History
Why Portland?
Portland’s history of discriminatory practices destabilized communities of color and created harm with impacts that reverberate today. While not all-encompassing, the list below indicates the prevalence and recency of racism in Portland and Oregon. The communities cited are resilient and critical to our history and journey toward equity.
For thousands of years, more than 60 tribal nations have lived throughout Oregon. Today Portland encompasses an even greater diversity of tribal community members and tribal citizens. Due to the devastating impacts of land theft, colonization and attempted genocide, tribal communities have suffered great loss of culture, language and prosperity through laws such as the Oregon Donation Land Act, which codified land theft and colonization. (Source: OPB)
Oregon’s earliest history was as a sundown state—where African-Americans could not live or “let the sun set on them.” Laws passed in 1844 to ban slavery also excluded all Blacks, free and slave, from the Oregon territory. African-Americans were required to leave Oregon after two years, or “be flogged publicly for every six months until they did so.” Coalition of Communities of Color
Ignoring the crucial role Chinese immigrants played in constructing the infrastructure of the West, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, suspending further Chinese immigration until 1892. The Act also made all Chinese immigrants ineligible for citizenship and barred them from several professions including mining. (Source: Coaching for Educational Equity)
Portland’s Japantown (now known as Old Town) thrived from the 1890s to the early 1940s. In May 1942, Portland’s residents of Japanese heritage were forced to abandon their homes and businesses and were evacuated and detained at the Pacific International Livestock and Exposition Center (the Expo Center), which was renamed the Portland Assembly Center. More than 3,600 people were held there until they were relocated to internment camps at Minidoka, Idaho; Heart Mountain, Wyoming; and Tule Lake, California for the duration of the war. (Source: NPS)
In 1944, close to 40,000 people lived in Vanport, including 6,000 African Americans, three times as many as had lived in all of Portland two years before. The Vanport Flood in 1948 wiped out the then-largest public housing project in the United States. Source: Oregon History Project)
Formed in 1958, the Portland Development Commission (PDC), now Prosper Portland:
1958: Displaced a predominately Jewish and Italian American neighborhood, relocating 1,573 residents and 289 businesses.
1967: Condemned land under urban renewal for the expansion of the Emanuel Hospital campus, displacing 171 families, 74% of whom were African American.
1988, a 28-year-old Ethiopian student and father, Mulugeta Seraw, was fatally beaten in Portland by three racist skinheads. (Source: Coaching for Educational Equity)
It was not until 2002 that Oregonians voted to remove all racist language from the Oregon constitution, and 28% of the population voted against the ballot measure. (BallotPedia)
In 2017, two men were murdered and a third injured when they interrupted a racist rant directed at two girls of color, including one wearing a hijab, on the MAX train (Source: Willamette Week)
Interested in learning more about Portland’s history?
All of these aspects of racial violence are a devastating and painful part of Portland’s history which contributes to present day racism, gentrification and colonization. Portland Means Progress hopes that our collective efforts will begin to restore the justice communities of color deserve.
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