FOREWORD

QUIN’NITA COBBINS-MODICA

With each passing year, with fresh new eyes, I assign The Forging of a Black Community in my courses to a new generation of students. As the definitive study of African American life in Seattle, it is a powerful testament to the many black men and women who dared to reconstitute their lives, families, and institutions in the far western corner of the nation. By situating the long black freedom struggle within a local and western context—an analysis too often missing from textbooks—students engage in an expansive interpretation of black Americans’ contributions to the political, economic, and cultural fabric of the nation. From the pioneering settlers to black power activists, students are captivated by their willful determination and how the quest to pursue their citizenship, freedom, and humanity in a place that touted itself as politically and racially “liberal” both paralleled and diverged from the dominant urban and civil rights narratives. Ultimately, they gain a deeper awareness of the profound challenges and various acts of resistance carried out by ordinary people to realize their visions of a representative democracy, thereby finding inspiration to become better-informed leaders, citizens, voters, and humanitarians.

Quintard Taylor’s study on black Seattle is just as resonant now as it was when it first appeared thirty years ago. Tracing the history of the largest black community in the Pacific Northwest, this book serves as a timely reminder that the experiences of black Seattleites were not divorced from or exceptional to the national struggles and public discourse around racial inequality but were rather integral to these developments. As evidenced by the historic summer protests of 2020 where a multiracial coalition of activists occupied several blocks of the Capitol Hill neighborhood, including the Seattle Police Department’s East Precinct, the Emerald City mirrored the current political, cultural, and social trends of cities across the nation after the police murder of George Floyd. The protests to demand police reform and accountability plunged the city into the national spotlight, making it the epicenter of a reckoning between progressive activists and law enforcement led by the city’s first black woman police chief. Despite the visible representation of black leadership (made possible by decades of black organizing power) and the long-held traditions of racial tolerance, the city could no longer mitigate systemic racial problems with tokenism and the “illusion of inclusion” (282).

While Seattle represented the intrinsic possibilities of a growing multiracial population to ensure freedom and fairness for all the city’s diverse residents, this reintroduction of Taylor’s work also speaks to contemporary debates over history and the politics of public memory. National discussions on the salience of institutional racism, stemming from the 2015 Charleston Massacre and the New York Times’ publication of the 1619 Project, are driving college campuses, local school boards, and city governing boards to reevaluate the nation’s complicated past. To date, hundreds of controversial Confederate symbols and monuments have been torn down or removed, and buildings have been renamed. The push to decolonize history education by integrating culturally responsive and racially diverse curricula into the schools engendered swift opposition by conservative lawmakers. Many have introduced troubling legislative proposals in nearly half of the states across the country to suppress the teaching of intellectually honest histories on the role of racism in the nation. The Forging of a Black Community challenges this propagation of American and western mythology that minimizes or altogether erases the lived experiences of African Americans and, I hope, will foster a greater understanding of the historic and ongoing battles they continue to face to eradicate institutional barriers that hinder racial progress.

In this masterful and meticulously researched account spanning a century, Taylor weaves together a rich cultural legacy of a people, separated from the most populous black sections of the nation, who fashioned a vibrant community with scarce resources. We learn that most African Americans perceived the West to be an egalitarian place that offered uninhibited freedoms, liberties, and opportunities for a better life than could be found in other parts of the country. As Taylor discovers, Seattle, and more broadly the Pacific Northwest, presented a paradox to those aspirations that remains as true today as it was when the first black settlers arrived in the late nineteenth century. That is, black Seattleites had to confront the caustic reality of racial prejudice and discrimination against the backdrop of “the public endorsement of equality” (4). While facing the harsh adversities of the urban environment, this community, which became synonymous with the Central District, formed a distinct character due to its remote location, a slow but steady migration, the paucity of manufacturing jobs, and more significantly the absence of a ghetto. But after World War II, it began to resemble the many characteristics and urban ills shaping other metropolises.

Throughout the twentieth century, black Seattleites remained vigilant in safeguarding their political and social freedoms and waged campaigns to address the intractable problems impeding their economic and political mobility. Taylor demonstrates how African Americans worked alongside Asian Americans, who comprised the largest nonwhite racial majority during the prewar period, in challenging trenchant housing and employment discrimination while remaining economic competitors. His careful examination of these moments of coalition building and tensions between black and Asian American residents not only complicates the white-black binary but illuminates how racially minoritized groups experience the impacts of white supremacy differently. The prominence of interracial cooperation, however, still remains paramount to the future of communities of color in the region, especially with the present-day rise of violent attacks against black as well as Asian American residents. The Forging of a Black Community offers lessons on how these two communities came together in solidarity and organized around common interests to bring about social and systemic changes. Taylor notes that “the history of Seattle illustrates both what can be accomplished when the interaction [among various groups of color] proceeds and the disastrous consequences when it does not” (280). Or, in the emphatic words of Fannie Lou Hamer, “Nobody’s free until everybody is free.”

