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Seattle from the Margins: Exclusion, Erasure, and the Making of a Pacific Coast City
From the origins of the city in the mid-nineteenth century to the beginning of World War II, Seattle's urban workforce consisted overwhelmingly of migrant laborers who powered the seasonal, extractive economy of the Pacific Northwest. Though the city benefitted from this mobile labor force―consisting largely of Indigenous peoples and Asian migrants―municipal authorities, elites, and reformers continually depicted these workers and the spaces they inhabited as troublesome and as impediments to urban progress. Today the physical landscape bears little evidence of their historical presence in the city.
Tracing histories from unheralded sites such as labor camps, lumber towns, lodging houses, and so-called slums, Seattle from the Margins shows how migrant laborers worked alongside each other, competed over jobs, and forged unexpected alliances within the marine and coastal spaces of the Puget Sound. By uncovering the historical presence of marginalized groups and asserting their significance in the development of the city, Megan Asaka offers a deeper understanding of Seattle's complex past.
Seattle from the Margins was made possible in part by a grant from 4Culture's Heritage Program.
Tracing histories from unheralded sites such as labor camps, lumber towns, lodging houses, and so-called slums, Seattle from the Margins shows how migrant laborers worked alongside each other, competed over jobs, and forged unexpected alliances within the marine and coastal spaces of the Puget Sound. By uncovering the historical presence of marginalized groups and asserting their significance in the development of the city, Megan Asaka offers a deeper understanding of Seattle's complex past.
Seattle from the Margins was made possible in part by a grant from 4Culture's Heritage Program.
272 pages, Hardcover
Published September 20, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
November 21, 2022
Excellent reviewing of Seattle’s actual history, one not told in the usual recountings. I was stunned (though I shouldn’t have been) to learn that the north/south divide was there from the beginning and makes me look at my own presence in this city with a more critical and informed eye.
January 24, 2023
I want to re-read this book because it has several historical theses I found compelling and illuminating, and I want to be able to hold the details that support them more clearly.
One is that Seattle was always built to segregate white families from laborers of color, and that present patterns only reflect deliberate and repeated policies meant to reinforce this. Supporting claims have to do with a pattern of migratory labor driving Seattle's wealth all the way into World War II, when Boeing turned its needs towards stationary manufacturing: The book, focusing on the former period, demonstrated that timber and hops farming relied on the seasonal habits of Coastal Salish workers who were used to traveling outside of winter, as well as Asians--Chinese, then Japanese, then Filipino--and white women too.
Asaka asserts that the Duwamish who did not sign on to the various 1855 treaties with the US government--Point No Point, Medicine Creek, and Point Elliott--sought a reservation at the confluence of the Black and Duwamish rivers a few years later in what is now Tukwila, but Seattle industrialists wanted the unsigned Duwamish close and displaced and available to work instead.
All the colonial routes and goals all the way back to the Opium Wars opened routes to and from Asia, both as a source of labor and as a commodity market. Chapters are devoted to Chinese labor in between 1860-1880 which then thinned to industrialists' needs by the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act but who could then seek out the Japanese until the Gentleman's Agreement of 1907 closed off the labor of Japanese men but who could then, in all that xenophobia, rely on Filipino labor as colonial subjects of the United States.
The foundation for the way laborers in Seattle were exploited and segregated and prevented from gaining a threatening foothold was the Yesler Mill and the Mill Street (now Yesler) that cut a line between residential Seattle (white) and the Sawdust in the South end. Generation after generation, laws and policies upheld this division, legally or financially harassing any nonwhites who might cross it.
Meanwhile, Seattle's history reflected that of the nation's, jumping to help or to domesticate white laborers when too unruly or cozy with other workers and therefore both an affront to morality and dangerous as a unionizing potential. How to domesticate? Women!
There are many important stories here, and many useful historical frames for understanding current reality. Sometimes Asaka sounds so academic that I worry about access for my students in particular; but there are also times when all of this precision and preceding historical thought allows Asaka to write with terse and even poetic force.
One is that Seattle was always built to segregate white families from laborers of color, and that present patterns only reflect deliberate and repeated policies meant to reinforce this. Supporting claims have to do with a pattern of migratory labor driving Seattle's wealth all the way into World War II, when Boeing turned its needs towards stationary manufacturing: The book, focusing on the former period, demonstrated that timber and hops farming relied on the seasonal habits of Coastal Salish workers who were used to traveling outside of winter, as well as Asians--Chinese, then Japanese, then Filipino--and white women too.
Asaka asserts that the Duwamish who did not sign on to the various 1855 treaties with the US government--Point No Point, Medicine Creek, and Point Elliott--sought a reservation at the confluence of the Black and Duwamish rivers a few years later in what is now Tukwila, but Seattle industrialists wanted the unsigned Duwamish close and displaced and available to work instead.
