black Lives Matter at School: A lesson in ‘Teaching for Black Lives’

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Amid Seattle’s snowy start to February, a start to Black History Month was not lost. The Black Lives Matter at School movement, fostered by Garfield High School teacher and education activist Jesse Hagopian, grew into a national effort along with local events and rallies.

Last fall as the school year began, CHS spoke with Hagopian about Black Lives Matter at School and Teaching for Black Lives, a book for educators and students with lessons meant to challenge and upend systemic racism in the classroom. Here is what we learned.

A lesson in ‘Teaching for Black Lives’ from Garfield High
By Carolyn Bick for CHS

In the one high school honors class Jesse Hagopian was in, his mostly white peers laughed at him when he stumbled over some words as he read aloud to the rest of the class.

“Being one of the only students of color in the classroom, that pretty much shut down my attention or will to participate in that class,” Hagopian recalled. “School was a challenge to me. I never thought I’d ever be a teacher. I wanted to get away from school.” Continue reading →

Liberty Bank Building: vision of equitable development, great views of the CD

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A ceremony to celebrate a financial boost to its vision of inclusive development also provided en opportunity for an early tour of the nearly completed Liberty Bank Building Monday in the Central District.

“I’m a product of the Bronx, New York. Raised in Baltimore. Used to having a lot of diversity in our lives. Coming to the Pacific Northwest, I was stunned and a little lonely for a while,” Regina Glenn said Monday inside the under construction building. “Coming to this project it reminds me of that pulling together that we had.” Continue reading →