Sometimes the law comes swift and unfairly as with the African American sex workers of downtown Spokane in the early 1900s.

Beginning early in the year of 1905, Chief of Police Leroy Cotman Waller unleashed a campaign against all “vagrants” designed to round up as many perceived undesirables as possible and place them in the city jail. As the war on crime progressed into the spring, police attention turned to the Black prostitutes in the downtown area, who Waller blamed for almost all the robberies in Spokane. On May 8th he officially announced that all Black women “engaged in unlawful occupations” were to leave town immediately or be arrested. Eight women had already left and four more were slated be jailed if they did not quickly follow. Two weeks later, police jailed seven women of color believed to be pickpockets. Some plead guilty and were fined $50 while others chose to fight their cases. Some had been charged with theft previously, but all were acquitted when witnesses did not show up in court.

After the May arrests police efforts to expel the women from the city slowed down. The newspapers still warned of the suspected roaming pickpockets, but there was no mention of further round ups.

This was not the first-time Black sex workers were forcibly expelled from Spokane. Two years prior twelve Black prostitutes were told to leave town immediately, and when they refused, five were caught and arrested by the police for vagrancy. Two had previous theft charges, so they left town on the advice of their lawyer N. E. Nuzum, while the others plead not guilty. Nuzum argued that of the 80 known prostitutes in Spokane, only the ten Black prostitutes remaining were facing charges. He threatened "if the rank discrimination continues against them I shall proceed in demand that the entire 'burnt district' be cleaned." The same day the five posted bail, three of the women were jailed a second time. Despite Nuzum’s best efforts, five were charged and fined, while the other five entered negotiations to leave town for Lewiston, Idaho, where the Chief of Police there said they would be arrested again.

Vagrancy was the charge brought against the sex workers in 1903 and likely would have been for the women in 1905. Vagrancy laws are designed broad intentionally, and make it illegal to be poor, suspicious, and idle in public or private spaces. Unsurprisingly, the law was used on the poor and minority groups lavishly until the 1960s when such laws were dismantled by the civil rights movement. Other charges such as disorderly conduct, loitering, and general misdemeanors were commonly used to punish "undesirables."

As 1905 pressed into late summer, Chief Waller remained the center of attention, but not likely in the way he anticipated. Waller and Deputy Assessor, Fred Leghorn, were brought before a grand jury for embezzlement. Waller and Leghorn were collecting fines from sex workers and pocketing the cash. The Judge explained that if they turned in the money, the courts would not have a case against the two men. It seemed they followed this advice as no further developments in the case were ever released. By October, Chief Waller was avoiding the subject of prostitution entirely and the previously expelled women slowly began to return to Main Avenue.

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"I began thinking of my mother who passed away in 1898 while I was yet a child. My thoughts naturally turned to my father who was left with the responsibility of rearing six children." - Sonora Dodd

A stone marker in front of a modest home at 603 S Arthur St commemorates the life of Sonora Smart Dodd, known for her creation of Father’s Day. Born in 1882, in Jenny Lind, Arkansas she was 5 years old when her family migrated to Spokane, Washington. She was the eldest of 6, when her mother died in childbirth, the children were raised by her father. To Sonora, her father was “a real disciplinarian, but he was also kind and loving parent who kept us together and happy.”

In 1899, she married John Bruce Dodd and the two had their only son in 1909. In her personal life, Mrs. Dodd was a painter, sculptor, and an avid member of several women's clubs in Spokane. Professionally, she was a published poet, worked for the Red Cross, and was the founder of the Father’s Day Association. She had a career as a faculty member at the Chicago Institute of Art, and later a founder of the Ball & Dodd funeral home.

Following a Mother’s Day sermon in 1909, Dodd realized what better way to recognize fathers than a holiday. With the help of Dr. Conrad Bluhm, her pastor, she spearheaded a petition that was brought to the Spokane Ministerial Alliance. By 1913, the holiday was celebrated in Canada, Germany, Hawaii, India, Mexico, and Sweden. In 1972, the holiday was officially adopted as a national holiday by Richard Nixon. In 1946 the first monument in Spokane for Father's Day was created. The monument was originally a plaque set into a two-ton granite stone.

Father’s Day was eventually commercialized with advertisements attempting to convince consumers to give fathers gifts on the day. Some feel this has impacted Father’s Day negatively, but the ads did not bother Mrs. Dodd as she saw nothing wrong with fathers receiving gifts. It was just one way to honor fathers, and she held a neutral and positive attitude towards the holiday's commercialization. Dodd states "at least I believe we've changed the sentiment of the country, and associate fathers with something."

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The East Central is a primary example of the ways that raciallly restricted housing policies altered a neighborhood.

Red, Yellow, Green, and Blue. From the 1930s to the 1960s in Spokane, these colors dictated whether you could obtain an insured mortgage on a home. HOLC maps, or Redlining maps, were color-coded maps that separated neighborhoods by race, housing quality, and income level. The maps red areas were considered the worst and would not be insured. One way an area would become red was the presence of African Americans. Because of this, neighborhoods would deny Black Americans housing by using racial covenants, which could exclude certain races from purchasing, renting, or living in a home unless they were a servant.

East Central was a redlined neighborhood and had the most African American residents out of the districts in Spokane. The neighborhood surrounded Liberty Park, a park that once rivaled Manito Park but had fallen into disrepair as the surrounding housing became increasingly poor and maintenance of the park dropped. Of all the neighborhoods, Spokane chose East Central and several other poor areas to be split by the U.S. Highways Project in the 1950s. 18 acres of the 21-acre park, and many surrounding homes, were sold to the state to make way for I-90. The destruction displaced many families and separated the neighborhood in two. East Central fell into the pattern of demolition for freeways that plagued many previously red neighborhoods.

The loss of nearly all of Liberty Park and much of East Central affects the area to this day. The decreased tree canopy was one of the consequences caused by redlining and the installation of I-90. Due to redlining, the properties in East Central were uninsured, which discouraged house ownership and encouraged renting. Landlords would remove trees from their property because trees needed pricey maintenance, which decreased profits. Liberty Park was one of the few areas in East Central with many trees, but now it was practically gone. Both events hemorrhaged shade in the neighborhood, and in 2022, the East Central tree canopy covered 14-17% of the district. The most affluent neighborhoods boast tree canopy coverage of almost 40%.

A heat map created in the same year as the tree canopy map indicates the east central neighborhood among the areas in Spokane that could be considered a heat island. These areas of Spokane had up to a 13.9° difference in temperature compared to the coolest areas of Spokane. Unsurprisingly, the areas with the least amount of tree canopy were also the hottest areas of Spokane. Redlining's impact on the land it marked also affected the economic status of residents long after its abolition. 1990s maps depicting unemployment and where minorities tended to live showed that rates of unemployment higher than 20% overlapped neighborhoods where minority populations lived. In most of the U.S. as well as Spokane, rent was just too high for black residents and other minorities to save money to move. If they tried, they would be pushed back into redlined areas by neighborhoods that feared black people would lead to declining property values and more redlining.

With little hope of finding housing elsewhere, black Spokanites stayed primarily in East Central until the 1980s despite the creation of the Fair Housing Act in 1968. Gradually, black residents began migrating out of East Central and the Liberty Park neighborhood in the 1990s. While the scars of redlining in East Central and other districts like East Sprague remain, the integration of Spokane housing has diversified the entire city.

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