Congress of Racial Equality. Seattle Chapter

The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) was one of the leading non-violent organizations that spearheaded the 1960s civil rights movement. Founded in Chicago in 1942, CORE became especially active and visible in the early 1960s, and chapters were established across the country. Seattle CORE, founded in 1961, became one of the organization's most ambitious and successful chapters. During the 1960s, Seattle CORE helped support the organization's national campaigns, particularly in the South in the early 1960s, and also undertook many projects to fight local discrimination in employment, housing, and education. In the late 1960s, internal rifts contributed to the Seattle chapter's decline and finally its end in 1970.

The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) was one of the leading non-violent organizations that spearheaded the 1960s civil rights movement. Although it had been in existence in Chicago for two decades, it was not until the early 1960s that the organization became highly visible and reached its peak, establishing local chapters across the country. Seattle CORE became one of the organization’s most ambitious and successful chapters. During the 1960s, Seattle CORE helped support the organization’s national campaigns and undertook many projects to fight local discrimination in employment, housing, and education.

In 1942 a group of Chicago pacifists founded the Congress of Racial Equality. However, the group did not receive much attention until 1960 when four African American students in North Carolina violated segregation practices by sitting at a Woolworth’s lunch counter. Realizing that the demonstrators had used the non-violent methods that CORE advocated, the organization rushed to assist them after their arrest. CORE was not responsible for this event, but the protest brought widespread publicity and showed the effectiveness that non-violent direct action could have.

The following year was even more pivotal for the organization when it organized the Freedom Rides. Despite the publicity that CORE gained from the Woolworth sit-in, the following year proved to be more momentous and led people in cities such as Seattle to open local chapters. Following a Supreme Court decision prohibiting segregation in interstate travel, including on buses and in terminal accommodations, CORE organized groups of African Americans to ride buses throughout the South and violate customary segregation wherever they went.

After its founding in 1961, most of Seattle CORE’s initial work was to support CORE’s national efforts, especially the campaigns in the South. One example was in 1961 when Seattle CORE teamed up with the local National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) to support the Haywood County Civic and Welfare League. This action was to raise money for black sharecroppers and tenant farmers near Brownsville, Tennessee, who had been evicted for registering to vote.

Soon, however, the chapter began to focus on local discrimination. The chapter’s first target was employment discrimination, and in October 1961 it began its campaign against the Bon Marché department store. By 1962 protests spread to J.C. Penney, Nordstrom, Frederick & Nelson, A&P, Tradewell, and Washington Natural Gas. Protest methods included a “selective buying” campaign, picketing, and other demonstrations. One of the largest protests came in 1963 when Seattle CORE and the local NAACP led 1,000 marchers to the Bon Marché. At department stores the chapter also led “shoe-ins.” During these events CORE flooded the stores with protesters who tried on numerous pairs of shoes without buying any of them. Seattle CORE also picketed A&P grocery stores for fifteen weeks in 1963 until reaching an agreement with management. However, by March 1964 the chapter said that the company had not lived up to its agreement and began protesting again. For the first time, Seattle CORE used the “shop-in,” in which protesters filled their carts with non-perishable goods and rang them up at the cash register, then left without buying the items.

By 1964 the chapter’s actions had convinced management to agree to start hiring more African Americans at Bon Marché, Safeway, J.C. Penney, A&P, Wonder Bread, Frederick & Nelson, Nordstrom, and other stores. By the end of 1964, Seattle CORE claimed that its actions had resulted in the hiring of more than 250 white-collar employees. In terms of the number of jobs opened to African Americans, Seattle CORE was one of the most successful chapters in the nation.

Despite initial jubilation, many Seattle CORE members began to see their gains as minor compared to the employment discrimination that still existed. Thus the chapter began Operation DEEDS (Drive for Equal Employment in Downtown Stores), one of the most ambitious programs ever undertaken by a CORE chapter. DEEDS was a boycott of the entire downtown shopping area in October 1964, with a demand for 1,200 jobs for African Americans. Members quickly became frustrated when they were unable to obtain their ambitious goal, even though the results of this project compared favorably with previous campaigns.

