Show Caption
- Oregon has one of the smallest populations of Black residents in the U.S., a reality shaped by its history.
- Oregon was the only state to include a Black exclusion law in its founding constitution in 1859.
- Despite exclusion laws, some Black pioneers settled in Oregon, facing significant legal and social hurdles.
- Historians argue that a legacy of exclusion, discriminatory practices, and displacement has had a lasting impact on Oregon's Black community.
Editor's note: In honor of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the Register-Guard and its sister publication, the Statesman Journal, are embarking on a year-long project exploring the history and culture that define Oregon and shape the lives of its residents in the modern day.
Oregon has long been a majority White state, though diversity is increasing. According to the 2020 census "non-Hispanic White" made up 74.8% of the state's population, down from 83.6% in 2010.
The state has one of the smallest populations of Black residents in the U.S., making up just 3.2% of Oregonians. That makes Oregon the ninth least Black state in the country, according to World Population Review.
Local historians point to several factors making this the reality. It arguably started with a series of laws, one of which was enshrined in Oregon's state constitution, barring Black people in the state's early history.
When Oregon joined the union on Feb. 14, 1859, Article 1, Section 35, of Oregon's founding constitution excluded Black people who were not already living here.
In Oregon's 1857 election, voters ratified the Oregon constitution while also banning slavery, and Black people.
Oregon's early Black exclusion laws
Oregon wasn't the first state with such a law, said Mariah Rocker, public programs and exhibits manager for Oregon Black Pioneers. But it was the first and only state to put such a law in its constitution.
Rocker said the Oregon territory's original settlers primarily came from former "Northwest" states like Indiana, Iowa, Illinois, and Ohio: all free states that bordered slave states, and they brought with them the prejudices and laws they were familiar with.
"These residents resented the Black people who had fled to their states for safety," Rocker said. "Because Black men were paid less than White men to do the same work, White laborers feared that the presence of Black laborers would depress the wages of White labor."
The Black exclusion law approved in Oregon's constitution was the last of three that have been in place throughout Oregon's history, Rocker said.
In 1844, Oregon's provincial government barred Black people from living in the area. Violating the law was initially punishable by public whipping, and changed six months later to manual labor.
In 1848, Oregon became a U.S. Territory, and the territorial legislature passed a new Black exclusion law the next year. Rocker said there's one documented case of this law being enforced. Jacob Vanderpool owned a boarding house and saloon in Oregon City and, after being exposed as Black, was kicked out of Oregon.
Voters then passed the final Black exclusion law in the 1857 election alongside the vote to become a state. Oregon's founding constitution states:
"No free Negro, or Mulatto, not residing in this state at the time of the adoption of this constitution, shall come, reside, or be within this state, or hold any real estate, or make any contracts, or maintain any suit therein; an the Legislative Assembly shall provide by penal laws, for the removal, by public officers, of all such Negroes, and Mulattos, and for their effectual exclusion from the state, and for the punishment of persons who shall bring them into the state, or employ, or harbor them.”
This section stayed in the constitution until 1926.
Congress recognized Oregon statehood two years later, in 1859, one year before Abraham Lincoln was elected, and two years before the Civil War began.
A few Black people came to Oregon despite the exclusion law, Rocker said. The people who did found that, besides Vanderpool, the Oregon government wasn't equipped to enforce exclusion laws.
“The Northwest was inviting because it was so large, because especially at the time it was a territory, there was so little ability to enforce (exclusion laws),” said Walidah Imarisha, a Black studies professor at Portland State University. “So a lot of Black people banked on the idea we could come here and we can just kind of disappear and we can build our own homes and we can be self-sufficient.”
Rocker said many Black people who came to Oregon in this time were newly freed and came with their former enslavers. Since slavery was illegal in Oregon, slave owners who wanted to come west had to free any people they owned. Many of these people then chose to come west as well to avoid being labeled a "fugitive slave" and resold.
The 1850 Fugitive Slave Act required that escaped enslaved people be returned to their former enslavers, regardless of local laws. Since someone suspected of having escaped slavery was not eligible for a trial, it was sometimes enforced even against people legally emancipated.
