The way to end poverty is to end the exploitation of the poor. ... We must recognize that the problems of neither racial nor economic justice can be solved without a radical redistribution of political and economic power. . . . Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., 1967
The Black Dollar Task Force is a 501(c)(3) organization founded in Seattle, Washington in November of 1988 with the intent of promoting the principles of self-help and self-determination through economic justice. The members and supporters of the Task Force are confident in our movement to decrease social service dependency through the revitalization of our community.
We firmly believe that national and local policy regarding America's inner-cities will be forced to change as people refuse to continue to accept handouts and displacements as an acceptable way of conducting business in the inner-city. To this end all Task Force programs are designed with community empowerment and dignity in mind.
All approaches to development are rooted in the organized community and safeguards are put in place to prohibit developers from using community-based development organizations to achieve their own self-interests.
Understanding the critical need for cooperative efforts, the Task Force brings together low-income African Americans who suffer from societal neglect; members of the Jewish faith who suffer from hate crimes and desire to bridge the gap between our races; those of European and Asian decent who have recently moved into the geographical boundaries of the inner city; and all those who have long proclaimed that as long as one societal group remains disproportionately locked out of this country's opportunities, we are all locked out.
The Task Force brings the community together and asks each participant what they can contribute to their own empowerment. We know that African Americans have extraordinary gifts, resources and intelligence, and that African Americans must be at the front of combating their community problems.
Approach to Organizing and Development.
In designing the Black Dollar Days Task Force as an organization that embodies both traditional community organizing and development, our founders courageously set forth on the road to redefining legitimate community-based development. We have been successful in our community.
As community developers we establish people-based institutions that house development professionals who achieve the goals set forth. As community organizers we mobilize structures that protect the people from the institutions we create. Restated: Most often, qualified developers generally do not have the capacity to create grassroots institutions from which to operate.
The sins of the past have shown us that a large percentage of community development efforts have been created in a manner which feathers the nest of the developer and outside speculators, as opposed to providing wholistic economic development to serve the needs of the people.
The Black Dollar Days Task Force approaches development through a four-step process:
- Going to the people
- Creating the institution
- Hiring expertise to run the institution
- Subjecting the institution to monitoring systems of the people
Thus, authentic, people-based institutions are born with people-based coalitions in place to safeguard the interests of the community.
07-BDDTF-Brochure.pdf
"Building Community Responsibility for Economic Prosperity"
Seven Community Values ~ SHAREFC* manifest our mission statement:
- Sharing - Communities working together to enhance quality of life.
- Humor - Celebrating humor in our challenges.
- Accountability - How will our actions impact us and others?
- Respect - To uphold the dignity of every individual and our community.
- Education - A commitment to continuously improve ourselves by learning new ways of being and doing.
- Faith - The belief that we can transcend our limitations and be unwavering in our achievements.
- Creativity - The ability to be resourceful and innovative in moving forward!
The fundamental principals around which the Black Dollar Days Task Force is developed are:
- The belief that business growth and development must be a priority for all efforts to economically enhance our inner cities.
- Inner-city residents must be considered as customers who are served at their individual level of need -- there is no creaming. Every person has value and that value is essential to the 21st century economy.
- The belief that community is empowered when its institutions and its citizens are united around the common goal of economic justice for all people. We seek to address the following question in all of our programming: How can we advocate for social justice and create financial capacity simultaneously?
The struggle of the Black Dollar Days Task Force is a legitimate struggle for true democracy in America. In 1928 W.B. DuBois argued, "when democracy fails for one group in the United States, it fails for the nation..." DuBois continued by quoting President Lincoln who said, "It is as true today as it ever was that the nation cannot exist half slave and half free." More than seven decades later, we remain a nation "half slave and half free" due to the binding constraints of economic blockades against people of color in this country. It is the desire of the Black Dollar Days Task Force to remove those blockades and open channels of access to this nation's wealth for the purpose of community self-determination. Our purpose for practicing community-based economic development is to promote self-determination.
