A short history of discrimination in Oregon (and surrounding areas)

I couldn't schedule an interview with one of the LGBT parents in my congregation, so I decided to interview someone who was educating during the Civil Rights movement, but I couldn't find anyone who was available before this post was due. So I'm building this reflection from the information I've found on the PBS website for the “Eyes on the Prize” series. Since the educators I would have interviewed all taught in Oregon, and mostly Salem, I decided to do some research on the Civil Rights movement and history of discrimination in Oregon, because I believed that the same biases of the region would be reflected in the schools as well.

I found a timeline of black history in Oregon here, which came from this interesting conversation in a forum I found about Portland here. As a short overview, slavery was outlawed in Oregon in 1844, but the provisional government and then the territory government passed exclusion laws, which prevented people of color from settling in Oregon. Pro-slavery separatists in southern Oregon try to create a second Territory out of southern Oregon and northern California, and it's voted down in both territories, but the idea sticks around. When Oregon becomes a state, it's the first state with an exclusion law written into the constitution to join the Union. When the Civil War starts, a pro-slavery, anti-Union group called the Knights of the Golden Circle opens many chapters in Oregon communities, trying to secede and form their own Pacific Coast Republic. Luckily, the group fell apart when it became apparent that the North would win the Civil War. After the Civil War, it takes three more years for Oregon to pass the Fourteenth Amendment, which gives citizenship to blacks. The Portland chapter of the NAACP is formed in 1914, and in 1926, Oregon finally amends its constitution and removes the exclusion law from its state Bill of Rights. However, it took until 1951 for Oregon to repeal the law prohibiting interracial marriages, and until 1959 for Oregon to actually ratify the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

Even after all the reforms were made, many towns in Oregon were 'sundown' towns, or had sundown laws written into their town laws, until relatively late, such as the mid '60s in Medford. I found this link with interviews about prejudice in Medford and the existence of sundown laws here. In case you're wondering what I mean by sundown towns, a sundown town is a town that is purposely all white, and the name came from the signs they post around town that tell people of color that they must leave town by sundown.

In relation to sundown towns, I learned a little more about the state of Jefferson, which is what the pro-slavery secessionist movement morphed into in southern Oregon and northern California. These citizens, instead of seceding, now wanted to form a new state, combining the bottom part of Oregon with the top of California, with Yreka as the capitol, and they called it the state of Jefferson. The movement was reaching a head in November of 1941, with the Jefferson Citizens Committee, as they called themselves, were in 'patriotic rebellion,' stopping traffic along Highway 99 outside of Yreka to protest their own lack of sufficient roads from the state government. However, the rebellion dissipated quickly after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor that December, and the citizens went to work for the war effort. However, they still had ties to the mindset of the Confederacy, because there are several markers (seen here) along the old highway 99 placed by the Daughters of the Confederacy in 1944 which memorialize 99 as Jefferson Davis Highway No. 99, Jefferson Davis being the president of the Confederacy. The movement is still around in spirit, and their home page is here.

I also examined the history of the little town of Dallas as a hotbed of KKK activity. However, it appears that the years the KKK was strong were from 1921 to 1924, and they basically lost power in the area after their candidates didn't win the election. This article from the Dallas Historical Society gives a short overview of the history of the KKK in Dallas, this article dives into the history a bit deeper, and this article from WillametteLive discusses the perpetuation of the rumors of an active KKK in Dallas, which is interesting because some of the students who attend Dallas High School report the rumors they've heard, and one of the local historians, Arlie Holt, had to come and give a talk to the students because most of them believed the KKK was still active in the area. Most of them believed it because the Dallas High School mascot is the Dragons, though Holt investigates and finds that the mascot choice had nothing to do with the Klan. I found this really interesting, because I have a friend from OSU who went to Dallas High School, and she was convinced that the reason they were called the Dragons was because it was left over from the history of the Klan in the area, and she reported how there was only one black family in town when she attended high school there, and that people didn't treat them very well. That made me think of my own experience living briefly in Joseph, Oregon, and how my manager at the soda shop called a black girl who came through one day 'that colored girl,' and how shocking his ignorance was to me, in that he thought that was an appropriate term.

As a counterbalance to this history of racism in Oregon, Brad Avakian, who is the Labor Commissioner of Oregon, has established the Oregon Council on Civil Rights to work with the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries, because, as he says here, “There is a need for a greater effort to address the causes and effects of discrimination in Oregon.” Since the government is openly acknowledging that we do still have issues of discrimination in Oregon, even after the advent of the Civil Rights Movement, then I feel hopeful that perhaps these issues can finally be addressed and solved. Otherwise, the only way to combat discrimination is to constantly educate each other about prejudice, and attempting to combat prejudice wherever we find it, while understanding the history behind it here in our towns.