Lake City=Sunset Town

Reflecting on MLK day: Arb and I were visitng with Peter Arthur this past weekend, going over an old map of Seattle, when he mentioned that the city north of the Ship Canal was a “Sunset Town,” as in closed off to minorities after the sun goes down. It was a bit of a shock, given Seattle’s reputation as a progressive city. Dave Neiwert goes on further:

Here in Seattle, University of Washington history professor James Gregory has begun digging through the records, and we at least are beginning to get a little better glimpse of our true historical selves:

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.

... 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.

Until the early 1950s, North Seattle was also home to Coon Chicken Inn, which for almost 20 years stood as a beacon of bigotry on Lake City Way Northeast. Whites of a certain disposition made it a hugely popular restaurant and no one could drive along Lake City Way without noticing the massive grotesque "coon" head and the big-lipped mouth that served as the restaurant's front door.”

I did some quick digging, and found out that the CCI was located at the current site of Ying’s Drive In on LCW, which Arb and I pass every day going home. Here’s a postcard image, look how huge these restaurants are:

Ugh. Does this history have anything to do with why the North End is not more integrated? There is still some kind of de facto segregation operating in Seattle, though I think the forces of gentrification are changing that, perhaps for the worse. We’re becoming a Latte city.

Arb and I are struggling with this as we plan our family. We would like to move south, closer to friends and with cheaper housing costs, but lacking in quality public schools, particularly at the secondary level. Is this race or economics? Both? We're a long ways off from answering that for ourselves.