This is part 2 of the report on Racial Restrictive Covenants which starts with our searchable map showing more than 44,000 properties. Here are additional interactive maps and below that is a neighborhood by neighborhood list of more 500 subdivisions where restrictions prevented African Americans, Asian Americans, and sometimes Jewish Americans from buying, renting, or occupying housing. Note: the maps are hosted on Tableau and may be slow to load.

Move between maps by selecting tabs below.
Scroll further for neighborhood by neighborhood list.

Neighborhood list with attached documents (below)

On the map above, do not assume that areas without marks were not restricted. We have so far searched roughly half of the relevant property records and expect to find many more restricted neighborhoods. Moreover, restrictive covenants were only one of the mechanisms of segregation. Neighborhoods without covenants often practiced racial exclusion by other means.

There is a logic to the geography. Areas developed between 1925 and 1950 were easiest to restrict as realtors and developers wrote racial exclusions into the initial documents platting and subdividing a future neighborhood. That is how so many north Seattle, south Seattle, and suburban tracts developed before 1950 came to be restricted. It was more complicated to restrict older areas. Neighborhood associations organized petition drives and convinced white homeowners to add racial restriction clauses to their properties in Capitol Hill, Madison Park, Queen Anne, Magnolia, and parts of Madronna. For a fuller explanation see Racial Restrictive Covenants: Enforcing Neighborhood Segregation in Seattle by Catherine Silva.

Look at the language of restriction in these deeds. Some specify that neighborhoods are reserved for "Whites," while others enumerate the prohibited racial groups. And the wording is curious. In the terminology of the 1920s-1940s "Hebrews" meant Jews; "Ethiopians" meant African ancestry; "Malays" meant Filipinos. Most shocking is the "Aryans only" restriction imposed on a subdivision in Clyde Hill. That racial concept, favored by Adolph Hitler, was written into deeds as late as 1948.

Here is how to read the table below. When a neighborhood or developer subdivision is shaded pink, it means that the restriction was written in the subdivision plat or accompanying restrictive covenant and thus covered all properties in an area. Where we have found multiple copies of a restriction using identical language we have likewise assumed it covered all properties in an area. Click the links to see copies of the restriction documents. In the list below, Seattle neighborhoods are followed by North King County suburbs, South King County, then Eastside suburbs. Click these links to jump ahead. You may also search for a neighborhood or race term using Control^F keys and typing the name. We are researching and mapping other counties and show results for Pierce, Snohomish, Thurston, and Whatcom counties on the Racial Restrictive Covenants Project - Washington State website.