Housing discrimination was another target of the chapter. Late in 1963, Seattle CORE conducted “Operation Windowshop” which encouraged blacks to look for housing outside the Central District. On designated weekends, CORE encouraged African Americans to visit realtors and attend open houses to try to move into white neighborhoods. However, many homeowners and members of the real estate industry were adamantly opposed to housing integration. As a result, many “for sale” signs came down and many realtors closed their businesses on Operation Windowshop weekends. Seattle CORE then lobbied the city council to pass an open-housing ordinance. When that effort failed, it tried to pass an open-housing referendum in 1964, which the local realtors’ association fought vigorously. Seattle voters soundly rejected the measure in eleven of twelve voting districts.

Following the defeat of the open-housing ordinance, Seattle CORE turned to direct action protests to fight housing segregation. In March 1964, it began sit-ins at the Picture Floor Plans Company, one of the local real estate firms accused of discouraging African Americans from buying homes in white neighborhoods. This protest signaled a change in the actions of the chapter’s membership in a way that seemed out-of-line with CORE’s rules of conduct. For the first time, many CORE protesters chanted and sang, shouted insults, and pushed and shoved when a locked door was opened to admit a customer. When a salesperson grew hostile and struck a demonstrator, the chapter suspended the protests. The next day a court injunction halted all picketing against realtors.

The actions of protesters at the Picture Floor Plans Company demonstrated the internal divisions that were taking shape within Seattle CORE as well as the national organization itself. Like other local chapters, Seattle CORE maintained a relatively small membership, which was partly by design. Seattle CORE had a “closed membership” policy which meant that people could only receive active memberships after serving a probationary period, participating in action projects, receiving approval from two-thirds of the chapter, and committing themselves to following the CORE rules of conduct. As a result of such stringent requirements, the membership of Seattle CORE usually remained below fifty. One of the reasons that CORE remained so effective was that its sympathizers, who contributed money and participated in demonstrations, outnumbered active members of the chapter. However, with each successive victory more people wanted to join the ranks of the organization and the chapter grew in size through 1964. Some members complained about this growth, arguing that the organization was getting too large and that it was becoming too easy for people to join. The rise of Black Power ideology by 1965 influenced many younger members of the chapter, who believed more fervently in retaliation than in non-violent resistance, and who were less willing to accept white integration in the organization.

Dissidents within CORE, who more readily accepted Black Power, formed themselves into the Ad Hoc Committee and even rented their own office. They were the ones who had inaugurated the confrontations at the Picture Floor Plans Company and had allegedly escalated confrontation at the A&P shop-in. Members of the Ad Hoc Committee accused the chapter leaders of being “too respectable” and not militant enough. When the chapter called off the Picture Floor Plans Company protests, dissident members tried to defeat the leadership in the next election. After failing, members of the committee withdrew from CORE and planned to function as a ghetto-oriented institution, but soon disintegrated. However, their departure did not end the chapter’s internal problems, as many members began leaving the organization. By 1965 Seattle CORE had a membership of only 65, compared to over 200 the year before.

Seattle CORE faced the same problems that were confronting the national organization and chapters across the country. While African Americans held most of the top leadership positions, CORE had always been a multiracial organization. In Seattle and in many other cities with a relatively small black population, it was not uncommon for the membership to include more whites than blacks. Although this issue was not the major one that split Seattle CORE in the mid 1960s, it did become a factor after the 1967 national CORE convention which deleted the word “multiracial” from its constitution. Seattle chairperson John Cornethan publicly criticized this action and declared that it was an effort to drive out white supporters. Dissidents Frances White and Les McIntosh seized on this opportunity to oust Cornethan from his post and then made Seattle CORE the city’s first civil rights group to embrace Black Power. After this event, most whites disappeared from the organization, which continued its decline until its end in 1970.

Despite internal rifts, Seattle CORE managed to continue anti-discrimination campaigns until the late 1960s. In the summer of 1965, it started running “Freedom Patrols” to follow police officers and monitor their behavior. In the spring of 1966 it led a two-day boycott of Seattle public schools to protest de facto segregation of schoolchildren. In the same year it also protested discrimination by labor unions, particularly the Building Trades Union which represented construction workers.