All the colonial routes and goals all the way back to the Opium Wars opened routes to and from Asia, both as a source of labor and as a commodity market. Chapters are devoted to Chinese labor in between 1860-1880 which then thinned to industrialists' needs by the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act but who could then seek out the Japanese until the Gentleman's Agreement of 1907 closed off the labor of Japanese men but who could then, in all that xenophobia, rely on Filipino labor as colonial subjects of the United States.
The foundation for the way laborers in Seattle were exploited and segregated and prevented from gaining a threatening foothold was the Yesler Mill and the Mill Street (now Yesler) that cut a line between residential Seattle (white) and the Sawdust in the South end. Generation after generation, laws and policies upheld this division, legally or financially harassing any nonwhites who might cross it.
Meanwhile, Seattle's history reflected that of the nation's, jumping to help or to domesticate white laborers when too unruly or cozy with other workers and therefore both an affront to morality and dangerous as a unionizing potential. How to domesticate? Women!
There are many important stories here, and many useful historical frames for understanding current reality. Sometimes Asaka sounds so academic that I worry about access for my students in particular; but there are also times when all of this precision and preceding historical thought allows Asaka to write with terse and even poetic force.
December 8, 2022
You'll never look at Pioneer Square, the International District, Downtown, Belltown, or Cap Hill in the same way.
Highly, highly recommend this "peak pick" from the Seattle Public Library for anyone interested in the founding of Seattle, and our overwhelming history of racial exclusion. At one time Yesler Way was the North/South dividing line between the haves/have-not's, whites and everybody else, and the stories of Seattle's growth, race, labor, and wealth are fascinating. It's also a pretty easy read - not really academic, which is good.
Highly, highly recommend this "peak pick" from the Seattle Public Library for anyone interested in the founding of Seattle, and our overwhelming history of racial exclusion. At one time Yesler Way was the North/South dividing line between the haves/have-not's, whites and everybody else, and the stories of Seattle's growth, race, labor, and wealth are fascinating. It's also a pretty easy read - not really academic, which is good.
August 13, 2025
Very interesting story - thoroughly researched. However, so much of it was repetitive and the timeline felt disjointed and ending incomplete.
Take first and the last two chapters and you'll have an excellent reader experience.
Take first and the last two chapters and you'll have an excellent reader experience.
December 10, 2023
I've always been a bit frustrated that my last name only reflects a small percentage of my heritage. I'm on this planet thanks to two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, 16 great-great-grandparents, and so on. Of this older generation, 15 last names don't have a future, at least not with me. Even if I had a hyphenated name, I'd still be losing the vast majority of my personal history, at least name-wise.
This book touches upon the theme of erasure in terms of the history of Seattle. Using the examples of reservation development in the 1900s, slum clearance in the 1930s, and Japanese internment in the 1940s, the author talks about how history is simply lost in the process of relocating people. The book made me think quite a bit about Beijing, a city that has undergone rapid change more recently. Anyone there over the age of 45 is most likely unable to find where they grew up - the apartment buildings and neighborhoods of people's childhood simply do not exist anymore.
This book also made me think about another book I've read somewhat recently - the Golden Horde. The author of the Golden Horde had to use a different approach to telling the history of some of the descendants of Genghis Khan. Because their rulers were constantly on the move (off on campaigns to conquer territory or migrating along rivers to provide grazing for their horses and livestock), their history was different than, say, the history of a modern nation-state, with a fixed capital and geographical center.
I found the details of this book fascinating. The history as told through the hops business, the lumber business, and the strawberry business was very useful for understanding why Seattle's early residents were migratory. The history talks about how single men, people of Asian heritage, and mixed race couples often had limited options in where they could live, as the formally developed parts of the city (i.e., northern parts of the city), were reserved for the ideal Seattle resident, i.e., white families.
This book was useful for understanding the present because the "southern district" is still feeling the pressure to change, with the coming of the West Seattle-Ballard Link Extension. There is a lot of passion in the discussion of where the future station should be, and this is not surprising given the history of this area and the constant, sometimes traumatic change, that has been forced upon the residents there.
This book touches upon the theme of erasure in terms of the history of Seattle. Using the examples of reservation development in the 1900s, slum clearance in the 1930s, and Japanese internment in the 1940s, the author talks about how history is simply lost in the process of relocating people. The book made me think quite a bit about Beijing, a city that has undergone rapid change more recently. Anyone there over the age of 45 is most likely unable to find where they grew up - the apartment buildings and neighborhoods of people's childhood simply do not exist anymore.