Some of Oregon's Black Pioneers
The University of Oregon’s Museum of Natural and Cultural History recently opened its “ReEnvisioned” exhibit featuring the portraits and stories of Black people who came to Oregon in this period.
One such person was Letitia Carson, who came across the Oregon Trail with David Carson, a White man who might have been her enslaver or her romantic partner. While she was able to stay, Letitia regularly encountered legal hurdles because she was Black.
Rocker said after arriving, David attempted to use The Donation Land Claim Act of 1850 to claim the 640 acres available to married White couples, and was instead given the 320 acres granted to single White men.
When David died, Letitia couldn't inherit his land or possessions. She had to buy some of these possessions at auction, and was later able to win back some of their property in court, making her the first Black person in Oregon to successfully get a Homestead Claim.
Another example was Rose Jackson, who came across the Oregon Trail with her enslaver William Allen. A popular story is that Jackson hid in a box for much of the journey to avoid authorities. Rocker said while historians haven’t confirmed that story, the fact it's plausible, “does tell us a lot about how people felt at that time.”
Later in life, Rose married John Jackson, another Black Oregonian, and the couple raised two children in the Waldo Hills east of Salem.
Rocker said Louis Southworth came to Oregon in 1853 at age 23 from Tennessee with his mother Pauline and enslaver James Southworth. After buying his freedom, Louis Southworth settled in Waldport where he operated a ferry and was well-known for his fiddle skills.
America Waldo Vogel was born in Missouri in 1844 to a Black mother and White father who brought her to Oregon as a child. Richard Vogel came to Oregon from Jamaica to mine, and later opened a barber shop.
After marrying, the couple moved near Walla Walla, Washington, where they raised eight children on a 200-acre farm. Two of their sons went on to become professional farmers in Portland.
Ben Johnson Mountain, near Medford, is named for another early Black Oregonian. Ben was a blacksmith and his horseshoe pincers were featured in the 1884 world's fair.
Exclusion a chain reaction
The exclusion laws were one of the first in a long chain of policies and attitudes that kept Black people out of Oregon, explained Steven Beda, a University of Oregon history professor specializing in Pacific Northwest history.
"If I'm writing a book that's trying to answer this question of why does Oregon's racial landscape look like it does today, the exclusionary laws would be the first chapter, and there's several more chapters," he said.
Rocker concurred, saying "that atmosphere of exclusion created sentiments that trickled throughout history that would impact the later displacement that communities in Portland and in Eugene would experience as a result of that mentality being baked into our state's history."
During the "great migration" of the 20th century, when many Black Americans left the South for other parts of the country, Oregon's industries and White residents made sure most of those people went elsewhere.
Beda said Oregon's early timber industry, which imported workers to Oregon in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, ensured most of those workers were White. Timber employers believed a racially diverse workforce wouldn't get along and would be less productive.
By contrast, mining, another early Oregon industry, did bring Black workers, often to break strikes. Once a mine was extracted, the White residents of Oregon's mining towns would then drive out the Black residents.
Oregon also had a heavy Ku Klux Klan presence in the 1920s, Beda said. Because there were so few Black people in Oregon, their main targets were immigrants, but that presence discouraged Black people from coming to the state.
"Oregon gains this reputation as a place where Black migrants coming out of the South know they're not welcome," Beda said.
According to historian James Loewen's sundown town database, 26 towns in Oregon were likely sundown towns.
Displacement prevents Black community connections
Irene Rasheed, who put together an exhibit for the Springfield History Museum documenting Black history in the area, added another factor: displacement.
One of the most well-known examples is the neighborhood in what is now Alton Baker Park, which was demolished to build the Ferry Street Bridge, but it's not the only one, Rasheed said.
Eugene's Ferry Street Bridge area was outside city limits in the 1940s, largely because of racial restrictions in zoning, and neighborhood covenants also were a factor.
Imarisha described these various policies as tools growing from Oregon's "foundational idea" that the state would be "a utopia that excluded anyone who wasn't White."
