Why Portland: The Context Behind The Work

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An important note from our team: This section contains historical accounts of violence, forced displacement, and deliberate exclusion. Much of this content may be difficult to read. Understanding our community’s history is not comfortable, but it is essential context for any organization committed to building a better Portland.

Culture change work does not happen in a vacuum. A community’s history, its relationships with institutions all help us understand who may be thriving or not within our organizations. Portland is a city with a complex and often painful history. Creating a culture of belonging requires us to know and understand that history and how it currently impacts those that make up our organizations.  

What follows is not a comprehensive account of Portland’s history, but instead a brief orientation to some of the most significant moments in our collective history that may impact our understanding of these efforts.  

These communities are not defined by what was done to them. They are defined by their strength, their culture, their contributions and their continued presence in Portland’s story.  This history belongs to each of us as does the responsibility to usher in what is next.  

Indigenous Communities  

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 dispossession, colonization, and attempted cultural erasure, tribal communities suffered profound loss of culture, language and prosperity through laws such as the Oregon Donation Land Act, which codified land theft and displacement of Indigenous peoples from their ancestral homelands. (Source: OPB) 

The Latino Community in Multnomah County 

Latinos have been residents of Multnomah County dating back to the 1500s, with the first wave of immigration beginning in the early 1800s. Despite this longstanding presence in the region, the Latino community faces systemic barriers that are reflected in poverty rates, income disparities, and homeownership. (Source: Coalition of Communities of Color) 

Black Oregonians 

Oregon's earliest history included some of the most explicitly exclusionary laws in the nation. Laws passed in 1844 excluded all Black people (both free and enslaved) from the Oregon territory entirely, requiring them to leave or face severe public punishment. That foundation shaped everything that followed: where Black Oregonians could live, work, own property, and build wealth and the echoes of those restrictions are still visible in Portland's geography and economic landscape today. (Source: Coalition of Communities of Color) 

Chinese immigrants and Chinese Americans 

Despite playing an essential and largely uncelebrated role in building the infrastructure of the American West, Chinese immigrants faced the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 which suspended further immigration, made existing immigrants ineligible for citizenship, and barred them from multiple professions. Their contributions were erased even as the barriers against them were codified into law. (Source: Coaching for Educational Equity) 

Japanese and Japanese American  

Portland's Japantown (now known as Old Town) thrived for decades before being dismantled almost overnight. In May 1942, more than 3,600 Portland residents of Japanese heritage were forcibly removed from their homes and businesses and detained at what is now the Oregon Convention Center area, before being relocated to internment camps for the duration of World War II. (Source: NPS) 

The Vanport Flood 

In 1944, nearly 40,000 people lived in Vanport, including a significant and growing Black community. The catastrophic flood of 1948 destroyed what was then the largest public housing project in the United States, displacing thousands of residents with almost no warning and no meaningful plan for their recovery. For Portland's Black community in particular, the flood accelerated a displacement from which many families never fully recovered. (Source: Oregon History Project) 

Urban renewal and forced displacement 

Portland's mid-20th century urban renewal efforts displaced thousands of residents and hundreds of businesses with the burden falling disproportionately on communities of color, Jewish communities, and working-class immigrant neighborhoods. In 1967, 171 families, 74% of whom were Black, were displaced from the Albina neighborhood for a hospital expansion that was never fully completed. The gentrification of North and Northeast Portland continues today, with Black residents being displaced from historically Black neighborhoods to outer East Portland and beyond. 

The murder of Mulugeta Seraw 

In 1988, a 28-year-old Ethiopian student and father, Mulugeta Seraw, was murdered on a Portland street in a racially motivated attack. His death galvanized the city's awareness of organized hate and serves as a reminder that the consequences of exclusion and hatred are not abstract. (Source: Coaching for Educational Equity) 

Racist language in the Oregon constitution 

It was not until 2002 that Oregonians voted to remove explicitly racist language from the state constitution. Twenty-eight percent of voters opposed doing so. (Source: BallotPedia) 

The MAX train attack 

In 2017, two men were murdered and a third seriously injured on a Portland MAX train when they intervened to protect two young women, one of whom was wearing a hijab — from a violent, hate-fueled attack. Their courage cost them their lives. (Source: Willamette Week) 

Disability Community 

Oregon’s state hospitals had a history of institutionalizing people with disabilities in conditions that caused significant and lasting harm. The legacy of those policies, in how disability is perceived, how disabled people are treated in workplaces, and how accessible our institutions truly are, is still being reckoned with. (Source: Disability Rights Oregon) 

Oregon's LGBTQIA Community 

Portland has long been a destination city for LGBTQ+ people seeking community and relative safety, but Oregon's history toward its LGBTQ+ residents has not always reflected that welcome. In 1992, Ballot Measure 9 sought to amend the Oregon constitution to declare homosexuality "abnormal, wrong, unnatural and perverse." It was defeated statewide but it passed in multiple Oregon counties, and the campaign itself caused real and lasting trauma for LGBTQ+ Oregonians across the state. (Source: Oregon Measure 9 (1992)) 

2020 BLM Movement:  

In May 2020, the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer sparked a national reckoning with systemic exclusion and the treatment of Black Americans by institutions of power. Portland's response was among the most sustained in the nation, with protests continuing for over 100 days. The city became a focal point for the national conversation, including the deployment of federal agents that drew widespread attention and concern. 

Ongoing Houselessness Crisis: 

Portland's houselessness crisis is one of the most visible and persistent challenges facing the city. Black, Indigenous, and other historically excluded community members are significantly overrepresented among Portland's unhoused population, reflecting the compounding effects of decades of exclusionary housing policy, displacement, and unequal access to economic opportunity. (Source: PSU Homelessness Research) 

This history did not end when the laws changed. Its effects on our community members wealth, their housing, their access to work, and their trust, continues to shape our city today. Portland Means Progress believes that businesses have both a responsibility and a genuine opportunity to be part of building something different for our future.