A Book Recalls a Time When the CD Was Black Seattle

People who have lived in the Central District (CD) — whether for one year or one lifetime — understand it to be in the midst of deep change. The historically Black neighborhood has experienced deep gentrification in the 21st century, with many Black-owned homes, businesses, and communities being left or closed as rent and cost of living have increased, forcing residents out and farther south. 

Along with them, they take their personal histories of what the CD used to be and the community who lived here. Limitless: Stories from the Neighborhood that Shaped Seattle, a new book out Nov. 19 via Chin Music Press, is a culmination of a decade of collecting current and former residents' oral histories — from prominent figures to everyday people who have called the CD home — for Shelf Life, a community oral history project. 

Edited by documentarian, oral historian, and Shelf Life founder Jill Freidberg, Limitless reads like a window into the CD's past. Though the streets and some buildings have remained the same, so much of the neighborhood has changed in the past near-century — from who lives here to what businesses continue to survive and thrive. The memories offered by the interviewees featured in the book provide glimpses of how the CD used to be — one woven together by shared struggle, camaraderie, and community during a time when Black Seattleites were redlined out of other areas of the city. 

"Seattle was a segregated city with segregated media," says Frank P. Barrow of KYAC Radio, a much-beloved Black-owned radio station serving the CD, in one of the book's recollections. "The other local stations, when they sent someone into the CD, they'd treat it like it was a foreign territory. But on KYAC, Black people communicated with Black folks. People would call us sometimes before they would call the police, okay? They'd let us know, 'This thing is happening over here. Could you check into it?' And we'd talk about it on the air, we'd send our news reporters out."

Other stories elucidate the economic history of the neighborhood, where many CD residents ruminated on reasons why the community remained as strong as it did during the mid-20th century. 

"One of the reasons the CD could be as good as it was is because people had stable jobs. If you didn't work at Boeing then you worked for the city or the school district. There was enough consistency in your life that you could feel like it was your community," says Zola Mumford. "I grew up with people who couldn't get a job anywhere else but the post office because they were Black. But they were still engaged in the community."

Most importantly, the stories weave a portrait of the CD that seems so different from the one that currently exists, a neighborhood that was deeply interconnected and interdependent, where generations of Black and Brown families grew up and supported one another. 

"We knew everybody blocks around. All the kids came to our house because our house sat on a double lot. We'd all gather there. My mother and father paid for so many broken windows in the neighbor's house. I don't know why but, if we played kickball or baseball or something, the ball always went through their windows," Narvella Jackson recalls in one of the book's passages. "We ran through everybody's yards. We had peach trees, cherry trees, blackberries. Neighbors had raspberries, apples, all kinds of fruit. Nobody yelled or screamed at you to get out of their yard or anything like that."

Shelf Life got its start in 2016, when Freidberg learned that the neighborhood's Red Apple Market complex was marked for demolition. She rented an old Subway shop right next door with the idea to ask shoppers and Red Apple workers to come by and tell stories about the role the store played in their lives. "It quickly became apparent that people were telling life stories, and the Red Apple was just one piece," she said. The project expanded into a neighborhood oral history project. 

Over the years, Freidberg and the Shelf Life team — named as a nod to the supermarket — interviewed around 75 people who told hundreds of stories about all aspects of life in the CD: the riot at Garfield High School after the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination, the lines at Ken's Gas Station on Yesler Avenue, the neighborhood's Mardi Gras festival that inspired Seafair. The recordings were then edited, collated, and shared on their podcast, pop-up projections, story phones, and via social media. But over the years, Freidberg also wanted to develop the project into something more tangible that people could hold. 

"There were a lot of really great stories that didn't lend themselves to being on a story phone or in the podcast that I really thought should be out there. And then also, there were a lot of conversations about creating something digital — like a map — that people could touch with their hands and stories would come out," said Freidberg. "We kept describing this sort of newfangled, contemporary digital virtual experience, and realized that really what we were describing was a book!"

The process of translating all the histories into a book format meant a deep relistening to everything the Shelf Life team had collected. Ariel Paine, a member of Wa Na Wari's first Seattle Black Spatial Histories Institute cohort who grew up in the CD, would listen to recordings on his walk to work, highlighting the elements of each story that stood out to him and would fit into a book format. The stories were then curated around recurring themes, which became separate chapters themselves, from "migration and survival" to "education" to "change."

Another element that a book offered over an audio format was a visual component. Not only could people read the stories, but there was also space to artistically represent them. Throughout Limitless are colorful original illustrations by Seattle artists who grew up and lived in the CD: Jite Agbro, Damon Brown, Romson Bustillo, Bonnie Hopper, Chi Moscou-Jackson, Erin Shigaki, and Inye Wokoma. 

Each artist got to pick which stories they wanted to illustrate with a mix of collage, photograph, prints, and paintings. Wokoma's evocative cerulean collage illustrates his meditation on being separated from the rest of Black America behind the "blue curtain," the Cascade mountain range. Hopper's jubilant painted portraits present Phyllis Beatty-Yasutake and her father, Cecil Beatty, who were interviewed for this project together. 

As for the future of Shelf Life as a project, Freidberg says she hopes its legacy can live on as part of the Seattle Black Spatial Histories Institute, an oral history training program she helped create and co-direct since 2021 at Wa Na Wari. (Alongside Wokoma, Elisheba Johnson, and Rachel Kessler, Freidberg co-founded the Black arts space in 2019, and that space is where Shelf Life is currently based.) She's been training one of the grads to eventually take over the program to ensure Black oral historians are the ones archiving the city's Black history. And for Limitless, Freidberg hopes it can change the way the city thinks about the CD.

"I feel like a book can get places that a podcast might not — it might be in the library, or it might be on the desk of a city council person," said Freidberg. "[I hope] it will make somebody think twice about the history of the place and the importance of the choices that policymakers make now, about the future of the place."

Limitless: Stories from the Neighborhood that Shaped Seattle releases on Nov. 19. The opening party will be held at Wa Na Wari that same day.There will be a follow-up event at Third Place Books Seward Park on Dec. 4. For more information about Limitless and the Shelf Life project, head over to the Shelf Life website.