George Houston moved West to achieve the American dream. A home of his own. But in 1968 he was pressured to sell. Like many Black Americans, he lost the chance to create generational wealth.
RENTON, WA – All it took was an X.
The promises of any long-term generational wealth for the Houston family ended when their illiterate father marked his name as an X and signed away the nearly 10-acre property he and his wife had sacrificed to buy and build a home on for their children.
It’s a story all too common in America, particularly among Black folks. Eminent domain, or the threat of its use, has been wielded to acquire the property of Black families – in cities and rural areas alike – allegedly needed for public use. Highways. Sewer lines. Green space. Commercial development. Government buildings.
I say allegedly because in the case of the Houstons, their parents’ property was purchased in 1968 by the Renton School District to erect a new school. It was to be called Apollo Middle School.
It was never built.
Instead, million-dollar homes with three-car garages and manicured lawns now sit on the site where a former sharecropper and a former maid dreamed of the benefits and financial freedom that come with homeownership.
The district paid $44,630 for the Houston parcel after years of threatening condemnation and seizure through eminent domain. Two other properties were purchased – one from a White family in 1968 and one from another Black family acquired in 1969 through eminent domain when negotiations faltered – for a total of 19.65 acres. The final price tag: $92,184.
Not only was the school not built, but the district turned around and sold the land just 12 years later to a private developer for $186,675. That’s the equivalent of more than $771,000 today.
The Houston family had no chance to capitalize on that themselves. No opportunity to use those proceeds to take care of their children.
“Any chance of anything being passed down to their kids and grandkids was just taken,” their son, John Houston, 71, told me. “My mother and father got robbed. Me and my brothers and sisters got robbed. There’s nothing left for us.”
‘They barely missed slavery’
George and Rachel Houston did what so many Black people did in the 1950s – they fled the Jim Crow South in the hopes of building a better life for themselves. They met as youngsters and fell in love. Work hard and be kind, they promised each other on their wedding day.
His father was born sometime around 1907 − there are discrepancies, he says − and his mother in 1914. “They grew up in rural Louisiana. So they barely missed slavery,” he told me. “My father went to the third grade because he had to work in the fields. My mother went to the seventh grade. And I guess back in those days, girls could move a little bit farther in school than the boys.”
George chopped tobacco and sugarcane and picked cotton in the 1920s. Rachel was a maid. In between their demanding work lives, they became parents. But as they aged, Louisiana wasn’t the place where they wanted to raise their children. They wanted so much more – and less – for their offspring. Less racism. Less poverty. Less brutality.
George was particularly motivated to relocate. There was an incident with a White woman who felt offended by how he talked to her. This, mind you, at a time when Black men were killed for talking to White women, killed for looking at White women, killed for having the audacity to just coexist with White women.
Rachel, who first moved to New Orleans, would stay behind in the South, cleaning houses and helping raise White people’s children, along with her own. She was called “a domestic.” George moved to the Pacific Northwest in 1946, hopping trains to get here, to work at the naval shipyards in Bremerton, Washington. It was one of the few employers in the region hiring Black men.
The couple reunited in Washington in 1950, when George thought he had saved enough money to send for his wife and children.
‘…She’s Gone Ahead’
At the time, Renton was the place to be in Seattle – especially if you were Black. It was one of the only Seattle-area locales where Black families could live mostly peacefully and even purchase property.
George was living in various flop houses at the time, traveling an hour to and from work each day. He heard about Renton from his shipyard co-workers and how land was available. Land where he could build a home for his growing family.
So like many of us, the Houstons scraped, pinched and saved what they could to realize America’s dream. And it happened for them – the Houstons bought their land in 1953.
John Houston, the baby of the family, was born in 1953. The same year his parents could finally purchase a home. It was swamp land back then. Not ideal for most people. But for Black Renton, it was a blessing.
Before the 1968 Fair Housing Act, Black and Brown people faced systematic discrimination. Some called it racism. Some called it redlining. Either way, it accomplished the same thing. They were prohibited from renting or owning homes – not just here, but in many areas of the country.
In King County, where Seattle and Renton are located, more than 44,000 homes on the open market had racially restrictive language written into their deeds, according to research by the University of Washington’s Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project.
The National Association of Realtors estimates that of the roughly 20 million acres of land Black people amassed after slavery, 90% of it no longer belongs to Black families.