And while those laws have lifted, that lack of diversity can self-perpetuate.
"American Black culture is not a monolith, but there are some threads that are universal," Rasheed said. "Those threads not being present in a local community, I think that makes this a place that you don't feel welcome. (Then) new people that we attract won't stay, because of the lack of any sort of cultural or communal foundation or any space or indication that you belong."
For example, Rasheed said she and her husband have hosted events at local schools; where they serve soul food that local Black children don't recognize. For example, Black children will ask her, "What are greens?"
"It breaks my heart," Rasheed said.
Exclusion, displacement leave a lasting impact
Black people are still left behind in Oregon today, according to the 2015 State of Black Oregon report. It found, among other data points: Black parents were more financially burdened than White parents, Black children were disproportionately suspended or expelled from schools or incarcerated, and Black young adults were more likely to be unemployed and more likely to have student debt of $30,500 or more.
Imarisha traced those financial disparities to those early employers. In addition to the industrial work Beda mentioned, white collar employers would rarely hire Black people.
"There were very few employment opportunities for Black folks," she said. "You could go to college, if you can get in, and if you can pay for it, you can get a degree. And there were still no job opportunities available in Portland because Portland continued to be a place that excluded, exploited Black communities."
Eugene's Johnson family
Another Johnson family, most likely unrelated to Ben, was among the five original Black families to settle in Eugene.
Charlie Johnson worked at a rendering plant and Bertha Johnson cleaned houses. Their family settled in Eugene's historically Black Ferry Street neighborhood.
They and their children were among the families displaced when the neighborhood was leveled to build the Ferry Street bridge, according to their grandchildren Rosita, Tyrone and William Jr.
Rosita said Charlie came to Eugene from Georgia in the late 1930s after seeing an ad seeking railroad workers. By the time he reached Oregon, the railroad was no longer hiring, so he switched to the plant.
Charlie and Bertha lived in the Ferry Street neighborhood for three to four years and while there, Bertha gave birth to triplets, one of whom was William Sr.
"They gave them a short notice to get out of there and they bulldozed down their makeshift home, and then they were displaced," Rosita said.
William Jr. said even though Oregon's law barring Black people from settling the state ended in the 1920s, his family continued to experience exclusion from economic opportunities.
"My father wasn't able to get the job that he may have been overqualified for. (When) we were coming up in school, we wouldn't get the help necessarily that we needed," William Jr. said. "So I think that (exclusion) lasted through the jobs, through housing, through education."
William Jr. said he experienced this as well. He struggled to get a job out of college despite earning a computer science degree during the early tech industry boom.
William Jr. said he didn't want to blame racism, "But it's kind of hard to say that it wasn't racism when my father faced the same problems, and my grandfather faced the same problems."
Rosita, Tyrone and William Jr. grew up in Eugene in the 1970s and '80s and had few Black peers.
William Jr. saw burning crosses in his Black friends' yards. He suspected the Klan left the Johnsons alone because of how big their family was.
Rosita said there weren't enough Black students at Willamette High School for a Black Student Union, but she managed to start a multi-cultural club with her Latino, Asian and Arabic classmates.
William Jr. had a hard time in school. He often got into fights in order to demand respect for himself or his siblings, and ultimately dropped out of high school and went to work in the mills. When the timber industry started to decline, he was one of the first laid off.
He doesn't know for sure he was laid off because he was Black, but based on the racism he'd experienced up to that point, he suspected that was the case.
"When you walk down the street and people shout the N-word at you and different things, it just kind of felt like everything was a microcosm of the society that was going on at that time," he said.
William Jr. said he had a hard time getting hired despite his computer science degree compared to his White classmates.
"I always heard that everywhere I went, even after I got my degree, 'you have no experience,' he said. "Maybe that's a commonality, but it didn't feel like it. ... Because my friends would get jobs out of school."
William Jr. did eventually find work in the tech sector, and was able to keep his children away from violence.
"I know my kids are good, grounded people because I didn't share that violence with them," he said.
Alan Torres covers local government for the Register-Guard. He can be reached by email at