Early on the morning of Saturday, Feb. 15, halfway through Black History Month, an email pings the inboxes of those who signed up to attend the Hey, Black Seattle! Coffee Shop Meetup Tour at The Station in Beacon Hill. In it, founder Kiesha B. Free encourages participants to show up and be "part of the movement." As an extra incentive, the first person from the RSVP to arrive gets their coffee on Kiesha. The two-hour meetup drew about a dozen attendees who filled the corner of the coffee shop, chatting, laughing, and being surrounded by other Black residents looking to build connections.
To bring the Black community together around the iconic Seattle beverage while supporting Black-owned coffee shops, Hey, Black Seattle! has scheduled a series of Let's Pull Up community meetups.
For Gwendolyn Phillips Coates, being a member of Hey, Black Seattle! means getting emails in her inbox that let her know about events like the Let's Pull Up tours without having to seek them out or hope that she sees an announcement on social media.
Coates said she was at the coffee shop to let the next generation know she sees them and what they are doing. She also brought along some of her one-of-a-kind, handmade handbags, GBags, showing off her stylish creativity and entrepreneurship.
The tour started at the beginning of February with an opening stop at The Scene in South Park. With stops at both Boon Boona locations, Black Coffee Northwest, and Campfire Coffee in Tacoma, it will end Thursday, Feb. 27, at The Station in Columbia City. Falling at the end of Black History Month, it also coincides with Hey, Black Seattle!'s one-year anniversary. Making it an unofficial birthday party.
The Puget Sound area may evoke certain images in people's minds — lush green forests, iconic views of Mount Rainier with wildflowers blooming in the meadows below, or fishmongers at Pike Place Market hurling a fish through the air. Although — when imagining the landscape of the people who reside in the area — one might picture an REI commercial, pre-DEI. Despite this image of a very white-washed Seattle, the Black community in the Puget Sound has been on the rise in recent years. As Free likes to remind people, the 6–8% of Black residents in the area amount to hundreds of thousands of people living, working, and commuting in the area.
Like many transplants, Free moved to the area for work, to help to build out a global network of vertical interest websites focusing on health, business, and other sectors for MSN. But after leaving corporate America in 2021, she transitioned into entrepreneurship and began to search for Black community for herself and her daughter. Having navigated the isolation often associated with the area, Free had the idea to do the same for others, by building a digital hub for the Black community across King, Pierce, Snohomish, Kitsap, and Thurston counties.
"I had this background of connecting people to resources that they needed," Free said about her work in the corporate world. "I got just a feeling, a calling that said, if you were doing this for yourself, you can do it for other people. You have all the information that you need to make it happen."
So the idea for Hey, Black Seattle! took shape, and in 2024, during the last week of Black History Month, the platform was launched. With an Instagram following of almost 13,000 followers, Hey, Black Seattle! has rapidly become a resource to discover events, find opportunities, and build community in a city where connections can often feel scattered.
The platform has evolved into a collaborative space to contribute information. Instead of just sharing what she knows, Free invites the community to add their recommendations, creating a digital collective knowledge base. While the area is ripe with Black community, it is often hard to connect or figure out who is doing what when. Free encourages engagement that pulls folks from the couch, our homes, or isolated worlds, and puts us into a place of connection.
"If you connect into this Hey, Black Seattle! communication hub, you can find out about things happening across the city in a consistent way. My job is: Who's Black and doing what, where they at, and how can I get it in front of your face?" said Free.
The hub of Hey, Black Seattle! features numerous ways to share and receive information. The landing page asks, "What can we help you with today?" With the "we" being based on the crowdsourced knowledge of the community. In addition to searching multiple categories, visitors of the site can browse event listings, search for jobs, or peruse a list of community resources by category or location.
But the most effective way to engage with the platform is to become a member. Membership ensures community members get access to the full experience.
"We have three layers of membership: free community members who engage like on Yelp or TripAdvisor, directory members who list their businesses or services, and premium members who want to promote jobs, events, and opportunities," said Free.
Engaging the community means moving past online interactions and actively showing up for each other. Free said that she has witnessed many community organizations hosting events that people say they need but then they don't show up.
"There's this feeling that you supported because you clicked a thing here, or maybe you said you were gonna go, but the support — you gotta follow through on it and actually show up for the thing."
Those in attendance at the Let's Pull Up stop at The Station in Beacon Hill not only got the opportunity to chat and build connections but also the experience of spending time in a space that is unapologetically Black, culturally rich, and intentionally built.
As the Hey Black Seattle! anthem plays over the speakers of The Station as owners Leona Moore-Rodriguez and Luis Rodriguez serve guests and mingle, Free is surrounded by attendees all vibing along to the song.
"I managed to get myself the Blackest life I ever could have imagined in Seattle, Washington, which feels like a miracle … I go days, days where I just am surrounded by Black people," Free said.
But she has also learned that it's important as we all build that community to understand that the isolation that occurs in the region may also be rooted in a different experience.
"I think that more grace [is needed] for Black people to process that Black experiences are different based on the culture that you grew up in, so people are judging Black people in the Pacific Northwest using the measuring stick of something else that they're used to, and I think [we need] more compassion and openness … about the fact that different Black experiences exist."
As Hey, Black Seattle! continues to grow, Free said the goal is to make the platform a centralized space for the Black experience in Seattle. A digital hub that puts resources, events, and more out so that the work everyone is doing is less fragmented.
One challenge, though, is sustainability, both in concept and funding. Free said that it's vital to sustainability that people understand the "for us, by us" nature with the emphasis on "us" not being her, but members. While she is often seen as the face of Hey, Black Seattle!, its true face is the collective community it was built to serve.
This misunderstanding highlights a larger challenge: shifting the perception of the platform from a promotional outlet to a communal effort. "It's not just meant to be an advertisement platform for business. There's an underlying purpose behind this — that's about breaking down isolation for Black people in this region, and it requires all of us to participate, not just leverage a platform to promote stuff," Free said.
Another challenge is ensuring that they can keep the digital doors open. Both Free and her assistant Kat Stokes work other jobs. But as the site gains members, it's important that there is a team in place to support it.
"What I want is for Hey, Black Seattle! to be stable — funded, with a team — so it doesn't just become another great idea that burns out. If we get enough people connected and find a way to fund it, that's success," said Free.
This platform isn't just a website — it's a movement, a growing digital and real-world hub dedicated to bringing Black Seattle together in an innovative way. Free has created something that not only informs but actively fights against isolation, making it easier for Black residents to find each other, show up, and thrive.
The best way to support that vision? Be a part of it. Join Hey, Black Seattle! by registering as a member and tap into the hub!
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