By Aaron Allen, The Seattle Medium
Last Saturday, Africatown Community Land Trust (ACLT), a non-profit organization dedicated to acquiring, developing land assets, and stewarding those land assets that are necessary for the Black and African diaspora, held its annual State of Africatown. This ten-year tradition brings the community and its leaders together to reflect on a decade of empowering Seattle’s Black community.
State of Africatown provides a forum for community members, political leaders, media, and grassroots changemakers to come together and address over 250 community stakeholders on the state of the Black union. The forum started in 2013 as a listening session for newly-elected Seattle Mayor Ed Murray and has since expanded to include the full community as a highly anticipated annual gathering. Ten years later, the State of Africatown 2023 closed out Black History Month by looking into the future and celebrating a decade of strategically realizing the vision of a thriving Black Seattle.
“The State of Africatown is asset-based and solution-oriented,” said ACLT CEO K. Wyking Garrett. “We don’t just highlight problems; we start with the future. We lift up important work that is happening to get us there. Of course, we acknowledge the obstacles and barriers, but we don’t focus on them.”
“This is the tenth year of coming together. Ten years ago, Dawn Mason and I put together this platform to lift up the brilliance, solutions, and self-determination of our community,” added Garrett. “This platform is for elected officials and policymakers to hear from changemakers about what’s working and what’s needed to move us towards realizing the visions of Africatown and a thriving black community.”
Speakers at this year’s event included Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell and Seattle Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Brent Jones.
Over the past 10 years, ACLT has been at the forefront of addressing systemic challenges faced by Seattle’s Black Community, including gentrification and displacement of Central District residents. Through its community-led initiatives, ACLT has successfully acquired and protected affordable housing and commercial spaces, providing a sense of stability and security to the community.
“The Platform is designed for thought leadership,” says Garrett. “It [The State of Africatown] also sets forth a vision of demonstrating progress. From Black Dot to the Liberty Bank building to Africatown Plaza, many projects, over a hundred different community-based initiatives and solutions that changemakers have been highlighting over the last 10 years. The State of Africatown celebrates 10 years of the significant work that has been done.”
The Central District, for generations, had been the living space and business hub for the black community, but for the past several decades, gentrification has diluted the community, splintering and spreading its Black residents all across the Puget Sound.
The legacies left by past generations are deeply rooted in the mission of Africatown to reestablish an African American presence where so many Black people grew up and thrived as a collective community.
“The State of Africatown is highlighting the black business renaissance happening on 23rd and Union, on 23rd and Jackson, and other developments,” says Garrett. “Churches holding their lands and now developing. The Central District had been written off as a place for Black people, that it is kind of a thing of the past, but we have been working, being a vanguard, a voice, trailblazers in terms of charting a different course rooted in the legacy of what previous generations had established.”