More importantly, Taylor’s study offers us a cultural lens into the social, kinship, and religious traditions that shaped a new urban culture in Seattle. As a community biography, we grow an appreciation of the ways that African Americans transported their cultural norms, attitudes, and practices to their new homes and their contributions to the community-building process. In each historical period, black Seattleites created spiritual and secular institutions, such as churches, organizations, businesses, mutual aid societies, and fraternal orders. They also engaged in leisure and pastime activities through sports, music, and parties. These forms of communal engagement created a shared sense of identity and belonging and were critical to the community’s survival in a place that remained, according to Taylor, “deeply ambivalent about its commitment to racial equality” (10). This raised tangible questions about the extent to which Seattle’s black residents became acculturated or assimilated into western society. Just how much of their southern or eastern cultural heritage were retained through these institutions and cultural markers can be seen through their music. While not generally explored, Taylor sheds light on the presence of black music in Seattle, primarily the southern influences of jazz and blues, that emanated from the Central District. Renowned artists such as Quincy Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Earnestine Anderson, and others came of age in this black enclave and vastly contributed to the genres of jazz, soul, rhythm and blues, and rock ’n’ roll. Seattle’s black music scene also attracted the likes of Duke Ellington, Ray Charles, and Billie Holiday. The Forging of a Black Community invites a much more comprehensive study of Seattle’s rich black music culture, including gospel music and the growth of hip-hop, the latter of which has recently been studied by historian Daudi Abe.

Inasmuch as Taylor presents us with a reinterpretation and expansive analysis of black life in a western city, he also challenges the notion of a singular urban African American experience. The social stratification of the Central District both connected and divided black residents along the lines of class, gender, lineage, educational status, political affiliation, and religious orientation. These differences and intra-racial conflicts can be traced throughout the twentieth century as diverse groups of African Americans sought to claim legitimacy in representing black Seattle. Perhaps nowhere is this more apparent than the post–World War II period. The Second World War generated the largest internal migration of African Americans from the South who brought with them a panoply of cultural styles, political attitudes, leadership abilities, talents, and skills, thereby upsetting social relations and norms that the black pioneer generation had grown accustomed to. Seattle would be forever changed to the extent that these southern activists strengthened the community’s organizations and institutions and forcefully contested the power structure that kept blacks economically and politically deprived. Subsequently, they propelled a civil rights movement that largely focused on issues of employment, housing, and school segregation. Taylor reveals that these campaigns developed later in the 1960s and did not necessarily translate into social cohesion. When a self-proclaimed middle-class civil rights group, known as the Central Area Civil Rights Committee (CACRC), emerged to become the singular voice for black Seattleites, it caused a rift in the community. While they pushed for school integration and the closing of community schools, many black parents advocated for desegregated schools and community control over their children’s learning. The founding of the Seattle Black Panther Party in 1968, the first chapter established outside of California, further indicated the political and generational splintering of ideas, power, and directions for the community. Younger activists challenged the legitimacy of this new leadership class and declared an immediate demand for black freedom, an end to police abuse, and community control of their own destiny. Detailing these complexities and broadening the periodization to encompass the civil rights struggle in an urban and western locality, Taylor helps us to better understand one of the most consequential periods in U.S. history.

Notwithstanding, the book’s greatest legacy lies in its enduring impact on the field of western and African American history. Newer generations of scholars, including myself, use Forging of a Black Community as a model to examine western black experiences through a diversity of approaches and perspectives, often extending our analyses into the post–civil rights period. My work on the history of African American women’s activism, politics, and leadership in Seattle stems directly from Taylor’s body of scholarship. While the book does not go far enough in analyzing gender and power relations that were ever present and negotiated in black communities and urban centers, it is evident that black women, collectively and individually, played a significant role in the political, economic, and civil rights struggle of the twentieth century and were a fundamental asset to the development of urban black communities. Taylor introduced formidable pioneers such as Susie Revels Cayton, the daughter of the first black U.S. senator who helped establish Seattle’s first African American newspaper and served as the associate editor. We also learn about a daring beautician and early civil rights activist, Letitia A. Graves, who served as the founding president of the Seattle branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). As the region witnesses a rising number of black women assuming positions in government, business, and politics, exploring the gendered dynamics of Seattle’s black community in addition to race and class can provide further insights into not just how a small community evolved and sustained itself but how social change takes place.

The Central District has dramatically transformed since Forging of a Black Community appeared in 1994. Street signs, parks, buildings, and murals bearing the names and faces of prominent black activists who made a lasting imprint in the city are juxtaposed to expensive high rises, coffee shops, juice bars, and cannabis dispensaries—the hallmark signs of gentrification. For the first time in thirty years, white residents have surpassed the number of African Americans who had historically been restricted to the Central District. A combination of external market forces, redevelopment, and high costs of living have pushed out and displaced a major segment of the black population, with many choosing to sell their homes at appreciated market value in search of more affordable housing in the suburbs of King County. While the populations of Latino/a, Asian, and whites have skyrocketed in the city since the 2010s, the number of African Americans has decreased from 10 percent of the total population in the 1980s and 1990s to less than 7 percent. Today, Bryn Mawr-Skyway, just about twelve miles southeast of the Central District, contains the largest strata of African American residents. Consequently, a once visible and spatially defined core of the black community has rapidly vanished.

Despite the uncertain future of black Seattle, the Central District remains a source of hope for many African Americans as they continue to forge new communal bonds in the twenty-first century and reimagine the very idea of “community”—one that is not necessarily connected by skin color but by history and heritage. Through the Africatown Community Land Trust, an initiative that creates commercial space and affordable housing for black residents to thrive, black community members are reclaiming the Central District to ensure African Americans remain an important part of Seattle’s future. Additionally, the Northwest African American History Museum, the black press, churches, and cultural festivities and celebrations continue to operate and serve the needs of African Americans while also accounting for the demographic changes and significant decline of black residents and businesses.

The Forging of a Black Community, therefore, should serve as essential reading for all of those who seek true justice, freedom, and equity. As Taylor implores present and future generations, “It is incumbent on all Seattleites who believe in a just and equitable society to ensure that unfair economic and social conditions that restrained black lives in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries do not prevail in the twenty-first century” (282). The struggle to materialize this reality lives on.