Owning land or a home is typically what builds generational wealth. It’s something that can be passed on to family members; something that gains equity year after year. A blessing.
But Black households have a fraction of the wealth of White households. This is nothing new. But we now know the why – or at least part of the why.
For example, we’re more aware of property seizures across America and how egregious they were at the time. How these transactions left families with nothing. These were easy targets, land grabs from people who didn’t know or understand their rights.
Because of this, many Black middle-class communities were destroyed across the country. Enclaves they worked so hard to establish were erased for interstates or parks, or schools. Or for nothing at all.
Until they became million-dollar homes. Or million-dollar beachfront escapes.
Their property was taken with little to no recourse. There are many reasons: racism, lack of education, the idea that these folks – many of whom didn’t know how to resist – were still beholden to believing they were less than or knowing they were considered less than.
A Black family’s lost generational wealth
John Houston’s family sold their land, and their chance at generational wealth, under threat of eminent domain to build a school that was never built.
Ramon Dompor for USA TODAY, Jasper Colt
A high-profile California case, in particular, opened many eyes. The property was called “Bruce’s Beach.” It was a sprawling oceanfront resort in Los Angeles County that its Black owners purchased in 1912.
After years of harassment, the Manhattan Beach Board of Trustees took the land in 1924 through eminent domain with plans to build a park. The Bruces’ property was condemned and demolished in 1929.
They were left with nothing. While others frolicked.
Is eminent domain legal? Yes. Did this practice disproportionately harm the Bruces and other Black Americans’ financial future? Also, yes.
The city did nothing with the land and it was transferred to the state of California in 1948. It became a mecca for affluent visitors seeking sun and fun.
After activists heard about the case, the land was returned to the family of Charles and Willa Bruce in 2022. They sold it the following year for $20 million.
That’s not possible for the Houstons.
“I always knew that we got robbed,” Houston told me. “My mother and father got robbed. They said they wanted it for a new middle school – there was a middle school 1 mile from our front door. My brothers and sisters walked to school there. And it was very sparse as far as population at that time. For some reason, they said they needed a new school. They never built a school. And the real kicker is that the population there has quadrupled and they still haven’t built a middle school.”
The Houstons fought to own their home. And after that tiring fight, they fought to keep it. They ultimately lost that battle.
“They worked so hard for it,” John Houston told me. “It breaks my heart.”
Both George and Rachel Houston are buried in Renton’s Greenwood Memorial Park, the same cemetery where rock legend and Seattle native Jimi Hendrix now rests.
Their afterlives look quite different.
Hendrix’s towering and well-maintained monument includes a stone dome with pillars, a giant steel guitar and a portrait of him etched in granite.
His words frame the top of the portrait: The story of life is quicker than the wink of an eye. The story of love is hello and goodbye. Until we meet again.
Fans visit and leave gifts to honor Hendrix: Miniature liquor bottles, guitar picks, rocks, bubblegum, stickers, dried flowers, crystals, a purple lighter, along with a pack of Marlboro menthols, personal notes and photos.
Just a short walk away are the graves of George and Rachel. There are no throngs of well-wishers. Not many people know what these ordinary folks accomplished.
John Houston shows honor, though. He kneels before the graves of both his mother and father.
“Love you.”
“Thank you.”
He uses his hands to pull the slightly overgrown grass around their small markers.
…She’s Gone Ahead, Rachel’s reads.
John Houston bows his head before each grave and cries.
Legally purchased land
On a recent visit, there was an estate sale sign at the corner of Bremerton Ave. NE and NE 7th Pl in Renton advertising for an upcoming weekend. I am immediately curious about what potential high-end finds might be available. I know it’s real, but it’s difficult to imagine this was once the place where the Houston family lived in what most today would consider a shack.
Eastern Renton Highlands, as the neighborhood is known, looks like any other affluent American suburban community. Nice houses. Nice cars. The school district estimates that the homes on the former Houston property are valued at well over $100 million.
John Houston remembers a different Renton – one that also offered amenities to its growing Black population.
“We had our own stores. We had barber shops. We had beauty shops,” Houston told me. “We had a little barbecue place and a little grocery store. Because in the stores at that time, you couldn’t find certain things that these people from the South wanted to buy. So we had our own little grocery store where you could go get certain things.”
Houston wants some restitution for what was once that home, once that neighborhood, once his center of belonging. He’s spent years pleading his family’s case to the Renton School Board and the Renton City Council. Media started to pay attention, as did the state legislature.
