yeloson | Sundown in Seattle

Talking with

benlehman and doing a quick google search, I found a lot of history on Seattle I wasn't aware of the particulars.

James Gregory

Seattle thinks of itself as a liberal city, one that has a reasonable record of racial integration. But we are also a city with a short memory. One of the things we have been forgetting is that only a few decades ago, Seattle was a sharply segregated city. It was a city that kept non-whites out of most jobs and most neighborhoods, even out of stores, restaurants, hotels and hospitals.

....

What we have uncovered surprises many Seattleites, including some who should remember but prefer to forget. Until the late 1960s, Seattle north of the ship canal was a "sundown" zone. That meant that virtually no people of color lived there and it also meant that African Americans were expected to be out of the area when the workday ended. After dark, a black man in particular was likely to be stopped by the police, questioned about his business and informed that he had better not be seen in the neighborhood again.

North Seattle was not alone. Queen Anne, Magnolia and West Seattle also were sundown zones. The suburbs were even worse. Shoreline, Lake Forest Park, Bothell, Bellevue, Burien, even White Center, vigorously and explicitly excluded people of color. But the ship canal was a special kind of boundary, an unmistakable dividing line between the part of Seattle where anyone might live and the part of Seattle that was off-limits to those whose skin was not white.

I also ended up unearthing specific places and laws regarding land ownership as well as a map of Sundown Towns in the US. And another book I'll have to get Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism.

Also, I need to read this whole thing, but I'm going to recommend it just from skimming it: After Sundown: part 7 in a series about Eliminationism.