Basic Information
- Type of Place
- Independent City or Town
- Metro Area
- Politics c. 1860?
- Don’t Know
- Unions, Organized Labor?
- Don’t Know
Sundown Town Status
- Sundown Town in the Past?
- Surely
- Was there an ordinance?
- Yes, Written Evidence
- Sign?
- Don’t Know
- Year of Greatest Interest
- Still Sundown?
- Surely Not
Census Information
| Total | White | Black | Asian | Native | Hispanic | Other | BHshld | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1860 | ||||||||
| 1870 | ||||||||
| 1880 | ||||||||
| 1890 | ||||||||
| 1900 | ||||||||
| 1910 | ||||||||
| 1920 | ||||||||
| 1930 | ||||||||
| 1940 | ||||||||
| 1950 | ||||||||
| 1960 | ||||||||
| 1970 | ||||||||
| 1980 | ||||||||
| 1990 | ||||||||
| 2000 | ||||||||
| 2010 | ||||||||
| 2020 |
Method of Exclusion
- Police or Other Official Action
Main Ethnic Group(s)
- Very Mixed
Group(s) Excluded
- Asian
- Native American
Comments
When Seattle incorporated in 1865, the city banned
American Indians from living there, except as live-in
domestic workers. When the city was reincorporated in
1869, the legal ban was lifted, and it may not have been effectively enforced, 1865-69. American Indians were still frequently harrassed, however, and subject to segregation.
In the 1880s, white Seattle residents attempted to
expel the city’s Chinese population. “A vigilante gang
of whites marched on Chinatown one morning and at gunpoint gathered the Asian residents, herding them
down to the train station. There the Asians were
loaded onto freight cars and shipped off to Tacoma.
Some eventually (and quietly) returned but most
apparently did not…
“On February 7, 1886, a throng of workers rounded
up virtually every Chinese in Seattle and herded them
to the Ocean Dock at the foot of Main Street for
passage out of town on a waiting steamer. The mob
and its frightened charges were met at the pier by
police and a contingent of the volunteer Home Guard.
A stalemate ensued when territorial governor Watson
Squire prevented the ship from leaving.” Thus Seattle never quite became a sundown town vis-a-vis Chinese, at least not for longer than a few days.
Many Seattle neighborhoods kept out African Americans, by tradition and force, and also by restrictive covenants, but as an entity, Seattle never prohibited blacks from living within the city limits.