Washington Cultural Groups

African American

 * See African American Resources for Washington

African American

 * See African American Resources for Washington

Chinese

 * Chinese Exclusion Act Case Files
 * North Dakota and Washington, Chinese Passenger Arrivals, 1903-1944, Index/images.

Indigenous People

 * See Indigenous Peoples of Washington

Japanese

 * World War II Files, 1942-1946
 * 1942-1946 Public Welfare/Social Security Department, Evacuee (Japanese) Referrals for Resettlement and Assistance, 1945-1946 at Washington State Archives - index and images; Assistance Cases, Evacuee Referrals for Resettlement and Assistance, 1945-1946

Swedish

 * Swedish Americans in Washington

General
See also United States Cultural Groups for additional resources.

Other records and histories of ethnic, racial, and religious groups in Washington are listed in the Place Search of the FamilySearch Catalog under:


 * WASHINGTON - MINORITIES


 * WASHINGTON, [COUNTY] - MINORITIES


 * WASHINGTON, [COUNTY], [TOWN] - MINORITIES

You will also find records in the Subject Search of the FamilySearch Catalog under:


 * AFRO-AMERICANS - WASHINGTON

Washington Historical Racial Composition
The racial composition of Washington's population as of 2016 was:

Areas of Concentration
While the population of African Americans in the Pacific Northwest is scarce overall, they are mostly concentrated in the South End and Central District areas of Seattle, and in inner Tacoma.[85] The black community of Seattle consisted of one individual in 1858, Manuel Lopes, and grew to a population of 406 by 1900. It developed substantially during and after World War II when wartime industries and the U.S. Armed Forces employed and recruited tens of thousands of African Americans from the Southeastern United States. They moved west in the second wave of the Great Migration left a high influence in West Coast rock music and R&B and soul in the 1960s, including Seattle native Jimi Hendrix, a pioneer in hard rock, who was of African American and Cherokee Indian descent.

Native Americans lived on Indian reservations or jurisdictory lands such as the Colville Indian Reservation, Makah, Muckleshoot Indian Reservation, Quinault, Salish people, Spokane Indian Reservation, and Yakama Indian Reservation. The westernmost and Pacific coasts have primarily American Indian communities, such as the Chinook, Lummi, and Salish. Urban Indian communities formed by the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs relocation programs in Seattle since the end of World War II brought a variety of Native American peoples to this diverse metropolis. The city was named for Chief Seattle in the very early 1850s when European Americans settled the sound.

Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders are mostly concentrated in the Seattle−Tacoma metropolitan area of the state. Seattle, Bellevue, and Redmond, which are all within King County, have sizable Chinese communities (including Taiwanese), as well as significant Indian and Japanese communities. The Chinatown-International District in Seattle has a historical Chinese population dating back to the 1860s, who mainly emigrated from Guangdong Province in southern China, and is home to a diverse East and Southeast Asian community. Koreans are heavily concentrated in the suburban cities of Federal Way and Auburn to the south, and in Lynnwood to the north. Tacoma is home to thousands of Cambodians, and has one of the largest Cambodian-American communities in the United States, along with Long Beach, California, and Lowell, Massachusetts. The Vietnamese and Filipino populations of Washington are mostly concentrated within the Seattle metropolitan area. Washington state has the second highest percentage of Pacific Islander people in the mainland U.S. (behind Utah); the Seattle-Tacoma area is home to more than 15,000 people of Samoan ancestry, who mainly reside in southeast Seattle, Tacoma, Federal Way, and in SeaTac.

The most numerous (ethnic, not racial, group) are Latinos at 11%, as Mexican Americans formed a large ethnic group in the Chehalis Valley, farming areas of Yakima Valley, and Eastern Washington. They were reported to at least date as far back as the 1800s. But it was in the late 20th century, that large-scale Mexican immigration and other Latinos settled in the southern suburbs of Seattle, with limited concentrations in King, Pierce, and Snohomish Counties during the region's real estate construction booms in the 1980s and 1990s.

Additionally, Washington has a large Ethiopian community, with many Eritrean residents as well. Both emerged in the late 1960s, and developed since 1980. An estimated 30,000 Somali immigrants reside in the Seattle area.