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Seattle’s Civic Unity Committee (CUC), a primarily white civil rights organization, lobbied for civil rights laws and sought to persuade the white community not to discriminate. A large-scale migration of blacks to Seattle during the Second World War increased racial tensions, prompting Seattle Mayor William Devin to create the CUC in 1944. Devin appointed prominent business, civic, religious, and labor leaders to the CUC--seven white men, two white women, two black men, and one Chinese-American man in all--but pointedly refused to select anyone seen as “left-wing.” The CUC negotiated with a number of firms that refused to hire blacks, but generally failed to end the discrimination. The CUC did, however, play a major role in ensuring that the return of interned Japanese Americans to Seattle went peacefully. The CUC ran employment and rental referral services for returning Japanese Americans and convinced local newspapers to condemn anti-Japanese discrimination.

When the fear of racial violence ebbed after the war, Mayor Devin cut the CUC’s ties with city government. The CUC reorganized as a private organization, funded by the King County Community Chest and by members’ donations. The number of members generally hovered around 1,000.

When Congress killed the national Fair Employment Practices Committee in 1946, the CUC turned its attention to passing a state-level job discrimination law. The CUC spun off a sister organization, the Washington State Fair Employment Practices Committee (later called the Washington State Committee Against Discrimination in Employment). While the Urban League wanted blacks to take a prominent role in a well-publicized anti-job discrimination campaign, the CUC and its sister group preferred to focus only on the legislature and to use white lobbyists. The CUC’s tactics seemed to fit the conservative political climate of the time; in 1949 the CUC and its allies convinced the legislature to create the Washington State Board Against Discrimination in Employment (later named the Washington State Board Against Discrimination (WSBAD). WSBAD had the power to investigate complaints, subpoena records, issue orders to stop discrimination, and enforce its orders in court. CUC lobbying later won laws banning discrimination in public accommodations (1953) and in publicly-funded housing (1957). While the CUC admired WSBAD’s attempts to use quiet negotiations rather than lawsuits or negative publicity to end discrimination, the Seattle National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and Urban League were furious at what they saw as a “do nothing” policy. These groups recommended that WSBAD denounce firms that refused to comply with anti-discrimination orders, and thought the agency should publicize the prevalence of racial discrimination in general. These policies were implemented by Democratic Governor Albert Rossellini’s appointees to WSBAD after 1957.

The CUC tried to combat racism in the white community with a number of techniques. They published a semi-monthly newsletter, Fair Play, which ran upbeat stories about improvements in race relations. The CUC sent its trustees to talk to civic organizations about discrimination. From 1948 to 1953 the CUC and the University of Washington sponsored an annual Northwest Institute on Race Relations. The Institute hired a prominent speaker to give a number of speeches to college and high school students and to do radio interviews. Lack of funds in 1954 and thereafter led the CUC to cancel the Institute and just hire a speaker to talk at a different high school each year.

The CUC shifted its focus to housing issues in the 1950s. The CUC was the primary force in the creation of the Greater Seattle Housing Council, a group which included construction companies, realtors, and civil rights activists. The CUC intended this group to promote dialogue and convince the real estate industry to voluntarily adopt open housing policies. Realtors, however, proved unwilling to change. When Washington’s law barring discrimination in publicly-funded housing was declared unconstitutional in 1962, the CUC joined the NAACP and the Urban League in sponsoring a blanket open housing law for all of Seattle. The CUC convinced the Seattle City Council to create a Human Rights Commission (now called the Human Rights Division) to draft an open housing law. Former CUC President Alfred Westberg chaired the Commission. The CUC lobbied the open housing law past a number of parliamentary roadblocks in City Council, but opponents collected enough signatures to put the new law to a referendum. Although the CUC conducted a vigorous campaign, fully 68 % of Seattle voters opposed the ordinance in the March 1964 election. This defeat disheartened the CUC, leading many members to conclude that their critics in other civil rights organizations were right--perhaps efforts to persuade white people not to discriminate had outlived their usefulness. The CUC disbanded soon after the election. Some CUC trustees joined Seattle’s primarily black-led civil rights groups, and some went to work for the Seattle Human Rights Commission.

The president and the executive secretaries who served the organization are as follows:

Presidents:

Executive Secretaries: