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LH: The situation in Seattle... today we have -- I digress a little -- today we have a city that's considered liberal, considered more progressive. It was not so at that time in the '60s. And we still have our problems today, of course, but in the '60s, there was a lot of opposition to minority participation. One of the things that demonstrated that were the many restrictive covenants attached to housing, the sale, rental or leasing of housing. And there was one... there are many, many examples of that, but one of them that I recall said that there shall be no chicken or fowl, or such animals allowed on this property, except for household pets. And there shall be no Asiatic or Negro people of Negro ancestry or lineage who will be able to live on this property, except if they are employed by a white person to work. So those were the kinds of things that were built into the exclusion of people of color in getting housing outside of a certain area, and which contributed to the ghetto. It was a... the housing effort was... took a lot of time. They finally prepared an ordinance which was presented to the city council. The city council was asked to pass the ordinance with an emergency clause. The emergency clause would provide for immediate implementation of the ordinance. However, the city council decided that they didn't want to be responsible for that, so they put it to the vote of the people. That then entailed many hours of promoting the ordinance in the community, in the city, much debate, many, many meetings, many speaking engagements, coffee hours and such that Phil and others had to participate in. And Phil also began communication with the Seattle Real Estate Board, which was adamantly opposed to open housing. But he met with them and tried to persuade them to consider why it would be a good thing. When it was put to a vote of the people, even with all the efforts that went into it, the measure was defeated by Seattleites with a vote of two to one, two to three. And the... I think I misstated that, it was something like 52,000 to 115 that voted on the measure, and it was defeated. So it was back to the drawing board and back to more of the same efforts, working hard to get the ordinance passed. It took four years to get the ordinance passed. A second time that it was presented to the city council, the same thing happened. It was referred to a vote of the people. And at that time, Reverend McKinney referred to the council as "a bunch of gutless wonders."

So it wasn't until the assassination of Dr. King, that people will began to come around and be more supportive of open housing. There was a large march and many people participated, some 10,000 people, which was big at that time. And they called again for open housing. Also, Phil had been making sure that his office was involved in community organization, and getting groups of people, especially in white communities, to support open housing and other measures which would promote equal opportunity. Those people formed a steering committee and presented a petition to the city council with many signatures calling for open housing. This time with these factors, the City Council adopted the ordinance and call for its immediate implementation. The... it was... it took time. But we didn't want to have everything on enforcement because enforcement is after an injustice has occurred. We had to have that, of course. But Phil saw the need and also in line with our creating ordinance to work in the community with various groups. For that he hired a community relations specialist and laid out his view of having community involvement and what he wanted done. With that, many human relations, neighborhood human relations councils were established throughout the city of Seattle, who helped all the work of the commission. And... am I talking too much here?

BT: No, actually, the only thing is I'm trying to be mindful for you, too, and make sure that we're not tiring you out. For me, it's fascinating to listen to you. But I also want to be sure that how you're doing here.

LH: I'm okay. I get a little thirsty.

BT: That's fine. I've been drinking. [Laughs] But yeah, I think that's part of what you're saying also, again it's remarkable, but I'm glad that we have it written down also in his, in the bio you provided. I think I'm gonna have... there's some things that we might go back to, but I think I'm gonna have Camila go to the next one, another question here.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2020 Seattle Chapter JACL. All Rights Reserved.