Reported by Cesar Canizales

“Behind us is the land that we owned,” said John Houston, as he pointed at a neighborhood in the Highlands in Renton. 

This is not how he and the Houston family members expected their lives to turn out.

“It was swampy land, but it was home, land owned by my parents,” said Houston, who is almost 70 years old. “It’s kind of heartbreaking to see it now, and realize the dreams that my parents had.”

Houston and his two remaining siblings are fighting for reparations from the Renton School district, which bought their parents’ nearly 10 acres of land under threat of eminent domain in 1968 for $44,000.

The district said back then that it needed to build a new school to accommodate an expanding population fueled by Boeing’s growth in the area.

It purchased 10 additional acres from two other families, one white and one black, to build Apollo Middle School. It paid a total of $92,000 for the 20 acres.

The new school was never built. Boeing began laying off workers in 1969 and the early 1970s in what is known as the “Boeing Bust.”

Twelve years later, in 1980, the district sold the 20 acres of land to developers for nearly $187,000 – more than double what it had paid. The houses that now occupy the land have contributed millions of tax dollars to the city and the school district over the decades.

Houston said his parents’ land was supposed to be passed on to him, his siblings, and all their descendants.

“They had it set up for us,” said Houston. “Generational wealth is talked about a lot these days-- how families pass on things to their children, their grandchildren. And that was taken away from us.”

Houston and his older brother James spoke to Converge Media about their family’s history and their struggle for justice.

Their grandparents were slaves. Their parents were sharecroppers in 1940s Louisiana. Their father, George, fled that state because he was accused of disrespecting a white woman, a dangerous accusation in those days, and he was being persecuted, Houston said. 

“Although he hopped trains most of the way, he made it to Bremerton, Washington. He had heard from others that in the Naval shipyard in Bremerton was hiring Black men. So that's how, how he got here.”

Their father had a third-grade education and could barely write or read. Their mother had a seventh-grade education. 

By 1953, when John Houston was born, his parents had saved enough money to buy some land in Renton, on what was then 132nd street and it is now known as Union Avenue. 

“My dad, you know, he didn't want to work for anybody because he didn't have no education,” said James Houston, 73. “He was Black. It was the fifties, early fifties -- a bad time for a Black man in this country. And he knew if he had some land, that he could take care of his family.”

It was one of the few areas where Black people were allowed to buy land due to redlining.

“There was actually a sundown rule law here. After sundown, Black people were harassed if they were caught downtown. It was pretty bad,” said John Houston.

The Houstons cleared the land by hand and made it into a working farm. 

“Mostly, we raised pigs, cows, chickens, sold eggs. We sold pork. My dad also tore down buildings, had a demolition business, if you will, where we tore down buildings and salvaged the lumber, resold the lumber, bricks, windows.”

“We always had chicken,” said the older Houston, James. “We always had food because we lived off that land.”    

George Houston also used the land to strip the steel, copper and other metals from old trucks—all to make a living for his family.

In 1956, the Houston family home burned to the ground. One of George Houston’s demolition clients gave him a house that he moved to the farm. 

In the 1960s, Renton was growing, which led the Renton School District to expand. 

In the mid 1960s, the district started searching for land to build a new middle school. It targeted the Houston farm and home, and two adjacent properties across the street from Honeydew Elementary. 

The Houston brothers said the district offered to buy the land several times during this period, but their parents refused.

“They started coming at dad -- my mom and dad about our property and saying they needed our property to build a school,” said James Houston. “My mom and dad said, ‘No, this is how we live and make our living. We live off this land.’ They said no.”

Documents provided by the school district back up the brothers. Those papers also show that the district was preparing to take the land through eminent domain.

“And then here they come back again. ‘We want your property. We can force you to sell it, you know,” is how James Houston retells the story. “And that's where my mom and dad was first told about this eminent domain and stuff. They didn't know what that meant. They, you know, they didn’t know anything…seventh-grade education – mom; third-grade education for dad.” 

Racial tensions were also high in the area during that tumultuous era. A suspicious fire burned the Houstons’ second house around 1965.

John Houston had been out with a friend at a Seattle Totems hockey game and remembers the incident. He said his friend and his dad were about to drop him off at the house. 

“All I saw was steam, and the fire was out. But I saw the flashing lights. It was raining. I'll never forget that. That sight just steam coming up and flashing lights. And we looked around, didn't see anybody,” said Houston. 

Jerry Evans was the friend who had gone to the game with John. 

“Right away, we noticed that there was a fire truck, a smaller, not a big, big fire truck, but a couple of those aid cars and things like that at the door. And we could tell that there was still a fire going on at the Houston residence towards the front porch area,” said Evans.

Evans said his father spoke to one of the volunteer fire department members who was there.

“That's when they said it looked like it was a firebomb or an accelerant that had started the fire towards the front porch area,” said Evans. “My father was a very quiet man, but you could tell he was emotional and upset. We had the opportunity on the way home to talk about it.

He mentioned that, ‘You know, things in the world aren't all right for a lot of the minorities right now.’”

Mike Bronson met John for the first time that night. He said his mother saw a glow in the sky from their house nearby, so they drove there to see what was happening. 

“We didn’t know who it was. We saw it was a Black family. We saw the house was fully engulfed, and my mom just pops out of the car, and she's running into the house, bringing the kids out, getting them in the car. I mean, they were smoking, and it was quite--quite a scene.”

The school district continued to pressure the Houstons to sell the land under the threat of eminent domain. They refused the offers.

With racial tensions mounting, matters got worse. Around 1967 or 68, there was an explosion at the Houston home. 

James Houston was staying at a friend’s house that night. His friend’s father took James to his parents’ home immediately. 

“When I got up there, it was the worse sight, you know, it was just terrible – my family, my mom's crying. My dad, he's cursing. I saw there was a hole in the wooden porch. The bottom part of the door, it was gone. And the metal thing across, it was all bent and stuff, you know, and it was just terrible,” said James Houston.  

In 1968, under the threat of eminent domain, the Houstons gave up and sold the land to the Renton School District.

The father, George, who had a third-grade education, signed the document with an “x.”

Within a few years, the parents separated and divorced. George Houston moved to Moses Lake, where he died in 1973. 

Rachael Houston stayed in Renton so her children could stay in their schools. She worked multiple jobs to stay afloat. She died in 1998.

“I'm 69 years old. I have leukemia. I'm legally blind. I still work. I own a small business, and I shouldn't be working,” said John Houston. “My mom shouldn't have died penniless. My mom literally died penniless.”

Stay tuned for part 2 of this story tomorrow