The Black Dollar Task Force defines community as people who are held together by common self-interest and by how they spend their money. The end effect of all community must be group self-sufficiency.
Thus, even though geographic boundaries generally are a primary indicator of community, we believe that common self-interest and economic inter-dependence are the real factors that define authentic community. Therefore, these are the factors that must now be structured to create community for those who have been historically left out.
For, throughout the entire history of this country, people have been shunned simply due to their ethnic heritage, religious belief and sexual preference. The creation of authentic community does not now, and cannot in the future, mean community isolation. Self-help or community self-sufficiency does not mean being alone; it means being whole.
Goals
- These goals are accomplished by uniting the community, the church, and business around the issue of economic equal opportunity.
- To create a cooperative relationship between business development and community organizing.
- To regain the dignity of the African American community through corporate community economics.
- To create a structured opportunity for full and sustainable employment for African American people.
- To create structures that guarantee equal benefit from corporate and government reinvestment in the inner-cities.
- To create an economic base that enhances the solidarity of deprived communities.
Strategies
- Self-Help
"Use what you have to get what you want." We take seriously our need to organize in order to best leverage effectively the power of our consumer dollars.
- Institutional Development
We create institutions that are protected by the balance of power which exists after uniting the church, the community, and business.
- Reinvestment in the Community
The creation of community-sensitive institutions provides an equitable base for government and corporate investment. This principle of investment values partnership over dependency.
Methodology
Step One
Understand and demonstrate the fact that most of our problems are economic based.
Step Two
Come to grips with the fact that we have the means to help ourselves.
Step Three
Create a means by which we educate others and draw the community, the church, and the business world together.
Step Four
Create programs that demonstrate that change can take place, given the opportunity.
Step Five
Begin to create structures that change the way other people relate to our community, once the community has awakened to its own power.
The rich legacy that African American residents have contributed to the growth and development of King County has been felt throughout the region for 150 years. Here are the histories of a few of the many people and events that shaped our heritage from the arrival of the first African American settlers through the early 20th century.
Pioneers on the Puget Sound: When the first non-native settlers arrived in the Puget Sound region in the 1850s, African Americans were among the early pioneers. African-born Manuel Lopes was Seattle's first African American settler, arriving in the young town in 1852. Lopes became the community's first barber and had his barber chair shipped by sea from Boston. His shop was just south of what is now known as Pioneer Square Park and Pergola.
William Grose, the city's second black resident (and eventually its wealthiest during the 19th century) arrived in 1861. Grose opened a restaurant and hotel called Our House near today's Pioneer Square. But after the fire of 1889, he moved to his 12-acre ranch northeast of downtown (near today's 24th and Howell streets) and formed the nucleus of one of the city's most important early African American residential districts.
Although many early black settlers purchased land near modern downtown, African Americans like Grose were pioneer developers of outlying districts, too. In 1869, for example, George Riley purchased 12 acres of timberland on Beacon Hill to help develop an early suburban housing tract.
African Americans were an important part of the early business community. However, discrimination in employment limited job possibilities to such positions as manual laborers, porters and maids. As a result, many Africans Americans began their own businesses.
By the 1890s, these businesses included a number of free-standing enterprises, like Robert and Anna Clark's dairy, and by 1910 there were commercial districts like the series of black-owned businesses on East Madison Street which included a lodging house, coal business, and restaurant. Other residents found employment in a variety of fields, from railroad porter and steamship cook to carpenter and newspaper editor.
Horace Cayton arrived in 1889 and established the Seattle Republican, which for 19 years was a leading voice for civil rights and, for a time, the city's second-largest newspaper. As Robert O. Lee, the first African American admitted to the Bar in Washington State, wrote in 1889, some residents chose Seattle because they were seeking a place "where race prejudice would not interfere with his prosperity."
Building a Community: As the African American community grew, so did local institutions like churches, fraternal lodges, and civic clubs. In fact, two of the oldest churches in the state are houses of worship started by early Seattle African American congregations. The First African Methodist Episcopal Church evolved from a Sunday school that first met in 1886, and Mt. Zion Baptist was founded in members' homes in 1894. Meanwhile, in 1891, William Grose, Dr. Samuel Burdett, and Conrad Rideout established the Grand Lodge of York Masons in Seattle. In March of the following year, lodge members paraded downtown in full regalia, establishing an annual tradition.
