Racist Covenant Can Be Removed Deed Barring Non-Whites Embarrasses Community

Residents of an exclusive community here have found a way to remove a clause in their charter that once prohibited some nonwhites from living in the neighborhood.

The decades-old covenant - a set of rules governing the community - had a clause barring “any person of the Malay, Ethiopian, or any other Negro or Asiatic race” from owning property or living in Sand Point Country Club.

That portion was rendered illegal and unenforceable by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1949 but it stayed in the books, rankling nonwhites who now live in the neighborhood overlooking Lake Washington.

In September, residents were asked by the community’s board of trustees to cast a vote by mail on whether to delete the restriction from the covenant.

While votes came quickly, the 100 percent approval level needed to change the charter had not been met by last week, said John Anthony, president of the Sand Point Country Club Maintenance Commission’s Board of Trustees.

The vote “didn’t turn out quite as well as we had hoped,” he said, because many residents were away for months at a time abroad or in other parts of the country.

One resident, a lawyer, began some research of his own. He found that, under a state law that took effect in 1969, “every provision in a written instrument relating to real property which purports to forbid … individuals of a specified race, creed, color, or sex … is void.”

Further, the law says that if a provision is voided, the county’s Superior Court “shall enter an order striking the void provisions from the public records and eliminating the void provisions from the title or lease of the property.”

That solution proved to be “a real relief to the whole community,” Anthony said.