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Popular stereotypes of Seattle--quirky left-coast outlier, nerdy high-tech hub--overlook bigger, harder truths about its past, & how this city is so much like the rest of America. Here are some sources that informed my most recent piece. THREAD: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/24/opinion/seattle-autonomous-zone-CHOP.html
First and foremost is the Seattle Civil Rights & Labor History Project, a truly remarkable digital archive of primary sources & original research essays created by my colleague Jim Gregory, cofounder @TrevorGriffey, & many @UWHist students past & present http://depts.washington.edu/civilr/
While this piece focused on Black Seattle, this city has always had a significant Asian American population whose experiences are critical to understanding the longer history of racial exclusion & civil rights activism. SCRLHP provides one entry point: https://depts.washington.edu/civilr/Asian%20Americans.htm
Seattle's history is also Native history, as is Native exclusion & fights for civil rights (including another headline-making occupation, of Ft. Lawton/Discovery Park, in 1970). The essential text: Coll Thrush, Native Seattle ( @UWAPress) https://uwapress.uw.edu/book/9780295741345/native-seattle/
The contradictions between Seattle's progressive sense of itself and its far more complex and contested history is a theme running through @matthew_klingle's beautifully crafted environmental history of Seattle, Emerald City ( @yalepress) https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300143195/emerald-city
An essential and extraordinarily rich digital resource on the Black history of Seattle, America, and the world is @BlackPastOnline, created by my colleague @QuintardTaylor https://www.blackpast.org
Another essential digital archive, the Washington Prison History Project, created by my colleague @dnbrgr, documents the history of prisoner activism and policy in this state: https://waprisonhistory.org
Similar histories have shaped other places now known for their progressivism. The urban history of the Bay Area needs its own thread, but right on point here is @RobertSelfNotes landmark study of Oakland and the East Bay, American Babylon: https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691124865/american-babylon
Btw, ALL the above sources are by historians who teach or received graduate training at @UWHist. There's even more great work soon coming out of here on Seattle and the greater PNW. Get ready, bc the dissertations of @sonicbust @mlheslop are 
Faculty across @UW are doing amazing work as well on Seattle and US politics, race, and justice. Here's just a few:
Anything by my colleague @blackbruin ( @PolisciUw) should be required reading, and this piece hits right to the heart of the not-so-progressive reality of this state and region: https://crosscut.com/2016/11/poll-results-washington-state-race-racism
Want to understand the longer history of civil rights and going from protest to politics? Run don't walk to your bookstore or library to pick up a copy of @meganfrancis (also @PolisciUw), Civil Rights & the Making of the American State. http://www.meganming.com/civil-rights-and-the-making-of-the-modern-american-state/
The data in the piece on racial disparities in policing in Seattle is one of the many important contributions of the work of Katherine Beckett of @uw_lsj https://soc.washington.edu/people/katherine-beckett
My colleague @AlexesHarris (UW Sociology) is doing tremendously important work on systemic racial and economic inequities in American political institutions and the legal system. Here's one example: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/03/opinion/alternative-justice-fines-prosecutors.html
All this is part of a larger, longer American urban history. Another historian-created digital resource, Mapping Inequality, illustrates this vividly. Find your city, then think about how these 1930s maps correlate with where wealth and poverty is now. https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/redlining/#loc=5/39.1/-94.58
Many historians have traced this broader history of race and space, inclusion and exclusion, across many institutions and all parts of the country. This reading list gives a sense of the breadth and depth of this literature. I'm indebted to this work. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1iDaVNNGRWYkhjB2CJwrA4j8f8dfimh0vEd93D__mnPo/edit?usp=sharing
Last, let me shout out to the institutions--museums, cultural centers, & more--who maintain this history & bring it to wider audiences. In C19 times, they need your support more than ever. In Seattle some of key those institutions are @naamnw @winglukemuseum @MOHAI @HistoryLink
Thanks, and as always, please add more suggestions and recommendations below! /END.
