April was Fair Housing Month, and local historians and city officials took the occasion to look back to the decade-long campaign of sit-ins, marches, and moral suasion that persuaded the City Council in 1968 to bar discrimination from property owners and realtors.

The problem was restrictive covenants inserted into local deeds typically stating that “No person or persons of Asiatic, African, or Negro blood, lineage, or extraction shall be permitted to occupy a portion of said property.”

Realtors refused to show houses to families of color. Bankers refused to lend money to them. African Americans seemed to have only one option, and that was to live in the Central District, says Dr. Quintard Taylor, ethnic studies professor at the University of Washington, who discussed the campaign at City Hally April 12.

“In an attempt to move it was like watching a fly buzzing around in a closed jar,” Seattle resident Gerald Hatcher said.

In 1961, the NAACP asked the City Council to pass an ordinance prohibiting discrimination in housing. Opponents included the Seattle Real Estate Board and the Seattle Apartment Operators Association. When the Council didn’t act, 400 people marched on City Hall; a multiracial group of young protesters sat in on the Mayor’s office for 24 hours.

The ordinance was referred to voters in 1964, who opposed it more than two-to-one; the City Council passed it April 19, 1968.

Today, we face different problems, says Taylor. “It is not so much where to buy a house today, but if we can afford to buy a house,” he said. “Seattle is becoming Europeanized: the wealthy live in the city and the poorer live outside.”

To file a complaint if you are victim of discrimination, call the King County Office of Civil Rights (206)296-7592 or the Seattle Office for Civil Rights at (206)684-4500.

—Laura Cruikshank