This book also made me think about another book I've read somewhat recently - the Golden Horde. The author of the Golden Horde had to use a different approach to telling the history of some of the descendants of Genghis Khan. Because their rulers were constantly on the move (off on campaigns to conquer territory or migrating along rivers to provide grazing for their horses and livestock), their history was different than, say, the history of a modern nation-state, with a fixed capital and geographical center.
I found the details of this book fascinating. The history as told through the hops business, the lumber business, and the strawberry business was very useful for understanding why Seattle's early residents were migratory. The history talks about how single men, people of Asian heritage, and mixed race couples often had limited options in where they could live, as the formally developed parts of the city (i.e., northern parts of the city), were reserved for the ideal Seattle resident, i.e., white families.
This book was useful for understanding the present because the "southern district" is still feeling the pressure to change, with the coming of the West Seattle-Ballard Link Extension. There is a lot of passion in the discussion of where the future station should be, and this is not surprising given the history of this area and the constant, sometimes traumatic change, that has been forced upon the residents there.
April 16, 2023
Seattle From the Margins by Megan Asaka 2022 University of Washington Press
This is a sobering, well-written and smartly researched look at how Seattle built itself with natives and immigrants working at a variety of physically demanding agricultural, coal mining, fishing and lumber jobs in an atmosphere of constant displacement and exclusion.
Asaka shows that Seattle played a key role in being a destination for transient workers while city officials largely contained this large, racially changing mobile workforce south of Yesler Way in the “Sawdust”/tenderloin district. And how a big reason Seattle’s founders opposed a Duwamish reservation south of town was to keep them in the workforce.
City officials also supervised the economy of serving the workers residing south of Yesler’s mill (now Yesler Way), where hotels, restaurants and rooming houses were thrown in with brothels and gambling houses in a racial mixing of migrant workers in between jobs or being recruited for one extractive industry or another.
Asaka also shares an interesting and nearly forgotten history about the hop-growing industry of the late 1800s that put the region on the maps, and how the work force changed after Coast Salish harvesters struck for higher wages.
Also of interest is the aggressive recruitment of Scandinavian workers from lumbering and farming communities on the other end of the Great Northern Empire railroad to come to Seattle to offset the influences of the Indigenous and migrant Asian work forces. After the influence of the International Workers of the World (Wobblies) on Scandinavians protesting worker conditions and pay with sometimes violent confrontations, employers hired social scientists who advised the companies to build white-oriented lumber towns to keep workers happy in a reasonably middle-class existence.
Sadly, “Seattle From the Margins” ends with the story of the aggressive planning and execution of redeveloping Profanity Hill into Yesler Terrace that resulted in the removal of a newly renovated Japanese Buddhist church and its local congregation as well as hundreds single and mixed couples who were prevented from living anywhere else in the city. Yesler Terrace’s marriage and citizen requirements ensured no migrant workers were welcome.
This is a sobering, well-written and smartly researched look at how Seattle built itself with natives and immigrants working at a variety of physically demanding agricultural, coal mining, fishing and lumber jobs in an atmosphere of constant displacement and exclusion.
Asaka shows that Seattle played a key role in being a destination for transient workers while city officials largely contained this large, racially changing mobile workforce south of Yesler Way in the “Sawdust”/tenderloin district. And how a big reason Seattle’s founders opposed a Duwamish reservation south of town was to keep them in the workforce.
City officials also supervised the economy of serving the workers residing south of Yesler’s mill (now Yesler Way), where hotels, restaurants and rooming houses were thrown in with brothels and gambling houses in a racial mixing of migrant workers in between jobs or being recruited for one extractive industry or another.
Asaka also shares an interesting and nearly forgotten history about the hop-growing industry of the late 1800s that put the region on the maps, and how the work force changed after Coast Salish harvesters struck for higher wages.
Also of interest is the aggressive recruitment of Scandinavian workers from lumbering and farming communities on the other end of the Great Northern Empire railroad to come to Seattle to offset the influences of the Indigenous and migrant Asian work forces. After the influence of the International Workers of the World (Wobblies) on Scandinavians protesting worker conditions and pay with sometimes violent confrontations, employers hired social scientists who advised the companies to build white-oriented lumber towns to keep workers happy in a reasonably middle-class existence.
Sadly, “Seattle From the Margins” ends with the story of the aggressive planning and execution of redeveloping Profanity Hill into Yesler Terrace that resulted in the removal of a newly renovated Japanese Buddhist church and its local congregation as well as hundreds single and mixed couples who were prevented from living anywhere else in the city. Yesler Terrace’s marriage and citizen requirements ensured no migrant workers were welcome.
