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 called attention to the city’s pervasive practices of school segregation and discrimination in employment and housing.
On October 4, CORE and eight civil rights and religious organizations held a Jobs Rally at Mount Zion Baptist Church, in Seattle’s Central District. Some 250 people listened as members of the Drive for Equal Employment in Downtown Seattle (DEEDS) pushed for more jobs in the downtown area to be opened to African Americans. Speakers urged a boycott of downtown businesses unless 200 jobs were available by October 17. DEEDS pushed for 12,000 jobs to be opened to minority groups within the next six months. On October 15, CORE announced that a boycott would begin the following week. This October 1964 poster announces the rally at the Mount Zion Baptist Church.
Caption information source: The Seattle Daily Times, October 5 and October 15, 1964.
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.
