SEATTLE! A name for most Easterners to conjure with! A seaport city; a western and still a pioneer city, Seattle has seen its rise and growth within the memory of men yet living. Negroes had been in the wagon trains which crossed the plains and the Rockies when the whole Northwest was Oregon territory. With the coming of the railroads and the discovery of gold in Alaska, the city's population grew by leaps and bounds. Negroes too, came in larger numbers. But far from the great centers of Negro population none but the adventurous found their way to this distant corner. It has always been a small proportion-let us see how this band of pilgrims fared.
Late in 1933, the CWA approved a family study of the Negro community as a project, and early in 1934, 766 schedules were collected covering slightly more than one-half of the Negro population. It remained for students on the Federal Student Employment Project to tabulate and illustrate the collected data.
The early stages of the study simply point to certain facts within the group, socially and industrially, without any attempt at comparison.
The average age at death was 52 years and 8 months. Twenty-one per cent of the deaths were age 70 or beyond, while 14 per cent were below the age of 30.
As is inevitable when a community grows from 40,000 to 365,583, in fifty years, the population is not home-born, but adopted. Only 6 per cent of the Negro persons who died during the year were born in Seattle.
Negroes for the most part live scattered throughout the city. In the two principal areas of concentration, they reached only 37 per cent of one and 45 per cent of the other. In the 37 per cent area the rest of the population is mainly Oriental and foreign born white, while in the latter area the remainder of the population is largely native white.
The dwellings occupied by Negroes scattered throughout the city rank about equally with their neighbors in cost, style and care.
Seven and one-half of every 100 workers are employed by the trans-continental and coastal railroads with termini in Seattle. This, however, is not the total number of Negroes employed by these railroads as the majority of the workers have residences in eastern and southern cities which serve as headquarters for the roads.
It is not news that the majority of workers are found in the lines illustrated. But the foreman of the City Light Company carpenter shop is a Negro as is the superintendent of one of the largest branch post offices. Still another is a manager of a Union Oil Station with Chinese and white attendants working under him. Every now and then skilled craftsmen as nickel platers, leather workers and electricians are found. Fourteen of every one hundred workers are employed in skilled trades.
Recommendations of the Seattle Urban League include better care of health and further diversity in wage earning pursuits, more boys and girls to finish high school, a wider participation in all civic activities, intelligent organization for increased political patronage.
