This Week in the Mercury
Thursday, February 3, 2011
History Portland's Vanished Black Neighborhoods
Posted by Sarah Mirk on Thu, Feb 3, 2011 at 5:29 PM
Two cool events coming up next week about the history of Portland's black communities.
One! Monday, February 7th, at noon, PSU prof Felicia Williams is giving a talk on the 10th floor of the Portland Building called, "Deliberate Destruction: A Look at Emanuel Hospital, The Portland Development Commission and Portland's Black Community." Sounds good and punchy, telling the story of how Emanuel Hospital and the Portland Development Commission demolished an entire black neighborhood around North Williams to make way for an expansion that never happened.
Two! Wednesday, February 9th, is the first day of an exhibit the black neighborhoods that vanished thanks to a flood, a freeway, and urban renewal. A former resident of Vanport, the mostly African-American city located where Portland International Raceway is now, will speak at the opening.
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If there were still such neighborhoods, would Sarah write an article illustrating how blacks are discouraged to live elsewhere?
I have a hard time looking at this as a black and white situation. (ok, bad pun...)
The inner ne used to be german-americans before it became black. The Chinese gate is celebrating turning 25 while 'Chinatown' increasingly shifts to 82nd...
Always in transition...
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One thing that's always troubled me about it, though, was that as catastrophic as the flood was, it did mean that the African-American population ultimately moved out of what, really, was a ghetto. Yes, the Albina area did become a de facto segregated area. That was nasty. But, at least it was inside city limits. At least after the flood, Portland wasn't able to simply ignore the metro area's first major black population because they were relegated to a nasty little non-city filled with cheap buildings and shipyards.
Vanport, in some ways, was not Portland's first major black neighborhood. Portland avoided having a black neighborhood by making Vanport a separate entity. After the flood, the city was forced, for better or worse, to have an actual African-American population of appreciable size inside of its boundaries. There is at least something positive about that, as horrible as the story of the flood is.
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@V.Renwick - Really, is that the stat? I thought it was majority. I'll look it up and correct the post.
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