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Oregon Humanities12
I E YE D T H E T H I R T Y CH A I R S SE T U P I N SM A L Lcircles around the top-oor room o North Portland Libraryand rowned. That Sunday in February 2012, I would be lead-
ing my Conversation Project program Why Arent There More
Black People in Oregon? A Hidden History or only the second
time. The frst was at Hollywood Librar y, where we reached the
orty-person room capacity and had to turn olks away. So I fg-
ured wed need a ew more chairs at North Portland.
But as people poured into the large, open room, librarian
Patricia Welch and I realized there wouldnt be enough seats
or all these olks even i we grabbed every chair in the library.
Finally, with the room at maximum capacity, Welch regretully
started turning people away.
That was a year and a hal ago, and since then Ive acilitated
the program with more than a thousand Oregonians across the
state. I developed my program and a timeline, excerpted on the
pages that ollow, to explore the history and living legacy o race,
identity, and power in this state and this nation.
Race is not a topic we oten discuss in public settings, at least
not explicitly. We are told we are in a postracial landscape, yet
race is the number one determinant o access to health care,
home ownership, graduation rates, and income, as the data rom
the Urban League o Portland (page 19) show.
We cant understand these disparities without understanding
history. I didnt grow up in Oregon; I moved here to attend high
school. It wasnt until I had the privilege o attending a presenta-
tion by Darrell Millner, ounder o Portland State Universitys
Black Studies Department, that I learned Oregon was created
as a white utopian homeland. That Oregon was the only statethat entered the Union with a clause in its constitution orbid-
ding Black people to live here. That the punishment originally
A Conversation Project program reveals the stories andstruggles of Oregons African American communities.
By W al i d ah I m ar i sh a
meted out or violating this exclusionary law was the Lash Law:
public whipping every six months until the Black person let the
state.That this ideology shaped Oregons entire history and wasreected in the larger history o this nation.
My goal with this program and timeline is not just to
recount all the horrifc wrongs done to Black people and other
people o color; it is to showcase communities o color as active
agents in their destinies. The only reason a Black community
exists in Oregon is because o determination, creativity, and
community-building.
There are so many stories: rom the Black community in
Salem raising money or a school in 1867 when their children
were barred rom at tending white schools, to North Wil liams
Avenue as a 1930s underground jazz gem, to the 2001 repeal o
the state constitutions exclusionary language that was led by
community leaders and organizers and supported by allies. This
is a history not o victimization, but o strength and hope. One o
my greatest joys has been creating a public space or people who
have lived in this community all their lives to tell their stories, to
be seen as the experts and change makers they are.
I always end the program with a list o organizations working
across this state or racial justice, a list that grows with every
program I do. Each o us has the power to learn these hidden
histories, and each o us has the right and the responsibility to
create the kind o state, nation, and world we all want to live in.
A HIDDEN HISTORY
Walidah Imarisha is a writer, organizer, and spoken word artist who has
taught at Portland State University, Oregon State University, and Southern
New Hampshire University. She leads two Conversation Project programs
or Oregon Humanities: Beyond Bars: Reenvisioning the Prison System
and Why Arent There More Black People in Oregon? A Hidden History.
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York, William Clarks slave, is part o the Lewis and
Clark Expedition, the rst American expedition to the
Pacic Northwest. Native nations treat York with respect,
and he played a key role in diplomatic relations. Upon
returning east, Clark describes York as insolent and sulky
in a letter to his brother, whips and jails him, and threatens
to sell him. Yorks ate is unknown; some historians believehe escaped slaver y and lived with the Crow in Wyoming.
The Provisional Government o Oregon enacts
the regions rst exclusion law against Blacks. This law
included the inamous Lash Law, which required that
Black peoplewhether ree or enslavedbe whipped
twice a year until he or she shall quit the territory. This
penalty is later changed to orced labor. Jacob Vanderpool,
a Black saloonkeeper living in Salem, is the only person
known to be expelled rom the state.