March 30, 2023
This book traces the history of migrant and otherwise transitory people in Seattle--Native Americans, Chinese, Japanese, and Filipinos. They were migrants or transitory because in the early days, they moved to where the work was, whether it was harvesting hops (who knew that Western Washington was once known world wide for hop growing?), railroad work, timber harvesting, or strawberry picking. The book's underlying premise seems to be that despite it's bluer than blue reputation, Seattle has not always been a welcoming place for ethnic minorities. The divide between north Seattle and south Seattle goes back to pioneer days, when middle and upper class white people built their houses north of Yesler Way, leaving the area south of Yesler Way to the nonwhites. Of course, by now, the racial covenants that were common in North Seattle are well known. Those who are conversant with Seattle history also know about the law that purported to keep Native Americans out of the city that was named after a Native American chief. But this book delves even deeper to such little known events such as the harassment of Japanese hotel operators who were brazen enough to operate hotels north of Yesler Way by the Seattle Fire Department.
June 20, 2023
Weaves together the experiences of Indigenous Puget Sound peoples, Hawaiians, immigrants from China, Japan, Scandinavia, and the Philippines, Black Americans, and western Europeans around the issues of residence (and exclusion from it), property ownership (and exclusion from it), labor and its organization (and its suppression), and social mobility.
I've lived here nearly half my life, and I didn't know a tenth of it. The book reads like a dissertation adapted for popular consumption, but that's a small price to endure for the rich, rich history it tells. I wish I'd read this 25 years sooner.
I've lived here nearly half my life, and I didn't know a tenth of it. The book reads like a dissertation adapted for popular consumption, but that's a small price to endure for the rich, rich history it tells. I wish I'd read this 25 years sooner.
January 11, 2025
This was an informative look at Seattle's founding through the lens of the incredibly mobile populations serving as laborers. I appreciated a chance to trace the stories of sites around the city and to hear how various demographics were involved in the making place. At times though, it was a little dry, and I was hoping to hear more about the history past the 1940s (though that seemed outside the author's thesis about the nature of the founding and subsequent expansion of the new city).
August 6, 2023
“…the notion that there once existed a better version of Seattle ignores much of the city's actual history..."
Seattle from the Margins was right up my alley: regional historical nonfiction, written by a woman of color, decentering the traditional (read: white supremacist) narrative. It does read like a college text, but if the above is your jam, I'd recommend it.
Seattle from the Margins was right up my alley: regional historical nonfiction, written by a woman of color, decentering the traditional (read: white supremacist) narrative. It does read like a college text, but if the above is your jam, I'd recommend it.
December 29, 2023
Interesting look at Seattle's history from the perspective of labor and migration. A bit dry and written like a dissertation, but still accessible. Much has been said recently about the history of redlining in Seattle, and this book makes clear that housing segregation in Seattle started at the very beginning of white settlement.
Read
July 18, 2024learned a lot about seattle’s history!
im curious to learn more about the sources Asaka used to put all this together. Thankfully, everything is cited extensively so shouldn’t be hard to find. I’m also curious about seeing some of the photos she used, was thinking of trying to see some of them in person (as their locations are also listed).
im curious to learn more about the sources Asaka used to put all this together. Thankfully, everything is cited extensively so shouldn’t be hard to find. I’m also curious about seeing some of the photos she used, was thinking of trying to see some of them in person (as their locations are also listed).
May 9, 2023
This was extremely well done! It may be a niche book for those not in Seattle or Washington state. However, I think anyone interested in history, indigenous peoples, early immigrants and the building of a U.S. city would get something by reading this.
April 13, 2023
Rock on
April 24, 2023
A nice multiracial history of Seattle.
May 5, 2023
Solid premise. Worth reading if you’re interested in Seattle history at the intersection of race and labor. Interesting thoughts, re: migration and landowning as critical disenfranchising tools.
Read
February 24, 2024for school. will not be rating.
Read
December 15, 2024I was hoping for more of a history book than a Black lives matter story
September 22, 2025
Very interesting book about the city’s history and how transient laborers and their exclusion shaped the city.
February 5, 2023
A vital resource for anyone interested in Seattle history
This masterful detailing of Seattle’s origins corrects our long-standing, nostalgic view of old, pre-tech-boom Seattle as an enlightened Shanghai-La. Asaka details the way our city was built by racial minorities (Indigenous peoples, Asian immigrants, Black laborers from elsewhere in the country) who also were forcibly excluded from sharing in the growing city’s growing prosperity. No study, however casual, of Seattle history is anywhere near complete without reading this remarkable book.
This masterful detailing of Seattle’s origins corrects our long-standing, nostalgic view of old, pre-tech-boom Seattle as an enlightened Shanghai-La. Asaka details the way our city was built by racial minorities (Indigenous peoples, Asian immigrants, Black laborers from elsewhere in the country) who also were forcibly excluded from sharing in the growing city’s growing prosperity. No study, however casual, of Seattle history is anywhere near complete without reading this remarkable book.
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews