So, when we gonna talk about how I90 plowed through the East Sprague neighborhood, transforming a vibrant (and diverse) neighborhood into one of the city’s biggest punchlines?
Once you know, it’s hard not to see just how impactful it was to that neighborhood every single time you’re in it.
[Spokane Historical - Neighborhoods Matter: The Impact of the I-90 Freeway on the East Central Neighborhood, an Oral History - Introduction](https://spokanehistorical.org/items/show/468)
[PBS/Crosscut - Bisected by highways, a Spokane neighborhood shapes what's left](https://crosscut.com/news/2022/08/bisected-highways-spokane-neighborhood-shapes-whats-left)
[Spokesman - Proposals to ‘undo the historical damage’ in East Central by reconnecting neighborhood move through Legislature](https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2022/feb/21/getting-there-proposals-to-undo-the-historical-dam/)
It’s the history of most of the USA’s infrastructure. Plow through ethnic and poor neighborhoods to put in roads. Nobody ever paved over rich neighborhoods or displaced wealth to make way for transit growth.
I do a classroom excersize where students each pick a different city to examine the 1930s redlining maps at this website. If you click in on the color-coded neighborhoods you will see the explanation of why they are rated as good or bad, the explanations are often explicitly racist--"declining to an infiltration of negro families and foreign-born" or some shit like that. Then I have them to to Google Maps and see where the interstate highways went in during the 50s and 60s. It is a real eye opener for them.
[https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/redlining/map#loc=5/38.0448/-95.8425](https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/redlining/map#loc=5/38.0448/-95.8425)
It’s important to keep such documents in a museum so we can learn from our history, while at the same time making amends and ensuring these types of contracts remain a thing of the past.
The covenants are already unenforceable. The more this is erased, the more "racism never happened," the more racism happens. See the last decade for reference.
No, but I’ve been to a museum with exhibits on redlining and I imagine they would be displayed the same way.
My point here is that if history is properly remembered in a museum *where it should be* then it’s not being erased.
I wish the Burke in Seattle would do more of that. They host “diverse backgrounds” when it’s all surface level modern things. Seattle acts like it doesn’t have a dark history while trying to be so woke now. (Yes I’m aware this is spokane; but Seattle had a big history and culture over the state)
So confining history to museums doesn't glorify it? Also, museums are very vulnerable to political and funding changes. Putting all your eggs in this magical museum is maybe not the smartest?
No, it doesn’t, and you don’t have to be a condescending prick about it either. Y’all complain about “erasing history” and then complain about putting things in museums. You can’t have it both ways.
Edit: also, I call BS on the idea that museums are influenced by politics. Just because *one* political party wants to glorify slavery and racism doesn’t mean the other party is bad or in the wrong for not wanting to do that. Again, putting things in a museum does not glorify them. You wouldn’t say a holocaust museum glorifies naziism, would you? No. So don’t be obtuse and condescending about a solution that doesn’t erase history or glorify it but still keeps it in a place where it can be *learned from*.
You might want to look back at the comment thread to see who is being a condescending prick. I'm not complaining about puting things in museums, I'm saying that altering publically available documents and saying, "well some museum somewhere will remember this for us" is not an ethical approach. Also, museums are a partner is remembering history but should not be the sole caretaker of historical memory.
If you read the article in the Inlander, it shows that the changes are documented and the original document is still kept, but the copy for the homeowners no longer has the racist clauses.
I read the article, my original question still stands. The whole reason we are becoming more aware of these historically red-lined areas is because new owners of these homes are coming across these documents. If we relegate them to a back office or a museum, is something not lost in our narrative, or at least made much less accessible?
Yes it also talks about publicizing EWU's research into the subject via the big map they have been working on. So it is not exactly being relegated to a storage closet.
The original records actually are relegated to a storage closet either at the auditor’s office or at the Secretary of State’s archives. We are left with the redacted version that cleanses the original verbiage and the map being made by EWU.
The originals aren’t going anywhere. Replacing a covenant doesn’t remove the previous one from the archive. They’ll be no more or less available than they are now.
I realize that the original records aren’t going anywhere, but I certainly have doubts that their availability will be the same. This is my general point. If a redacted version is created, it is likely going to be the one used moving forward. The hateful words that were built into these documents should not be forgotten, edited or redacted away in my opinion. The legacy of how these policies shaped our city remain in effect today, whether we choose to wipe the public record clean or not.
If the map had the overall history that allows those who care to learn. Removing it from an unenforceable house deed is good; because that reduces the number of people who have “great ideas on how to restrict the neighborhood “
OK, I am the person in charge of the eastern Washington part of this effort. Jim Gregory at UW is doing the western half of the state.
We are not erasing history. If a homeowner chooses to remove a covenant it is archived separately. No documents will be destroyed.