Oregon becames the only state
admitted to the union with an exclusion
law written into its state constitution.
It bans any ree negro, mulatto, notresiding in this State at the time rom
living, holding real estate, and making
any contracts within the state. The 1860
census shows 124 Black people living in
the state. The law is repealed in 1926.
The language however is not removed
rom the constitution until 2001. As
historian Egbert Oliver writes in Oregon
Historical Society Quarterly, Arican
Americans were essentially illegal aliens
in Oregon.
When William Browns children are reused access
to public school because they are Black, Salems Black
community raises $427.50 to operate a school or six months.
Ater Brown les a lawsuit, the school distr ict agrees to
und the school, opening Little Central School to serve the
districts sixteen Black school-age children. Portland Public
Schools also institutionalizes segregation in 1867.
1804-1806 1844 1859 1867
MICHAELHAYNESMHAYNESAR
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LIBRARYOFCONGR
ESS
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Abstract o votes in Polk County rom
the 1857 reerendum on the OregonConstitution and the prohibition o
slavery and ree negroes.
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Oregon Humanities14
1870 1880s 1914
The Fifteenth Amendment, which outlaws voting
discriminat ion based on race, is added to the USConstitution, despite ailing to pass in both Oregon
and Caliornia. This ederal law supersedes a clause in
the Oregon State Constitution explicitly banning Black
surage, but the language is not removed rom the
constitution until 1927 and the Fiteenth Amendment
is not ratied in Oregon until 1959.
Alonzo Tucker, a Black man in
Coos Bay (then called Marsheld ), is
charged with raping a white woman.
He is released rom jail and hunted
by two hundred armed white men.
Tucker is shot twice and then hung
o a bridge. The Coast Maildescribes
the lynch mob as quiet and orderly
and reports the lynching as ollows:
No such lawless proceeding was
ever conducted with less unnecessary
disturbance o the peace. Going
urther, the Oregon Journalcalls
Tucker a black end who got the
death he so thoroughly deserved.
No one is indicted or Tuckers brutal
murder. This is the only ocially
recorded lynching in Oregon, though
Black community members say many
more went uninvestigated.
1902
The completion of the transcontinental railroad brings the
rst large infux o Black people to Oregon. Willie Richardson,
president o the Oregon Northwest Black Pioneers, credits Black
railroad workers or building a community in Portland: Because
they stayed, they allowed a whole new generation to come in
and succeed. In 1906 Black businessman W. D. Allen opens
the Golden West Hotel, which becomes the center o a thriving
Black-owned business district . The hotel is designed primarily to
serve Black railway employees, who are denied accommodations
in Portlands white-owned hotels.
Beatrice Cannady helps ound the Portland
chapter o the National Association or the
Advancement o Colored People. An outspoken
Black civil rights activist, she is the editor and
owner o The Advocate, Portlands only Black
newspaper. She works to repeal Oregons
notorious Black Laws, which prohibit AricanAmericans rom settling in Oregon and deny
voting rights to people o color.
THEFIRSTVOTE,A.R.WAUD
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ERPROGRAM
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The Portland Real Estate Boards
Code o Ethics mandates that real estate
agents not sell to individuals whose racewould greatly depreciate, in the public
mind, surrounding property values.
1938 Portland Residential Security Map
The Ku Klux Klan establishes its Oregon chapter.
At the height o its popularit y, the Klan claims that 15
percent o eligible Americans (white men) are members.
Some o the individuals pictured above include the
Portland police chie, a district attorney, a US attorney,
a Multnomah County sheri , and the Portland mayor.
The Klans reign in Oregon is brie, but notorious. Among
other things, the organization infuences the electiono 1922, unseating the gubernatorial incumbent, Ben
Olcott , who is an outspoken critic o the Klan.
