CORE, the Congress of Racial Equality, was founded in Chicago in 1942. It played a key national role in the Civil Rights Movement, launching a variety of actions towards racial equality for African Americans. The Seattle CORE chapter, founded in the late 1950s, grew increasingly active by the early 1960s. Inspired by the sit-in movement and freedom rides in the South, Seattle CORE actively called attention to the city’s pervasive practices of school segregation and discrimination in employment and housing.
In 1964, the Port of Seattle asked that the Washington State Board of Discrimination investigate CORE’s charge that the Farwest and Graytop taxi companies had no African American drivers. The companies served Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, a part of the Port of Seattle, and discrimination was against the airport’s hiring policy. The Board’s August 1964 report revealed that neither Farwest nor Graytop had Black drivers, and neither had plans to hire any. CORE produced bumper stickers calling for a boycott of the two companies.
Caption information source: The Seattle Daily Times, July 24, 1964, August 11, 1964.
Physical Description: 1 bumper sticker ; 17 x 3.75 in.
Additional Information: Digital copy of this item available thanks to funding from a 2016 Institute for Museum and Library Services grant. Metadata updated as part of a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services administered by the Library Services and Technology Act, through the Washington State Library, a division of the Office of the Secretary of State.