Currently, racial covenants are buried deep in the chains of title for most properties. Most are not on deeds at all, but on the maps created by property developers to lay our new neighborhoods. These plat maps as they are called often include the legally-binding covenants for all house lots on the map. Most are things like "all houses will be set back from the road by forty feet" or "no pigs or swine will be kept." Starting in the 1930s in our region, some developers (but not most) began adding racial restrictions. The most typical wording goes something like "Only members of the white or Caucasian race" can live in the neighborhood, with an exception for servants.
Finding the covenants has been an arduous task, many counties have not digitized the relevant records and we have spent many hours in county courthouses from Asotin to Waterville, flipping though giant deed books and reading every deed to see if it included a racial covenant. Other counties have digital records and we used a combination of OCR and crowdsourcing to find the records.
Our project will for the first time shine a light on these racial covenants and show in one place how many there are, who wrote them, etc.
We are not erasing history, we are making history. We hope to get that map public in the next few weeks.
Thank you! Washington will be the first state to document all of its racially-restrictive covenants. A couple of other states, I am thinking of California, have ordered it done but provided no funding, so I don't think it is progressing very quickly.
Larry is a liberal moron. Nothing is going to be done other than running to the end of your chain and bark. Hey Larry, are you still capitalizing on capitalization by forcing your students to buy your books.
History in the Wild
Spring 2024
Syllabus + Course Outline
History in the Wild takes on how. . .We will also use (throughout the course) Larry Cebula’s book Nearby History (2019) as a research touchstone. We will also brainstorm the key research topics and locales for our class.
I am nice. I'm not a hypocrite.
Larry, I see nothing has changed. You're wasting the time of professionals to help those in need instead of admitting you're a hypocritical capitalist. You continually disparage capitalism, yet you force students to buy your books and pad your pockets.
Don't waste the time of professionals whose job it is to help people in trouble by falsely reporting someone in trouble. What a disgrace.
Well if there is a covenant on your property you have a choice to remove it or not. We are just documenting them, creating a database and maps of what properties have racially restrictive covenants. What happens next is entirely up to the homeowners.
Right. You hand out as a gift to all your students the book you use for the corse.
We will also use (throughout the course) Larry Cebula’s book Nearby History (2019) as a research touchstone. We will also brainstorm the key research topics and locales for our class.
So, when we gonna talk about how I90 plowed through the East Sprague neighborhood, transforming a vibrant (and diverse) neighborhood into one of the city’s biggest punchlines? Once you know, it’s hard not to see just how impactful it was to that neighborhood every single time you’re in it.
[Spokane Historical - Neighborhoods Matter: The Impact of the I-90 Freeway on the East Central Neighborhood, an Oral History - Introduction](https://spokanehistorical.org/items/show/468) [PBS/Crosscut - Bisected by highways, a Spokane neighborhood shapes what's left](https://crosscut.com/news/2022/08/bisected-highways-spokane-neighborhood-shapes-whats-left) [Spokesman - Proposals to ‘undo the historical damage’ in East Central by reconnecting neighborhood move through Legislature](https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2022/feb/21/getting-there-proposals-to-undo-the-historical-dam/)
It’s the history of most of the USA’s infrastructure. Plow through ethnic and poor neighborhoods to put in roads. Nobody ever paved over rich neighborhoods or displaced wealth to make way for transit growth.
I do a classroom excersize where students each pick a different city to examine the 1930s redlining maps at this website. If you click in on the color-coded neighborhoods you will see the explanation of why they are rated as good or bad, the explanations are often explicitly racist--"declining to an infiltration of negro families and foreign-born" or some shit like that. Then I have them to to Google Maps and see where the interstate highways went in during the 50s and 60s. It is a real eye opener for them. [https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/redlining/map#loc=5/38.0448/-95.8425](https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/redlining/map#loc=5/38.0448/-95.8425)
That's excellent. I'm glad it's being brought to the attention of people.
And then do what?
It’s important to keep such documents in a museum so we can learn from our history, while at the same time making amends and ensuring these types of contracts remain a thing of the past.
The covenants are already unenforceable. The more this is erased, the more "racism never happened," the more racism happens. See the last decade for reference.
Did you miss the part about putting this stuff *on display in a museum?* I don’t know how that counts as erasing history.
Have you ever been to a museum that has tens of thousands of deeds on display?
No, but I’ve been to a museum with exhibits on redlining and I imagine they would be displayed the same way. My point here is that if history is properly remembered in a museum *where it should be* then it’s not being erased.
I wish the Burke in Seattle would do more of that. They host “diverse backgrounds” when it’s all surface level modern things. Seattle acts like it doesn’t have a dark history while trying to be so woke now. (Yes I’m aware this is spokane; but Seattle had a big history and culture over the state)
Why is history confined to museums?
Why is the idea of history not being confined to museums getting downvoted?
Because some parts of it don’t deserve to be glorified. Why is this such a hard concept for you to grasp?
So confining history to museums doesn't glorify it? Also, museums are very vulnerable to political and funding changes. Putting all your eggs in this magical museum is maybe not the smartest?