Oregon passes the Compulsory
Education Act, making it mandatory or
every child to attend public school, with
the goal o shutting down Catholic and
other private schools. One o the acts
chie supporters is Governor Walter
Pierce, who is backed by the Ku Klux
Klan. Its members see the law as a way
to urther white supremacy through
assimilating and Americanizing Catholic
immigrants and Oregon youth. In 1925,
the Supreme Court deems the act
unconstitutional beore it can be enacted.
Sixty skilled Black workers rom the South move
their amilies to Maxville, a town run by Bower-Hicks
Lumber Company in Wallowa County. In 2007,
lmmaker Gwen Trice, whose amily lived in Maxville
until 1943 when it was dismantled, ounds the Maxville
Project, which later becomes the Maxville Heritage
Interpretive Center, a nonprot organization that
collects and preserves the history o multicultural
logging communities in the Pacic Northwest.
Coon Chicken Inn, an American chain o
restaurants, opens in Salt Lake City. Diners enter
through a door that portrays the mouth o a smiling
blackace caricature. The chains third restaurant
opens in 1930 in Portland s Hollywood District. A
restaurant with a similar history, Lil Sambos (ormerly
Lil Black Sambos), still operates today in Linco ln City.
1919 1921 1922 1923 1925
PORTLANDSTATEUNIVER
SITY
OREGONHISTORICALSOCIETY,#89968
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ERITAGEARCHIVES
PORTLANDTELEGRAM,AUGUST2,1921
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Jazz is popular in Portland as early as
the 1930s, but fourishes ater World War
II because o the infux o Black people
drawn by wartime industries. North
Williams Avenue becomes the heart o
the Portland jazz scene and the heart o
the Black community. In a city considered
one o the most discriminatory north
o the Mason-Dixon line, clubs line
Williams, oering jazz twenty-our hours
a day, every day o the week.
The Columbia River foods and the dike
protecting Vanport breaks. Because Vanport
was built on reclaimed lowlands along the
Columbia River, the city was vulnerable to
fooding. In addition, it was built quickly with
temporary housing. During the food, teenpeople are killed, the entire city is underwater,
and nearly eighteen thousand people, many o
them Black, are let homeless.
Voters approve construction o Memorial
Coliseum in the Eliot neighborhood, resulting in
the teardown o more than 450 Albina homes
and businesses. At the time, our out o ve
people in this thriving, close-knit community are
Black. Many are ormer inhabitants o Vanport
because redlining polic ies limited where they
could live. This same year, ederal ocia ls also
approve highway construct ion unds that would
pave Interstates 5 and 99 through South Albina,
destroying more than eleven hundred homes.
A political rally releases the
rustrations o Black youth in
Portlands Albina neighborhood
and the streets explode in an urban
uprising, sparked by discontentment
with treatment by the police.
Between two and three hundred
people throw bottles and rocks at
cars, while a ew hurl rebombs
through store windows, causing
$20,000 in damage at one grocery
store and damaging dozens o others.
On the rst day o the Albina riot,
Detroit, Michigan, also experiences
devastating race riots that claim
orty-one lives and cause damage
estimated at more than $500 million.
Another riot in the same Portland
neighborhood happens in 1969.
Vanport City is hastily constructed between
Portland and the Columbia River to house wartime
Kaiser Shipyards workers. Southern Blacks are
recruited in large numbers to work in the shipyards.
At its peak, the city houses one hundred thousand
people, 40 percent o whom are Black. It becomes
Oregons second- largest city, containing the largest
US public housing project.
1930s 1943 1948 1956 1967
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OCIETY,#ORHI25043
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Kent Ford and others establish the Portland
chapter o the Black Panther Party, with support
rom Reed College students. The Panthers
run a ree childrens breakast program or ve
years, eeding up to 125 children a day. They
operate the Fred Hampton Memorial Peoples
Health Clinic, which grows to twenty-sevendoctors and becomes one o the longest- running
Panther health clinics in the country. In 1970,
they ounded the Panther Dental Clinic. Portland
Panthers experience the same targeting by
law enorcement as Panthers nationally, and
members o the Portland Panthers ace multiple
alse arrests and trials.
