Named in honor of the life and legacy of Frank and Goldyne Green, the Frank and Goldyne Green Cultural Land Conservancy continues their unwavering commitment to family, collective work, land ownership and community. Both Frank and Goldyne were born and raised in rural Arkansas. Frank’s family sharecropped and Golyne’s family farmed land they owned. They met in Arkansas but wedded in Seattle in 1948 after Frank migrated there after serving in World War II.
For the next sixty years they would be committed community builders through their service as a part of the diaconate of Mt. Zion Baptist Church and their monumental efforts buying five homes in Seattle’s Central District and one in South Seattle. Through the church they helped build and maintain an institution that was influential in local and national civil, labor and economic rights activism. As homeowners they rented almost exclusively to family members at or below market rate. Frank trained several of his nephews, nieces, children and grandchildren in skills that allowed them to help maintain the homes. His encouraged some to pursue formal training in electrical work, plumbing, carpentry, and more. Goldyne the same to always find a way to be in service to their community through volunteerism other ways. Both were staunch supporters of advanced education. With their shared lives as a model, over 5 generations of Green and Arnold family members learned what it meant to pour your whole being into the family and community that you love.
The organization was formed as a nonprofit organization in 2021, at a moment when the community Frank and Goldyne helped build was on the cusp of disappearing.
Frank passed away in 2010. Goldyne passed away ten years later in 2020 after a 16 year bout of Alzheimer’s disease. At the time of Goldyne’s passing she only owned two of the five family homes. The Black community in Seattle’s Central District was also in the later stages of the gentrification process. After two decades of systemic displacement, a neighborhood that was once nearly 80% Black was composed of less than 10% of its legacy residents. As a result Black cultural, and community spaces were increasingly rare. For many the erasure of the community was complete.
A few people felt differently and continued to see possibility and hope for the future of a once vibrant community. One of Frank and Goldyne’s last homes was being rented by an organization called Wa Na Wari. Wa Na Wari rented the house in April 2019 and turned it into Black community and cultural center. Their goal was to pay market rate rent and take on the cost of maintenance and repairs to forestall the imminent sale of the home. Through their efforts they were able to create enough support for the idea of purchasing the home after Goldyne passed and making it a permanent cultural space.
This foundational work paved a way for the formation of the Frank and Goldyne Green Cultural Land Conservancy. In 2020 Wa Na Wari launched a capital campaign with the goal of making the house they were renting a permanent Black cultural and community center. The campaign was successful enough for them to support their true strategy, to help members of the Green Family purchase and steward the remaining two houses.
This is where Frank and Goldyne’s grandchildren enter the story. They came together with Wa Na Wari to create a new nonprofit organization that would purchase and preserve the two remaining homes their grandparents owned. Inye Wokoma, Ibiere Seck, Tonye Wokoma, and Yirim Seck were all shaped by the guidance and example offered by their grandparents. Each was inspired in their own way by the work of Wa Na Wari. Together they formed the Frank and Goldyne Green Cultural Land Conservancy as a way of continuing a long legacy of community building through land stewardship and collective work and responsibility.
The organization was formed as a nonprofit organization in 2021, at a moment when the community Frank and Goldyne helped build was on the cusp of disappearing.
Founded by descendants of a legacy Black Seattle family who experienced gentrification firsthand, The Frank and Goldyne Green Cultural Land Conservancy was created in response to the rapid loss of Black spaces and neighborhoods. Although this loss seemed all but final, it was just the opening passage to the next chapter of the story. The formation of the Frank and Goldyne Green Cultural Land Conservancy was an act of creative resilience that will continue to shape and inspire generations to come.