Saturday, February 16, 2013

BlackPast.org Blog: Langston Hughes Performing Arts Institute: 40 Years of Black Performing Arts History in Seattle, Washington

[Photo credit: Synagogue Bikur Cholim: Washington State Jewish Historical Society]

BlackPast.org Blog
Saturday, February 16, 2013


Editor's note: today's blog post is written by guest blogger Lisa Myers Bulmash

It is nice to point out heroes of color during Black History Month, like legendary poet/playwright/author Langston Hughes, but as readers of the Black Past blog well know, black history is something everyday people create, every day. For the past four decades, the Langston Hughes Performing Arts Institute (LHPAI) has created performing arts history vital to the Seattle African American community. 

The Institute seems to have always been part of the Central Area, and, in a way it has: its landmark building was originally erected as the Chevra Bikur Cholim congregation's synagogue and dedicated in 1915. At that time, the Central Area was a mostly Jewish neighborhood with some residents of black, Japanese, and Scandinavian heritage.

More black people began to move to Seattle during World War II, but were restricted to the Central Area by job and housing discrimination. It took long-term challenges from dozens of Seattle civil rights activists and thousands of demonstrators and protestors of all racial backgrounds in the 1960s for the city and state to improve housing, educational and recreational opportunities for blacks and other people of color.

By the late 1960s many of these activists sought a chance to establish a cultural center in the Central Area.  That chance arrived in 1968. The congregation of Bikur Cholim sold its synagogue to the City of Seattle as many of its members migrated out of the area south to Seward Park and east to Mercer Island and other suburbs. In 1969 Seattle’s leading anti-poverty organization, the Central Area Motivation Project (CAMP), utilized federal funding to help create the Langston Hughes Cultural Arts Center in an unusual partnership with the City of Seattle.

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