WEBVTT - Part One: Oregon is a Bastard: The History of a White Supremacist State 0:00:00.040 --> 0:00:05.360 M Hey everybody, I'm Robert Evans, and this is once 0:00:05.400 --> 0:00:07.600 again Behind the Bastards, the show where we tell you 0:00:07.640 --> 0:00:10.040 everything you don't know about the very worst people in 0:00:10.080 --> 0:00:13.520 all of history. And this week, of course, I'm in Portland, Oregon, 0:00:13.640 --> 0:00:16.000 on the seventeenth, which is to us tomorrow but to 0:00:16.040 --> 0:00:17.800 you in the past. There will be a rally from 0:00:17.800 --> 0:00:20.239 a group called Patriot Prayer, who you will be hearing 0:00:20.280 --> 0:00:22.919 a lot about in the next episode of this podcast, 0:00:22.960 --> 0:00:25.640 with some members of Rose City antifas guests in the day. 0:00:25.680 --> 0:00:29.200 Of course, my guest is My name is Marie L. Eaton, 0:00:30.040 --> 0:00:33.320 and I've lived in Portland for fourteen years and I 0:00:33.400 --> 0:00:36.880 do many different things here, including quite a bit of activism, 0:00:37.080 --> 0:00:40.720 quite a bit of activism. My main effort is with 0:00:40.880 --> 0:00:46.360 sexual and relationship violence prevention and victim advocacy, and I've 0:00:46.440 --> 0:00:50.680 done activism around that for about a decade now, and 0:00:50.960 --> 0:00:56.480 I am a victim advocate both in the university setting 0:00:56.880 --> 0:01:01.080 as well as independent organization setting. And you've also done 0:01:01.160 --> 0:01:03.520 quite a bit of anti fascist action in the street 0:01:04.280 --> 0:01:08.280 during which you you were photographed, uh and have become 0:01:08.319 --> 0:01:11.120 sort of a figurehead of anti fa for CNN's reports 0:01:11.160 --> 0:01:14.600 on the matter. So we're officially is officially an interview 0:01:14.640 --> 0:01:19.600 with Antifa. That's the Fox News chiron that would go across. 0:01:20.360 --> 0:01:23.080 So we're gonna be talking about Oregon, your lovely home state, 0:01:23.120 --> 0:01:25.679 which is one of the most beautiful places in the world. 0:01:25.920 --> 0:01:30.600 Uh and also way more racist historically, at least than 0:01:30.800 --> 0:01:33.120 most people would give it credit for based on Portlandia 0:01:33.280 --> 0:01:37.640 and currently. Yeah, it's not just macrobiotic burritos. And uh, 0:01:38.560 --> 0:01:41.240 I'm trying to think of something else. Hippie ash cars 0:01:41.280 --> 0:01:45.320 that run on garbage. Garbage, Yeah, yeah, garbage cars. It's 0:01:45.680 --> 0:01:47.640 it's it's a little bit deeper than that. So that's 0:01:47.640 --> 0:01:49.320 what we're gonna be getting into the day today. The 0:01:49.360 --> 0:01:54.040 bastard is the state of Oregon, which you know, Sorry, Oregon, 0:01:54.120 --> 0:01:57.400 I do love you, but let's get into it. So 0:01:57.520 --> 0:02:00.720 Peter Hardeman Burnett was born in eight no seven. He 0:02:00.800 --> 0:02:03.000 started out as a self educated which I think in 0:02:03.080 --> 0:02:06.480 eighteen o seven just means uneducated owner of a general 0:02:06.520 --> 0:02:09.680 store in Clear Creek, Tennessee. As a young man, Peter 0:02:09.720 --> 0:02:12.320 Burnett came to suspect that an enslaved black person was 0:02:12.400 --> 0:02:14.679 drinking from his stores whiskey barrel at night, so he 0:02:14.760 --> 0:02:16.840 set up a booby trap, a rifle that was rigged 0:02:16.840 --> 0:02:19.400 to fire when the windows shutter was opened. His trap 0:02:19.440 --> 0:02:21.280 wound up killing the poor man when the guy tried 0:02:21.280 --> 0:02:24.080 to break into his house. Burnett expressed remorse, but was 0:02:24.120 --> 0:02:26.480 not charged with any crime because it was eighteen o 0:02:26.639 --> 0:02:28.600 seven and that sort of thing wasn't really a crime 0:02:28.639 --> 0:02:31.959 in Tennessee back then. In eighteen forty three, Burnett helped 0:02:32.080 --> 0:02:34.760 organize and lead the first great wagon train to Oregon. 0:02:34.840 --> 0:02:37.240 So he was one of the pioneers who first discovered 0:02:37.280 --> 0:02:40.399 this territory Oregon Trail. You could say is a game 0:02:40.400 --> 0:02:44.400 about Peter Burnett, murderer and uh soon to be politician, 0:02:44.840 --> 0:02:48.160 because he was quickly elected to the provisional Legislature of Oregon. 0:02:48.520 --> 0:02:49.959 Now this before Oregan was a state, so it was 0:02:50.000 --> 0:02:52.880 still a territory, and he served as the territory of 0:02:52.880 --> 0:02:57.320 Oregon's first Supreme Court justice, chief Supreme Court Justice. So 0:02:57.440 --> 0:03:00.040 I'm guessing his qualifications were let a wagon train and 0:03:00.320 --> 0:03:03.760 was a murderer. So in either like you're our judge, 0:03:03.880 --> 0:03:07.480 you're you're in charge of this state right now. Um, 0:03:07.560 --> 0:03:10.720 So eighteen forty four, Peter Burnett was instrumental in passing 0:03:10.760 --> 0:03:13.000 what came to be known as the Burnett Lash Law. 0:03:13.200 --> 0:03:19.960 You heard of the Burnett Lash Law from you? Okay, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, 0:03:19.960 --> 0:03:25.000 that we've talked this. Uh. I had not heard and 0:03:25.120 --> 0:03:27.600 not remembered that. I'm sure I've heard it, but I 0:03:27.639 --> 0:03:29.840 have not remembered that until you brought it up. It's 0:03:29.840 --> 0:03:33.080 a little bit famous, um it. Uh. It's essentially stated 0:03:33.120 --> 0:03:35.880 that all black people were required to leave Oregon County 0:03:35.960 --> 0:03:38.920 under penalty of being whipped quote not less than twenty 0:03:39.040 --> 0:03:42.080 or more than thirty nine stripes. Uh. This punishment was 0:03:42.120 --> 0:03:45.000 to be repeated every six months until they left the state. 0:03:45.600 --> 0:03:47.720 So one of the interesting things about Peter Burnett is 0:03:47.760 --> 0:03:50.400 that he's a classic example of someone winding up on 0:03:50.400 --> 0:03:54.040 the right side of a historical issue for tremendously wrong reasons. 0:03:54.040 --> 0:03:56.760 Because Peter Burnette was an outspoken abolitionist, not because he 0:03:56.800 --> 0:03:59.280 believes slavery was wrong, but because he was just that 0:03:59.360 --> 0:04:01.760 racist and he thought that if there was slavery, there 0:04:01.760 --> 0:04:04.000 would be people who weren't white in the country. That 0:04:04.080 --> 0:04:06.400 was his whole issue, which is there's a whole like 0:04:06.960 --> 0:04:09.240 chunk of the abolitionist movement which were just people who 0:04:09.240 --> 0:04:11.720 were too racist to own slaves. Um. It's kind of 0:04:11.720 --> 0:04:13.960 a little historical angle. It gets left out a lot 0:04:13.960 --> 0:04:18.799 of the time, but bizarre. So Burnett's law did include 0:04:18.839 --> 0:04:21.360 a grace period three years for black women and two 0:04:21.400 --> 0:04:23.040 years for black men, so we gave him some time 0:04:23.080 --> 0:04:25.840 to get out of the state. Burnett also pushed against 0:04:25.920 --> 0:04:28.640 Chinese migration to Oregon. He tried to ban it um. 0:04:28.680 --> 0:04:31.039 He later went on to become the first governor of 0:04:31.080 --> 0:04:33.719 the state of California, so he's my state's first governor 0:04:33.760 --> 0:04:35.760 as well. And of course his first action and governor 0:04:35.760 --> 0:04:38.200 of the state of California was I'm pretty sure you 0:04:38.200 --> 0:04:41.680 can guess he tried to ban all black people. Yeah, yeah, 0:04:41.839 --> 0:04:43.160 what do you know? And then he tried to ban 0:04:43.240 --> 0:04:46.680 all Chinese people from California. Peter Burnett was a consistent man, 0:04:46.920 --> 0:04:50.280 if nothing else. Uh. And I got a picture of him, 0:04:50.320 --> 0:04:51.920 and he looks like we'll put it up on the 0:04:51.960 --> 0:04:54.039 site behind the bastards dot com. But he looks like 0:04:54.080 --> 0:04:57.160 the guy you would cast to play a generical Look 0:04:57.200 --> 0:05:00.719 at that four. That's a five head, Yes, that is 0:05:01.080 --> 0:05:03.599 maybe even a seven. I mean it is. It just 0:05:03.720 --> 0:05:06.920 keeps going and those little curls on the side the curls. 0:05:07.040 --> 0:05:08.560 I'm not going to go against them for the curls. 0:05:08.920 --> 0:05:10.920 I mean that's he seems like he might have. That's 0:05:10.960 --> 0:05:14.160 the only redeeming quality. And I mean it's a weird cravat. 0:05:14.279 --> 0:05:16.640 He looks like someone in a story who would like 0:05:16.800 --> 0:05:18.960 take off his cravat and his head would fall off 0:05:19.360 --> 0:05:21.240 in an old fable. Yeah, it doesn't look like a 0:05:21.360 --> 0:05:24.640 very happy person. No, no, he does not. He looks 0:05:24.680 --> 0:05:27.800 a little bit like the painting of the guy Vigo 0:05:27.880 --> 0:05:31.039 and Ghostbusters to the bad guy who's trying to steal 0:05:31.080 --> 0:05:33.800 that baby's body. Yeah, he's got that, he's got his 0:05:33.839 --> 0:05:37.000 eyes are doing that sort of thing. So you really 0:05:37.000 --> 0:05:38.360 owe it to yourself to look at a picture of 0:05:38.400 --> 0:05:40.760 Peter Burnett, a guy who looks like his goal in 0:05:40.800 --> 0:05:44.000 life was to ban people who aren't white from multiple states. Yeah, 0:05:44.160 --> 0:05:47.520 so Burnett's lash law did not last long, which is 0:05:47.640 --> 0:05:49.839 kind of hard to say. Ten times fast law did not. 0:05:50.320 --> 0:05:53.240 I'm not even going to attend it fair enough. So 0:05:53.360 --> 0:05:55.080 now the good news is that no black people are 0:05:55.080 --> 0:05:57.719 recorded to have been lashed under. It apparently was not 0:05:57.960 --> 0:06:00.280 used even in the eighteen forties in Oregon, and people 0:06:00.320 --> 0:06:04.799 were like, this seems a little bit too racist. That said, 0:06:06.040 --> 0:06:08.240 we're talking Oregon in eighteen forties. Who knows what happened, 0:06:08.560 --> 0:06:11.560 especially rural areas where the rural law was even less 0:06:11.560 --> 0:06:14.160 than it was in Portland. Whether or not it was used, 0:06:14.200 --> 0:06:16.400 the law reflected the values of the first white people 0:06:16.440 --> 0:06:18.840 who settled in the territory of Oregon. They wanted their 0:06:18.880 --> 0:06:20.880 state to be slave free, but because that was the 0:06:20.920 --> 0:06:22.960 only way to ensure the state had no black people 0:06:23.000 --> 0:06:26.640 at all, in eighteen forty eight, the Oregon Territorial government 0:06:26.640 --> 0:06:29.919 passed a law that banned any quote negro or mulatto 0:06:30.120 --> 0:06:33.360 from living in Oregon. In eighteen fifty, the Oregon Land 0:06:33.360 --> 0:06:36.599 Donation Act gave quote whites and half breed Indians six 0:06:37.000 --> 0:06:39.400 and fifty acres of land from the government. All other 0:06:39.440 --> 0:06:42.320 people of color were banned from receiving land grants. So 0:06:42.960 --> 0:06:45.680 Oregon was founded as a whites only state. It was 0:06:45.760 --> 0:06:48.239 seen as this is going to be just white people 0:06:48.480 --> 0:06:51.120 in this chunk. So that was the Pacific Northwest from 0:06:51.279 --> 0:06:54.840 the get go, almost two hundred years ago. Yeah, and 0:06:55.200 --> 0:06:57.280 there's this we'll be talking about. There's some people who 0:06:57.360 --> 0:06:59.479 still think that ought to be the way things work. Yes, 0:06:59.800 --> 0:07:02.000 So from the beginning, Oregon was a very rough place 0:07:02.080 --> 0:07:04.680 to be anything but a very very white person. There 0:07:04.720 --> 0:07:07.760 were some extraordinarily brave black pioneers who did try to 0:07:07.760 --> 0:07:10.200 make a life out here. In eighteen fifty one, one 0:07:10.240 --> 0:07:13.040 of them was Jacob Vanderpool. He was a former sailor. 