Eastern Washington University Historians are Helping Homeowners Make History
David Lieb and his wife, Esperanza, purchased a home in Whitworth’s Morningside Park neighborhood six years ago, moving from Western Washington to raise their three children in Spokane.
Recently Lieb learned that the couple’s property records have something they didn’t bargain for when purchasing their first home: a decades’ old covenant that restricts persons of “any race other than the White or Caucasian race” from living there. The only exception, the covenant says, is for domestic servants.
“We’re not a 100 percent Caucasian family at all. I’m half Japanese, half white and my wife is Mexican,” Lieb said. “Just seeing that on there, it hit us a little bit. It’s very racist to read and to see. The house was built in 1943, so it just blows your mind that they were still using this language only 70-some years ago.”
The racially restrictive covenants aren’t currently enforceable because of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 1948, followed by the adoption of the federal Fair Housing Act of 1968 and legislation in Washington state. The modification document, however, renders them completely void into the future.
Lieb is among dozens of Spokane-area property owners who’ve received help to modify racially restrictive real estate covenants from a team of Eastern faculty and student historians. EWU’S Racial Covenants Project is run by Larry Cebula, professor of history, Tara Kelly, project director and Logan Camporeale, senior consultant, with support from Stacy Warren, GIS Expert, Josue Estrada, Central Washington University lead, and numerous EWU and CWU students.
The team recently joined forces with Spokane County Auditor Vicky Dalton to conduct community workshops that provide an easy, no-cost, way to modify racist property records to make sure they are void and remain unenforceable.
“We’ve been working on this for three years. We’ve spent so much time driving around counties and pulling down dusty old books and working with our partners at UW through the digital documents – and now we’re seeing the effects,” Cebula said.
The EWU Racial Covenants Project, in cooperation with University of Washington’s Racial Restrictive Covenants Project, received state funding through HB 1335 in May 2021.
EWU historians have researched 20 counties in Central and Eastern Washington, discovering 1,409 racially restrictive covenants in master documents that impact property records for thousands of households.
Within Spokane County alone, the team discovered 299 racially restrictive covenants affecting more than 7,000 individual properties, including the entire city of Airway Heights.
The covenants started popping up in the 1920s, with the intention of banning people of different races and ethnicities from living – and even being buried – where they wanted. The covenants cover a multitude of non-white races and ethnicities, extending even to Greeks.
“One of the most interesting things about our research to me is that this was never standard practice. At the time these covenants were written, most developers in Spokane – or really anywhere we’ve worked – didn’t have covenants. It was a very intentional choice of a few people to do this,” Cebula explained.
Cebula says the project has created applied learning opportunities for the nearly 30 EWU students who have been directly involved in research and mapping. Even history students not directly involved in the Racial Covenants Project are researching and writing stories stemming from its findings.
As a student, Rachael Low learned about the racial covenants in class and went on to write a piece about the “free-housing debate” for SpokaneHistorical.org, a site Cebula started several years ago to give students publication experience. After graduating in 2022, Low landed the job of research assistant for the racial covenants team.
“My degree is in history, and I want to go into the museum field and kind of explain hidden parts of history to the public,” Low said. “So, being able to bring this part to light through these workshops is very, very nice.”
The project also has an interdisciplinary aspect as geosciences faculty and students have contributed maps used on the project’s website and for public workshops.
Among those geosciences contributors are Stacey Warren, EWU professor of geography, and student Monique Baxter. They are working toward creating an interactive map that can provide interactive experiences for people across the state.
“We’re moving beyond Spokane County, and we are starting to tackle the other eastern Washington counties’ maps,” Warren said. “This is really interesting from a mapping perspective because each county has its own methods and their own historical way of saving things and communicating things. Every time we go to a new county, it’s like starting over.”
The project has been extra challenging, Warren says, because it utilizes data pre-dating computers. In addition, property boundaries have changed, as well as how latitude and longitude are documented.
“Every day there is some kind of new kind of interesting challenge,” Warren said.
Now in its final phases, the EWU and UW teams have recorded the addresses of 80,000 impacted properties, on both sides of the state, and they are now readily accessible, along with a modification form and instructions by visiting the website.
Cebula’s group even developed a business card (pictured below) with a scannable QR code so that property and homeowners can immediately learn if their deeds were written with restrictive covenants.
So far, the group has held a half dozen workshops to educate the public and assist homeowners. Dalton, who drafted language for the Restrictive Covenant Modification Document used statewide, was there with the team to provide assistance for Lieb.
Within a few quick minutes, they pulled Lieb’s property records, found the exact covenant and accessed the records needed to modify the covenant. Dalton went through the form with Lieb, with the only remaining piece to obtain a notarized signature from his wife.
Lieb, a medical professional whose two sons have gone through EWU’s Running Start program, was grateful for the help, saying, “This is really cool. It feels like they went above and beyond for me today.”
So far, the EWU team has helped more than 50-plus homeowners modify their property records.
“We’ve amended far more racial covenants in the last six months than have ever been amended previously. It feels good to make a difference,” Cebula said.
