Housing discrimination in the Madrona/Denny Blaine neighborhoods eases in 1956.

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In 1956, housing discrimination in the Madrona/Denny Blaine neighborhoods of Seattle eases when some residents, encouraged by the Civic Unity Committee and the Central Seattle Community Association, begin to quietly sell to black or Asian families.

In February 1956, a vote to amend the bylaws of the Madrona-Denny Blaine Neighborhood Association to permit nonwhites to move into the Lake Washington neighborhood was defeated.

Leslie H. Dills, president of the Neighborhood Association, led the fight to prevent residential integration by frightening residents with the specter of lower property values and rising crime rates.

Unhappy with the racial prejudice and discrimination practices exhibited by Dills, some community residents, encouraged by the Civic Unity Committee and the Central Seattle Community Association, began to quietly sell to black or Asian families.

Sources:
Quintard Taylor, The Forging of a Black Community: Seattle’s Central District from 1870 through the Civil Rights Era (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1994), 183, 184.

By Mary Henry, April 28, 1999