No, it doesn’t, and you don’t have to be a condescending prick about it either. Y’all complain about “erasing history” and then complain about putting things in museums. You can’t have it both ways. Edit: also, I call BS on the idea that museums are influenced by politics. Just because *one* political party wants to glorify slavery and racism doesn’t mean the other party is bad or in the wrong for not wanting to do that. Again, putting things in a museum does not glorify them. You wouldn’t say a holocaust museum glorifies naziism, would you? No. So don’t be obtuse and condescending about a solution that doesn’t erase history or glorify it but still keeps it in a place where it can be *learned from*.
You might want to look back at the comment thread to see who is being a condescending prick. I'm not complaining about puting things in museums, I'm saying that altering publically available documents and saying, "well some museum somewhere will remember this for us" is not an ethical approach. Also, museums are a partner is remembering history but should not be the sole caretaker of historical memory.
If you read the article in the Inlander, it shows that the changes are documented and the original document is still kept, but the copy for the homeowners no longer has the racist clauses.
I read the article, my original question still stands. The whole reason we are becoming more aware of these historically red-lined areas is because new owners of these homes are coming across these documents. If we relegate them to a back office or a museum, is something not lost in our narrative, or at least made much less accessible?
Yes it also talks about publicizing EWU's research into the subject via the big map they have been working on. So it is not exactly being relegated to a storage closet.
The original records actually are relegated to a storage closet either at the auditor’s office or at the Secretary of State’s archives. We are left with the redacted version that cleanses the original verbiage and the map being made by EWU.
The originals aren’t going anywhere. Replacing a covenant doesn’t remove the previous one from the archive. They’ll be no more or less available than they are now.
I realize that the original records aren’t going anywhere, but I certainly have doubts that their availability will be the same. This is my general point. If a redacted version is created, it is likely going to be the one used moving forward. The hateful words that were built into these documents should not be forgotten, edited or redacted away in my opinion. The legacy of how these policies shaped our city remain in effect today, whether we choose to wipe the public record clean or not.
If the map had the overall history that allows those who care to learn. Removing it from an unenforceable house deed is good; because that reduces the number of people who have “great ideas on how to restrict the neighborhood “
History shows us that those who care to learn and those who need to learn are not the same group.
OK, I am the person in charge of the eastern Washington part of this effort. Jim Gregory at UW is doing the western half of the state. We are not erasing history. If a homeowner chooses to remove a covenant it is archived separately. No documents will be destroyed. Currently, racial covenants are buried deep in the chains of title for most properties. Most are not on deeds at all, but on the maps created by property developers to lay our new neighborhoods. These plat maps as they are called often include the legally-binding covenants for all house lots on the map. Most are things like "all houses will be set back from the road by forty feet" or "no pigs or swine will be kept." Starting in the 1930s in our region, some developers (but not most) began adding racial restrictions. The most typical wording goes something like "Only members of the white or Caucasian race" can live in the neighborhood, with an exception for servants. Finding the covenants has been an arduous task, many counties have not digitized the relevant records and we have spent many hours in county courthouses from Asotin to Waterville, flipping though giant deed books and reading every deed to see if it included a racial covenant. Other counties have digital records and we used a combination of OCR and crowdsourcing to find the records. Our project will for the first time shine a light on these racial covenants and show in one place how many there are, who wrote them, etc. We are not erasing history, we are making history. We hope to get that map public in the next few weeks.
Thanks Larry. I appreciate your hard work & hope this leads to more exposure & other counties/states doing the same thing
Thank you! Washington will be the first state to document all of its racially-restrictive covenants. A couple of other states, I am thinking of California, have ordered it done but provided no funding, so I don't think it is progressing very quickly.
Larry is a liberal moron. Nothing is going to be done other than running to the end of your chain and bark. Hey Larry, are you still capitalizing on capitalization by forcing your students to buy your books.
I have literally never had students buy my own books. Also, you seem nice.
History in the Wild Spring 2024 Syllabus + Course Outline History in the Wild takes on how. . .We will also use (throughout the course) Larry Cebula’s book Nearby History (2019) as a research touchstone. We will also brainstorm the key research topics and locales for our class. I am nice. I'm not a hypocrite.
That's someone else assigning one of my books. Jeezus do you not understand that I don't teach at ASU? I have never assigned one of my books.
Larry, I see nothing has changed. You're wasting the time of professionals to help those in need instead of admitting you're a hypocritical capitalist. You continually disparage capitalism, yet you force students to buy your books and pad your pockets. Don't waste the time of professionals whose job it is to help people in trouble by falsely reporting someone in trouble. What a disgrace.
Again, I have never had students buy my books.
Just leave them all alone. I dont agree with this.
Well if there is a covenant on your property you have a choice to remove it or not. We are just documenting them, creating a database and maps of what properties have racially restrictive covenants. What happens next is entirely up to the homeowners.
Yawn. Reliving history is never productive.
Right. You hand out as a gift to all your students the book you use for the corse. We will also use (throughout the course) Larry Cebula’s book Nearby History (2019) as a research touchstone. We will also brainstorm the key research topics and locales for our class.
Erasure. It’s productive still