This weekend, Oregonians will kick back, unwind and take to the mountain slopes, the gym or maybe spend some time at home with their families. As we take advantage of a three-day weekend honoring the civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., it is important that while we celebrate the advancements our state has made, we also examine our failures and acknowledge the sometimes turbulent racial history of our region.
Civil rights is not only a story of the highly visible, segregated South. As responsible citizens we should acknowledge that the Pacific Northwest, and Oregon in particular, has its own, often glossed-over history of bigotry and racism.
From its earliest incarnations as a territory, Oregon had a history of issues with diversity. Early laws prohibited slavery but discouraged African-Americans from living here. The “Lash Law” required that a black person in Oregon be whipped twice a year “until he or she shall quit the territory.” Although state voters rejected slavery in 1857, they simultaneously voted to ban African-Americans from the state. Provisions in the state constitution actually prohibited African-Americans from residing in Oregon or voting until they were repealed in 1926 and 1927.
In 1862 the state adopted a law requiring all African-Americans, Chinese, Hawaiians and mulattos (referring to people of mixed ethnic heritage) residing in Oregon to pay an annual tax of $5. If they could not pay this tax, the law empowered the state to press them into service maintaining state roads for 50 cents a day. Interracial marriages were banned in Oregon at the same time, and it was illegal for whites to marry anyone one-fourth or more black.
Oregon’s citizens rejected the 14th Amendment in 1868, refusing to grant blacks citizenship, only to pass it two years later.
Such discrimination would pave the way for decades of residual hatred and bigotry on par with some of the oft-demonized deeds of the South. Accounts of discrimination well into the 20th century are readily available.
Much later, as equal rights for non-whites became a national issue in the ’50s, resistance in Oregon still ran strong. An early attempt by the Portland City Council in 1950 to make discrimination illegal on the basis of race was quickly thrown out by voter referendum.
Oregonians should realize this history is woven into the culture of the state, and in order to move beyond it, we should make a point of exploring and learning such mistakes instead of whitewashing over the shameful past.
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