A state that tried to keep Black people out, and the community that built Portland anyway.
Exclusion
Oregon's earliest laws tried to keep Black people out. An 1844 law ordered Black settlers to leave the territory within three years, an 1849 law barred them from coming in, and the 1857 state constitution banned any free Black person not already living in Oregon. The 14th Amendment made the clause void in 1868, but it stayed on the books until voters removed it in 1926.
The Golden West And Beatrice Cannady
In the early 1900s the Golden West Hotel, run for 25 years by William D. Allen, a Black former railroad worker, was the center of Black life in Portland. In 2022 it joined the National Register of Historic Places.
Beatrice Morrow Cannady edited The Advocate, the state's largest African American newspaper, and in 1913 helped found the Portland chapter of the NAACP, the first branch west of the Mississippi. In 1922 she became the first Black woman to graduate from law school in Oregon, and as the chapter's secretary she campaigned to strip the racist exclusion language from the state constitution.
Vanport
In August 1942 construction began on Vanport, built to house workers at the Kaiser Shipyards, and about 40 percent of its roughly 40,000 residents were African American. At 4:05 in the afternoon on May 30, 1948, the city was destroyed by a flood. Its destruction eased the integration of a large Black population into North and Northeast Portland.
Albina
In the second half of the 20th century, Albina was home to most of Portland's African American residents. Racially motivated real estate practices kept many Black families from owning homes when they were affordable, and in the 1960s the building of Interstate 5 cut through the neighborhood, displacing residents and businesses, while the expansion of Emanuel Hospital deepened the damage.
Black Portland Today
From the Golden West to Albina, Black Portlanders built a community in a state that tried to bar them, and Black-owned restaurants, salons, shops and brands are part of everyday Portland.
Shop Black-owned businesses in Portland on CashBlack.
Photo Credits
The Golden West Hotel building. Photo: Jon Roanhaus, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons The 1948 Vanport flood from the air. Photo: Unknown photographer; published by Camera Art Studio (Portland, Or.), Public domain, Wikimedia Commons The former Albina Carnegie Library on NE Knott Street. Photo: Steve Morgan, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons