May 2025: Covenants Project Newsletter
Racial Restrictive Covenants Project Presents for the Washington State Bar Association
On May 30th, research associates Ari and Emma presented Covenants Project research findings to an audience of over 200 lawyers at the Washington State Bar Association in Blaine, Washington.
Thurston County Commits to Broad Covenant Modification
On Saturday, May 31st the covenants team joined Dr. Thelma Jackson at the Thurston County Auditor’s office in Olympia, Washington to present research findings on the over 1,700 racial covenants that excluded nonwhite people from many parts of Thurston County prior to 1968.
Dr. Jackson is a leading local historian, civil rights educator, and organizer in the Thruston area, and the oral histories she has collected in Blacks in Thurston County Washington 1950-1975: A Community Album provide essential insight and cultural context for the pervasive certification of exclusionary racial covenants.
The Thurston County auditor's office plans to initiate a broad covenant modification program with the goal of altering all 1,700 of these racist deeds. If your property deed includes racial restrictions, you can modify this language using racial covenant modification forms below. If you have questions or concerns about this process, reach out to your local county Auditor for assistance.
Nandini Baliyan (Our Computer Engineer) Explains Research Tools at the UW Undergraduate Research Symposium
On Tuesday, June 3, project Programmer/ Computer Engineer Nandini Baliyan presented her processing method for identifying contemporary property addresses using complex geographical descriptions at the Paul Allen Undergraduate Research Symposium at UW. This system of identifying “Metes and Bounds” has allowed the Project to map hundreds of racially restricted properties otherwise too complicated and time-consuming to map by hand.
Snohomish and Pierce County Maps Updated
Using the Metes and Bounds method for mapping complex property information, the covenants team has updated our maps for Pierce County and Snohomish County with hundreds of additional properties which are now shown in red alongside previously recorded restrictions. Click the maps above to explore these newly mapped properties.
Congratulations Graduating Research Associates!
This week three of our research associates, Bryce, Annika, and Ella, graduated with bachelor’s degrees from the University of Washington. Bryce graduated with a dual degree in History: Race, Gender, and Power and Geography: Data Science. Annika also earned a BA in both History and Communications, and Ella graduated with a BA in History: Race, Gender, and Power with a minor in Geography. We are incredibly proud of their hard work, and the incredible contributions they’ve made as undergraduate researchers on the Racial Restrictive Covenants Project! Congratulations Bryce, Annika, and Ella!
To hear from the project in the future subscribe to our newsletter, and to learn more about the history of racially restrictive covenants in Washington state, check out the Racial Restrictive Covenants Project website.
To read more about related legislaton review resources on the Covenants web page, and to learn more about accessing this funding check out resources including the Black Home Initiative.
If your property was restricted by a racial covenant, you can modify the restriction using a form from your local county auditor’s office similar to the King County Auditor’s form shown above. It is important to understand that, while modifying a racial covenant is a cursory step in recognizing legacies of local discrimination, addressing the ongoing presence of racial prejudice in our communities requires critical examination of the cultural, legal, and economic institutions perpetuating intergenerational harm to various marginalized groups in Washington State.