Facing the past

Racial restrictions still on the books in some Basin neighborhoods

MOSES LAKE — When you buy a home, there are often neighborhood covenants that come with the property. Sometimes you have to have your house set a certain distance back from the street, or you can’t put up a shed as a second residence, or you can’t run certain kinds of business out of the house. And on paper, at least, sometimes you have to be white to live there. “Starting in the mid-20th century in eastern Washington, and earlier in some other places, developers began adding racial restrictions,” said Dr. Larry Cebula, a professor of history at EWU and managing director of the project. “These typically read ‘only members of the white or Caucasian race will live here.’ There’s usually a kind of codicil saying ‘excepting servants thereof.’ So if you had a servant who was a person of color, they could live there. Most of the racial covenants we find in eastern Washington reads like that. Sometimes there’s a list of who can’t live there: ‘No Negros may live here,’ ‘no members of the Asiatic race,’ – something like that. The language varies, but it’s usually only whites.” ...