Chicano activists occupy abandoned school in Seattle, which will become El Centro, on October 11, 1972.

  • By David Wilma
  • Posted 8/02/2000
  • HistoryLink.org Essay 2588
See Additional Media

On October 11, 1972, Chicano activists led by Roberto Maestas (1938-2010) occupy the abandoned Beacon Hill School, 2524 16th Avenue S, Seattle. Maestas founds El Centro de la Raza, (Center of the People) a Chicano/Latino civil rights organization.

The protesters were mostly the Latino faculty and staff of an English and adult basic education program at South Seattle Community College. The program was defunded and they found themselves without an educational home. The activists saw the Beacon Hill site as a central location suitable for expansion and development. The facility lacked heat and running water in what turned out to be a record cold winter.

Over the next three months, protesters also staged demonstrations in the chambers of the Seattle City Council and at the offices of Seattle Mayor Wes Uhlman (b. 1935). The leaders of the protests were arrested.

Ultimately, the Seattle School District and the City of Seattle agreed to lease the property to El Centro for $1 a year. 

In 1997, the school district insisted on fair market rates and rent rose to $12,000 a month. By 1999, El Centro owed $150,000 in back rent. Grants from the City of Seattle and from Washington state totaling $1 million allowed El Centro to buy the site from the school district.


Sources:

Walt Crowley,  Rites of Passage: A Memoir of the Sixties in Seattle (Seattle: University of Washington Press: 1996), 314; Linda Keene, "El Centro Clashes with Neighbors Over Beacon Hill Site," The Seattle Times, April 1, 1999, (www.seattletimes.com); El Centro de la Raza Home Page (www.elcentrodelaraza.com).


Licensing: This essay is licensed under a Creative Commons license that encourages reproduction with attribution. Credit should be given to both HistoryLink.org and to the author, and sources must be included with any reproduction. Click the icon for more info. Please note that this Creative Commons license applies to text only, and not to images. For more information regarding individual photos or images, please contact the source noted in the image credit.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License
Major Support for HistoryLink.org Provided By: The State of Washington | Patsy Bullitt Collins | Paul G. Allen Family Foundation | Museum Of History & Industry | 4Culture (King County Lodging Tax Revenue) | City of Seattle | City of Bellevue | City of Tacoma | King County | The Peach Foundation | Microsoft Corporation, Other Public and Private Sponsors and Visitors Like You