The Black community protests the expansion o Emanuel
Hospital, unded by ederal money earmarked or urban renewal.
The expansion demolishes near ly three hundred homes in North
Portland. Residents are given ninety days to move. Homeowners
are compensated with a maximum $15,000 payment, and renters
receive $4,000. The ederal construction unds run out ater the
homes are demolished but beore construction is nished. The
expansion takes decades to complete.
Mulugeta Seraw, an Ethiopian student and ather, is
killed in Portland by three skinheads aliated with the
White Aryan Resistance. He is beaten with a bat and
let in a puddle o his own blood. Tom Metzger, leader
o WAR, calls the killing a civic duty. The community
organizes rallies and educational events, and starts
organizations in the wake o this attack. In 1990, a
teen-hundred-person rally in memory o Seraw takes
place along the South Park Blocks.
The Black United Front protests the closure o
predominantly Black Harriet Tubman Middle School
by organizing a one-day boycott with our thousand
students. The closure ollows Portland schools
mandatory busing program throughout the 1960s
and 70s that sent Black students to schools ar rom
their homes to attend integrated schools; most white
students attended their closest neighborhood school.
1969 1970 1982 1988
REEDCOLLEGE
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Cover o
Willamette
Bridge,
January 14,
1970.
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The name of Union Avenue, the main street through
the heart o the historic Black community, is changed
to Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. A coalition opposing the
name change gets enough signatures (6 percent o
Oregons population) to put the name change on the
ballot. The Oregon Supreme Court blocks the initiative
challenge by ruling the name change is an administrative
decision and thereore not subject to voting by citizens.
In response to complaints o neighborhood activists and the
recommendations o a citywide task orce report on abandoned
housing, the City o Portland begins revitalizing the Albina
neighborhood, using building code enorcement to conront the
extreme level o housing abandonment. Whites buy homes,
displacing many low-income Black amilies to relatively ar-fung
areas where they can aord the rents. By 1999, Blacks own 36
percent ewer homes in the neighborhood than a decade prior,
while whites own 43 percent more.
Measure 11 passes, which establishes
mandatory minimum sentencing or several crimes.
It removes judges discretion in sentencing. The
measure requires juveniles over the age o teen
who are charged with these crimes to be tried as
adults. As much as 41 percent o Oregons prison
population growth is attributable to Measure 11.
A 2011 report by the Partnership or Saety and
Justice says Black people account or just 4 percent
o the states youth population, but they represent
19 percent o Measure 11 indictments.
Activist, community organizer, and ormer
politician Avel Louise Gordly becomes the rst Black
woman to be elected to the Oregon State Senate.
Her legislative record eventually includes initiatives
that ocus on cultural competency in education,
mental health, and criminal justice. She also achieves
notable reorm in the state senate caucus system
and briefy secures press access or meetings that
are usually closed.
199619941989 1990s
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HOUSING/INCOME
Median income Black-headed households: $30,000
Median income White-headed households: $46,800
Percentage of Black adults with no checking account: 20%
Percentage of White adults with no checking account: 7%
38% of Black children live in households with income
below the poverty line
From the Urban
Leagueof Portland
EDUCATION
Black students are twice as likely to be suspended or
expelled as White students
Black students dropout rates are twice that of White
students
Black students who graduate on time: 68%
White students who graduate on time: 85%
CRIMINAL JUSTICE
HEALTH
Black babies are 50%more likely to be bornwith low birth weight
Black babies are 50% more
likely to suffer infant mortality
Black incarcerationrates are 6 timesthat of whites.
STATE OF BLACK OREGON2009 STATISTICS
Blackhouseholdswho own theirhome: 37%
Whitehouseholdswho own theirhome: 68%
Whitestudentswho meet orexceed the10th grade
readingbenchmark:68%
Blackstudentswho meetor exceedthe 10th
gradereadingbenchmark:38%