The Sad-Happy Story of Horace Cayton

February is Black History Month in. Instead of tackling the interesting and rich history of our Black neighbors, here is an overview of one Black pioneer, an unusual, sad-happy personal tale.

Horace R. Cayton’s maternal grandfather’s portrait was proudly displayed in his Seattle parlor.  Grandfather Revels was a quiet gentleman and an ordained minister, a Doctor of Divinity, and had been a college president and U.S. Senator during Reconstruction.

Raised on Seattle’s Capitol Hill in the early 1900s, Cayton recalled his family’s two-story white house facing Volunteer Park.  Quakerism permeated the home, a horse-drawn carriage stood outside the door, a Japanese servant was on duty, and “mixing” was avoided.  Such “mixing” had nothing to do the white neighbors, but rather with what the Cayton family viewed as misbehaving Black residents occupying what was known as the “Sporting Areas” downtown and in the Central city.  Newspaper editor Cayton and his family were aristocrats.

Cayton family activities devoted to what Cayton’s mother called “uplift” were a family priority. “I will rise” societies were common features of early Black American communities, perhaps more social than sociological.  For example, Cayton’s mother founded the Dorcus Charity Club, referred to at the time by the Seattle Times as “the Darky’s Charitable Club.”

Cayton’s blackness was realized when he ventured into other Seattle neighborhoods. For example, on Halloween Horace and his brother and sisters blackened their faces but avoided actually ringing a white family’s doorbell. Cayton’s mother once rushed them into the basement and began furtively reading the Bible aloud.  When her children asked what was wrong, she said “your father hit a white man.”

Booker T. Washington visited Seattle during the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition (AYP) and stayed with the Caytons.  The senior Cayton proudly showed his guest the great Seattle mansions of Capitol Hill.  Washington, however, to the chagrin of Mr. Cayton, wanted to visit the Black neighborhoods.

Cayton recalled a story that Washington told his hosts during that memorable visit. After he had a much-publicized lunch with President Theodore Roosevelt, several Georgia “crackers” approached Washington, one of them saying, “Booker, we think you are the greatest living American.”  Dr. Washington replied, “How can you say that?  What about President Roosevelt?”  Oh, the inquisitive Georgian answered: “We used to think he was the greatest until he had lunch with you.”

Cayton dates the failure of his father’s paper, called the Seattle Republican, to a story in that paper which gruesomely described the lynching of a Southern negro.  Cancellations poured in, “official” visitors arrived at the house — all of this as race relations began to change in Seattle.

The Cayton family had attempted to straddle the line between white and black (one of Cayton’s light-skinned sisters passed for white).  The family carriage, servant, and home were lost.  Cayton recalls moving to a small house in Rainier Valley, and later to an apartment on 22nd Avenue near Jackson Street.  His parent’s marriage foundered.  Young Cayton found himself fighting Italian schoolmates at Colman School.

Franklin High School was where Cayton’s personality began to emerge.  English courses and the debate team were an attraction.  Open race prejudice was repugnant.  Soon rebelliousness got the better of the bright young man. He entered the adult world by shipping to Alaska as a crew member.

A world of trouble, travel, sexual adventures, and struggles for an education became Horace Cayton’s life. He flirted with labor radicalism, marriage, and earning a degree at the University of Chicago. Choosing journalism, like his father, Cayton began a serious career in newspapers and government that resulted in his managing a milestone study of negro ghettos in America and authoring two other books.

Washingtonian Horace R. Cayton’s life represented a battle within himself and between two societies, white and Black.  He won both battles but his life has been largely forgotten.