Racial Restrictive Covenants Project: Recent Updates February
We also post project updates on Instagram (@racialrestrictivecovenantswa).
2024 is off to a good start, and we have news, thank yous, and an invitation to share.
Special Lecture Announcement
Please join us for a special lecture by James Gregory, project director and professor of History, entitled “Homes for some: Seattle's history of housing and racial exclusion” on Wednesday, Feb. 7 at 7 p.m. in Kane Hall 130 on the UW Seattle campus.
Professor Gregory’s lecture will detail the history of housing policies, including covenants, that have made it difficult for people of color to find homes in Seattle and nearby counties. He will also show how Black, Japanese American, Chinese American, and Filipino American communities organized and attempted to resist these practices, and how this history continues to shape demographics and homeownership in the Puget Sound today. It is part of a series of history lectures entitled “Seattle and the Salish Sea: Building and Belonging.” The lecture is free and open to the public. More information can be found here.
Scanning Updates
We are pleased to announce that as of December, we have completed the scanning and digitizing of King County property records between roughly 1930 and 1955. In total, we:
Digitized nearly 1.5 million property records
Scanned more than 2,000 rolls of microfilm
We are now confirming thousands of potential racial restrictions
Thank you to everyone who made this extraordinary feat possible – especially archivist Hannah Sookup and everyone at the King County Archives who supplied us with boxes upon boxes of microfilm for months on end.
Volunteer Updates
Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter and volunteering your time in person or on Zooniverse! If you would like to contribute to the project, please check out the Volunteer page on our website. Transcribing documents on our Zooniverse page is a remote, easily accessible way to earn service hours while contributing to a ground-breaking research project. Email us at wacovenants@gmail.com with proof of your volunteer time, and we will happily sign off on hours!
We would like to take a moment to thank Zakariya Mukhtar, Aaron Lin, Janice Wu, and Tai Nayla, our service learners from Seattle Central College who assisted us during Fall Quarter. Thank you for your hard work and support!
We now have 1,131 Zooniverse volunteers assisting us. Thank you all for your contribution to this project. We couldn’t do it without you!
Learn More About the Project
Racial Restrictive Covenants Project Website
Racial Restrictive Covenants Instagram