Gregory Scruggs, Reuters, July 22, 2018

Not so long ago, few whites wanted to live in Seattle’s diverse Central District, so it housed the people who had no choice.

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Now things are changing once again and the district’s long-term black residents don’t much like it.

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Brown, then just nine, remembered police landing en masse one day, how he was instructed to run at full speed to the nearby office of the Black Panther Party, a political organization founded in 1966 to monitor U.S. police forces and challenge any brutality meted out to blacks.

Today, that old Panther office is an Ethiopian travel agency, a lone immigrant business on an otherwise establishment block of wine shops, cafes, and boutiques — fancy businesses that anchor a neighborhood of million-dollar houses.

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In April, the Black Panther Party’s Seattle chapter celebrated its 50th anniversary with a free breakfast like the kind it offered children in the 1960s and 1970s, but in a city that has changed dramatically since the Panthers’ heyday.

Founded in the aftermath of the assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., the Seattle chapter was the first to be established outside of California, where the African-American activist group started out in Oakland.

The Panthers — in trademark berets and leather jackets — established themselves in majority black neighborhoods and were known for militant politics, preaching self-determination and armed self-defense in the face of police brutality and widespread discrimination.

The Seattle Panthers also provided essential social services to an underserved community, offering free breakfasts — later turned into a federal program – grocery deliveries for the elderly and a free health clinic that still operates today.

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Many of the old-timers who convened for the anniversary celebrations said they no longer recognized their own neighborhood after a decade of intense population growth.

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Seattle’s red-lined neighborhood was the Central District, an enclave of single-family homes east of downtown and home to the first black-owned bank west of the Mississippi River.

When the Panthers kept watch, its black population topped 70 percent, creating a strong sense of community.

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In today’s Central District, less than one in five residents is black, according to census figures.

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Those who can afford the new houses, meanwhile, are more likely to be white and work in the booming high-tech sector.

Nor is this trend just hitting Seattle, perched high in the Pacific Northwest.

Brown pointed to similar waves of white gentrification and black displacement on the East Coast, transforming Harlem in New York City and the seat of government in Washington, D.C.

“This ethnic cleansing thing is going on all over the country,” he said. “I don’t know of any place that did it better than Seattle – they completely dismantled the community.”

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Seizing on the Panthers’ legacy, some locals now hope to get political and turn the tide.

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Africatown [is] a community land trust that has acquired land for redevelopment into affordable homes, marketed to blacks who cannot afford the district’s hefty rents and home prices.

Africatown received a $1 million grant from the City of Seattle on July 5 to support its redevelopment of a strip mall in the heart of the district into housing and stores for black-owned businesses.

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The effort comes as long-time residents feel disoriented.

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