Seattle was also a center of arts and entertainment. Jazz had its local roots in Jackson Street in the 1920s and 30s, where several black-owned clubs hosted such musical luminaries as Duke Ellington, Sarah Vaughn, Louis Armstrong, and Lionel Hampton. These stars would join local musicians, often playing Jackson Street after engagements at larger downtown venues. Between the businesses and the entertainment, the neighborhood was sometimes compared to Chicago's State Street or Memphis's Beale Street.
Seattle has long been known as a theater town, and one of the most extraordinary theater endeavors was the vibrant Seattle Negro Federal Theatre, a federally funded project established at the University of Washington in 1936. The company of black actors, singers and dancers featured innovative plays that focused on the African American experience.
Black builders were also at work at the turn of the century. For example, builder Charles Harvey arrived in 1887, and builder E. R. James and his architect son Harry were in practice in the early 20th century.
Obstacles and Opportunities: By 1900, as the city's population grew, various restrictions-both formal and informal-began to hinder opportunities. One example can be seen in the platting of the Mt. Baker residential area in 1900, which included restrictions on people of color. But shortly thereafter, an African American resident, Susie Stone, sued to open the residential tract to all, finally winning in the State Supreme Court in 1911 and building her house in the neighborhood.
Job discrimination, practiced by both unions and employers, was a serious problem. In 1917, in the midst of the wartime boom, the Negro Business Men's League of Seattle wrote: "There is a disposition to prevent us from participating in this promised prosperity wave (but)...there are many opportunities in and about Seattle awaiting... including corner grocery stores, shoe repair shops, market stalls, truck gardens, and henneries in the suburbs, berry farms and small dairies in the country as well as other small enterprises." Indeed, African Americans found employment and created businesses in all these areas. And in 1909, the first black military officer in Seattle arrived at Fort Lawton.
Beyond Seattle
African American settlers lived outside Seattle from the earliest years. African Americans especially played an important role in the county's early mining industry as well as operating truck farms and berry farms. Here are a few examples:
Kent: The year of statehood, 1889, saw the first African American resident in the small farming town of Kent. William Scott operated a successful truck farm where he raised vegetables for the Seattle markets. In 1890, the region's first celebration of Juneteenth Day (celebrating the June 19, 1865 order that all workers must be paid for their labors, thus strengthening the earlier Emancipation Proclamation) was held in Kent, drawing celebrants from Tacoma and Seattle.
Federal Way: A Civil War veteran and his wife-John and Mary Conna-were among the first settlers of Federal Way, acquiring a 157-acre homestead in 1885. In 1889, Conna became the first assistant sergeant at arms for the new Washington State Senate and sergeant at arms in the 1890 special session of the legislature.
Coal mining towns: In 1891, African American miners arrived in the King County coalfields, moving to the site from the South, Midwest, and other parts of Washington. These industrial workers were engaged in one of the region's most important early industries, and they moved from mine to mine in places like Newcastle, Coal Creek, Ravensdale, and Franklin. The community of black miners numbered more than a thousand by the turn of the century, and their influence was felt in towns like Newcastle and Franklin where African Americans served as school board members, police, jurists, and church leaders. The Colored Baptist Association of Washington was formed at Newcastle in 1900.
Bellevue: At the turn of the century, when Bellevue was a rural community, African Americans from Seattle enjoyed an annual picnic held by the Fraternal Order of the Hawks, a mutual benefit society. Picnickers would board the Leschi ferry in the morning and enjoy a full day of good food, friends and fun.
Renton: African American farmers and miners arrived in Renton in the 1890s. But the population really grew in the 1940s, when the wartime employment boom attracted defense plant workers from throughout the country.
Auburn: Some of the earliest African American residents in Auburn arrived by 1910 and worked in the railroad yards of the community.
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