The Seattle Opportunities Industrialization Center, or SOIC (pronounced "So I see") was established in 1966, largely through a grant from the Office of Economic Opportunity, the federal agency funding "war on poverty" programs. Modeled after the original OIC started by a Philadelphia minister two years earlier, the community-based program recruited, trained and placed unemployed people in the labor market. The program grew, and a new four-story building at 22nd Ave. S. in the Central District was built in 1974, more than doubling capacity. SOIC's diversified funding and its accreditation saved the school from the financial collapse experienced at the beginning of the 1980s by many similar institutions, but it could not survive the federal government's rapid and drastic cutback of funding around 1983 and 1984. The Seattle Opportunities Industrial Center closed in August 1986.
This photo shows Rex Jones, executive director of SOIC, at a blackboard preparing a group of job trainees for management positions. Rex D. Jones (1921-1994) was the executive director of SOIC from 1966-1970. He went on the manage the Black-owned Active Mortgage and Escrow Company, serving prospective Black homeowners in Seattle's Central Area. Prior to resigning from SOIC, Jones served for five years as associate director in charge of employment at the Seattle Urban League. Before that, he was a field representative for the State Board of Discrimination for five years. Earlier, he served as pastor of the Bethlehem Baptist Church in Tacoma.
Caption information source: http://archiveswest.orbiscascade.org/ark:/80444/xv41479 Caption information source: "Rex Jones Quites as Head of Training Center," The Seattle Times, February 5, 1970, p. 9; "Central Area Roots Give Firm Advantage," Seattle Times, November 15, 1970, p. 43. Caption information also derived from captions written by Post-Intelligencer staff and attached to the back of the photograph.
