Black Emeralds: African American Women's Political Activism and Leadership in Seattle, 1941-2000

Abstract

Black women in Seattle have long been major political actors and leaders ¬¬in their communities although they comprised a very small population. Throughout the 20th century, they engaged in a never-ending struggle for freedom, equality, and visibility to be recognized as first-class citizens and to make the professed liberal ideals of Seattle a more egalitarian place for blacks to live. Black women boldly entered the spaces of social and political justice on their own terms and sought to challenge urban inequality by changing policies, hearts, and minds in a city that refused to acknowledge it ever had a “race” problem. This dissertation explores their political engagement, resistance strategies, and community-building efforts to demonstrate the many different ways African American women exercised power and agency in a city where they never constituted more than five percent of the population. Through organizations, institutions, businesses, social movements, and other sites of contestation, black women collectively fashioned programs and strategies to manipulate, negotiate, and influence their communities to bring about social change that went beyond electoral participation. This study also extends current scholarship by examining black women’s efforts after the 1960s to offer new insights on how their political activism impacted urban western communities in this later period of the 20th century. In the post-Civil Rights era, activist women leaders rose to positions in city and state government through elective and political appointments that provided expanded political and social visibility to the African American community and women. Their leadership and civic work directly created and shaped public policies most critical to women, families, children, and the poor; thus, making significant contributions to Washington State and the Pacific Northwest.