Like many people interested in urban and environmental issues, I have long been interested been interested in Oregon’s long history of progressive populism. And like many people who have looked up to Oregon’s lead in those areas, I’ve been puzzled and concerned by the fact that the state also has been – and continues to be—a hotbed of activity by violent right-wing militias, whose members spout hateful rhetoric.
This paradox, it appears, is embedded in the history of Oregon, which became a state on February 14, 1859, a milestone marked by today’s #stampoftheday, a 4-cent stamp issued 100 years later on February 14, 1959 that was designed by Robert Hallock. In fact, anti-Black sentiment dates back to at least the 1840s, when the state began attracting significant numbers of settlers.
In 1844, the provisional government of Oregon County – a vast area that includes what are now three states and parts of two others – passed a law allowing slave holders then living in the state to keep their slaves for a maximum of three years. After the grace period, all black people – those considered freed or enslaved – were required to leave. Black women were given three years to get out; Black men had only two years. Moreover, those who refused to leave could be severely whipped, the provisional government law declared, by “not less than twenty or more than thirty-nine stripes” to be repeated every six months until they left.
The law’s main backer was Peter Burnett, a former slaver holder who came west from Missouri by wagon train explained that his goal was “to keep clear of that most troublesome class of population [Blacks]. We are in a new world, under the most favorable circumstances and we wish to avoid most of those evils that have so much afflicted the United States and other countries.” (A few years later, he was elected governor of California, where he had moved after gold was discovered.)
While the law was later repealed, it was the first of several anti-Black measures. In 1848, government of the new Oregon Territory passed a law making it illegal for any “Negro or Mulatto” to live in the territory. (While rarely used, it did result in at least one expulsion).
In 1850, the federal Oregon Donation Land Act, “granted 650 acres of federally-owned land to whites and half-breed Indians” but not any other people of color.
In 1857, as the now smaller territory of Oregon sought to become a state, the drafters of the hoped-for state’s constitution proposed both that slavery be legal and that free Blacks and mulattos be banned from emigrating to the state. The territory’s voters overwhelmingly rejected the slavery proposal and overwhelmingly approved the exclusion clause. Not surprisingly, the 1860 census found only 128 Blacks living in among the state’s 52,465 residents.
The exclusion clause was rendered moot with the ratification of the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution, which (supposedly) gave citizenship and “equal protection of the law” to “all persons born or naturalized in the United States.” Oregon’s Republican-controlled legislature ratified this amendment by a narrow margin in 1866. But after Democrats won control of the legislature in 1868, they quickly rescinded that ratification – a legally meaningless but symbolically important gesture. Moreover, in 1870, the legislature voted against ratifying the 15th Amendment, which (supposedly) makes it illegal to use “race, color, or previous condition of servitude” as the basis for denying the right to vote.
In the next few decades, the overt measures waned but the anti-Black (and, increasingly anti-Chinese) sentiments continued to be strong. Indeed, Oregon was a hotbed of support for the resurgent Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s, providing more members (on a per capita basis) than any other state. Backed by such support, KKK members were elected to several key offices, including the governorship in 1922.
The KKK’s influence waned and in 1925 the largely ignored exclusion ban was removed from the state constitution. But it took until February 1959 for Oregon’s legislature to officially ratify the 15th Amendment and until 1973 to re-ratify the 14th Amendment.
1973 also was the year that the state enacted a landmark law requiring localities to define Urban Growth Boundaries that would limit and guide growth in ways that would preserve high-quality agricultural lands, protect forests and open space, and develop denser, more livable residential areas. Though it’s had its travails, this law has been and continues to be one of the nation’s most significant regional land-use planning efforts.
In 2019, Oregon enacted a landmark housing law requiring cities with more than 10,000 residents to allow duplexes in areas zoned for single-family homes and requiring localities in the Portland metro area to allow four-plexes. This too is stronger than what any other state has done.
Despite its recent history of progressive politics, Oregon is less diverse the nation as a whole. About 61 percent of the people in the US are non-Hispanic whites; but it’s 76 percent in Oregon; 71 percent in the Portland region; and 72 percent in the city of Portland. While non-Hispanic blacks make up 12 percent of the country; they comprise only 2 percent of the state’s residents, a figure that rises to 3 percent in the Portland metro and 6 percent in the city. (The comparable figures for Hispanics are 18 percent nationally, 13 percent statewide and in the region, and 10 percent in Portland; for Asians its 6, 4, 7 and 8 percent respectively. Native Americans make up less than one percent of the population in all four geographic areas.)
This history helps explain the state’s seeming paradoxes. As Winston Grady-Willis, director of Portland State University’s School of Gender, Race and Nations told the Washington Post in 2017, the long history of efforts to make Oregon a “lily-white state sets the tone and is important structurally” for what has happened since February 1859 when Oregon became a state, including some of the sometimes violent clashes that have occurred in the past few years.
Stay safe, be well, fight for justice, and work for peace.