Under a new state law, property owners whose land is taken by any Washington school district through eminent domain, or the threat of it, will have the opportunity to repurchase the real estate if the project does not come to fruition.
Senate Bill 5142, or the Houston Eminent Domain Fairness Act, was signed into law by Gov. Bob Ferguson in May. The legislation was inspired by the story of Houston’s family. The bill passed unanimously in both the Senate and the House.
This law will help future families. But it’s not retroactive. The Houstons can’t buy back their parents’ property today. They can’t make the Infiniti disappear from someone’s driveway. They can’t stop that estate sale. This is why John Houston and his siblings seek compensation.
The Houstons had frequent visitors from district and local officials during their 15 years living there. They were trying to convince the family to sell their property, John Houston told me.
It was friendly at first, then less so. They began to feel harassed and unsafe, he said. There were two unexplained fires in 1956 and again in 1965. George Houston kept rebuilding on the land he loved. But after an explosive was ignited on their front porch in 1966 − again unexplained − the family believed they were under siege. The message was clear, at least to them, they needed to sell.
In a May 19 report, the city of Renton found no information on the fires on the Houston land, which at the time was not in city limits.
Randy Matheson, a spokesperson for the Renton School District, told me the Houston land was legally purchased, and upon review by the district years later, there is no evidence of misconduct in how the transaction proceeded.
The district bought the land to accommodate the many new families moving there, particularly those seeking good-paying jobs at nearby Boeing. There was significant hiring in the early 1960s as the company ramped up production of commercial airplanes, including the 707 and later the 727.
But a regional economic bust would follow in the 1970s, prompting the district to hold off on building a new school.
“We’ve told Mr. Houston that the money he is requesting isn’t our money, it is taxpayer money and we have to be good stewards of that taxpayer money,” Matheson told me. “We can’t just give it away.
“We’ve reviewed all the documents,” he continued. “We’ve taken this as far as we can go legally. There’s no mechanism in this situation for us to cut Mr. Houston a check, what would be a second check, for property purchased in 1968.”
‘Little boy’
I wanted to take a walk with John Houston. I wanted to see the neighborhood where he grew up among pigs, chickens and cows. Where he used to play. Houston, himself, can’t see the details like he used to. He’s now legally blind.
Still, we took a walk, his white folding cane along to assist.
He was able to show me the marsh and wetlands he and his siblings used to explore. There used to be a pond with fish that they sometimes couldn’t identify but still caught for sport. Tall trees and wooded areas where they would run between the timber to hide from each other.
The houses are prideful, as they should be. Suburbia. Success. I’m certain the residents who live there now worked to achieve their own American dream. The journey may have been different, but homeownership is an accomplishment to all, at least in my estimation.
And this is why I’m writing about the Houstons. This Black family came from very little with the dreams of something a little bigger.
After the Houstons sold their land, the family fell apart. George and Rachel divorced, unable to reconcile the loss of home ‒ and lacking the mental health resources and support a couple might have today.
Rachel started working two jobs to keep the family afloat. George moved to Moses Lake, Washington, to lick his wounds from self-described failure. He died in 1973, just five years after selling his Renton land. The kids became collateral damage, idled and also traumatized. John Houston and two of his siblings dabbled in drugs and alcohol. They became addicted.
Houston, who now works as a drug abuse counselor, lost his way. Until he found it with sobriety. He went back to school to earn an associate’s degree. He addressed his childhood trauma. He then worked for a decade as a counselor for the Renton School District – the very district that bought and sold his parents’ land.
“I wanted to help the Black and Brown kids who are in trouble or headed for trouble,” he told me. “My father would be proud. He always called me little boy. ‘I’m proud of you, little boy.’ That’s what he would say. I think he’d still say that now.”
Houston said a lot is driving him today. “Not only for my parents,” he told me. “I want to make my parents proud, but for my kids, this is something for my kids to see.
“I was a drug addict sleeping outside, in and out of jail,” Houston continued. “But it shows my grandkids and my kids that if you don’t have anything blocking you, you can do anything.”
Houston isn’t certain of what is next. Attorneys have offered to take on his case. His fight has already changed state law. He’s written a book. He still wants reparations.
But what he’s done to honor his parents is something he’ll proudly take to the grave. Right next to George and Rachel – and Jimi Hendrix.
Suzette Hackney is a national columnist. Reach her on X:@suzyscribe