0:07:13.080 --> 0:07:14.680 I think he came from the Caribbean Islands, but I 0:07:14.720 --> 0:07:16.720 don't think we know exactly, But he came to own 0:07:16.760 --> 0:07:20.040 a saloon, restaurant and boarding house in Oregon City. And 0:07:20.120 --> 0:07:25.000 a white guy named Theophilius Magruder, which is a name, 0:07:25.200 --> 0:07:26.960 quite a name in the name you would expect of 0:07:26.960 --> 0:07:28.760 a guy who's about to do or who did what 0:07:28.760 --> 0:07:31.400 we're about to talk about him doing, reported him for 0:07:31.520 --> 0:07:34.840 the crime of being black in Oregon Um and he 0:07:34.880 --> 0:07:37.680 was given thirty days to leave the state. Now, Magruder 0:07:37.760 --> 0:07:40.360 also owned a hotel and a bar in the same town, 0:07:40.400 --> 0:07:43.440 so it's entirely possible that his motive was as financial 0:07:43.520 --> 0:07:46.640 as it was racist, if not more so. But Jacob 0:07:46.720 --> 0:07:48.800 Vanderpool was forced to leave and forced to give up 0:07:48.800 --> 0:07:52.280 his business. In eighteen fifty seven, Oregon wrote a state 0:07:52.320 --> 0:07:55.960 constitution that enshrined its exclusion of black people into law. 0:07:56.880 --> 0:07:59.920 Quote no free negro or mulatto not residing in this 0:08:00.040 --> 0:08:02.080 state at the time of the adoption of this Constitution 0:08:02.080 --> 0:08:04.560 shall ever come reside or be within the state, or 0:08:04.600 --> 0:08:07.679 hold any real estate, or make any contract, or maintain 0:08:07.800 --> 0:08:11.200 any suit therein. And the Legislative Assembly shall provide by 0:08:11.200 --> 0:08:13.640 penal laws for the removal by public officers of all 0:08:13.680 --> 0:08:16.600 such free Negroes and Mulattos, and for their effectual exclusion 0:08:16.640 --> 0:08:18.760 from the state, and from the punishment of persons who 0:08:18.800 --> 0:08:21.520 shall bring them into the state, or employ them or 0:08:21.600 --> 0:08:26.520 harbor them therein. Yeah, so that's the initial law that 0:08:26.560 --> 0:08:30.720 Oregon is founded under eighteen fifty seven. In eighteen fifty nine, 0:08:30.880 --> 0:08:33.640 Oregon Territory finally becomes a state. It was the only 0:08:33.640 --> 0:08:36.120 state in the Union that was officially whites only. So 0:08:36.200 --> 0:08:38.000 this is the only time that this happened. You know, 0:08:38.000 --> 0:08:39.920 as much racism as there is in the history of 0:08:39.920 --> 0:08:42.160 the United States, We're going the only state to try 0:08:42.200 --> 0:08:47.320 to do this. So that's a fame. I guess. Texas 0:08:47.320 --> 0:08:52.079 has the Alamo and which is also pretty racist as 0:08:52.160 --> 0:08:54.319 kind of. I grew up in Texas and they always 0:08:54.520 --> 0:08:57.960 kind of smoothed over why the Texans were rebelling against 0:08:58.000 --> 0:09:00.480 Mexico a lot to do with the So they wanted 0:09:00.480 --> 0:09:04.280 to own people in Mexico. Didn't like people owning people. Yeah, yeah, 0:09:04.320 --> 0:09:07.880 they really hid that fat yeah always yeah. So, while 0:09:07.920 --> 0:09:10.960 Oregon initially ratified the fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which 0:09:11.000 --> 0:09:13.560 gave citizenship to all people born or naturalized in the 0:09:13.600 --> 0:09:16.040 United States, including former slaves. This is why we have 0:09:16.080 --> 0:09:18.240 birthright citizenship. It was they were trying to figure out 0:09:18.280 --> 0:09:21.440 a legal solution too. We've got all these people that 0:09:21.520 --> 0:09:23.520 were forced to be here and now they've got to 0:09:23.520 --> 0:09:27.360 be citizens. Yeah. So Oregon initially ratified the fourteenth Amendment, 0:09:27.400 --> 0:09:30.720 but then it almost immediately rescinded the ratification of the amendment. 0:09:31.080 --> 0:09:34.040 I guess people got angry. Oregon is also one of 0:09:34.080 --> 0:09:37.040 only six states that refused to ratify the fifteenth Amendment, 0:09:37.040 --> 0:09:40.599 which gave black men the right to vote. So fortunately 0:09:40.600 --> 0:09:43.680 Oregon eventually got it shipped together enough to finally ratify 0:09:43.720 --> 0:09:46.000 the fifteen Amendment. Do you want to guess when that happened. 0:09:48.040 --> 0:09:50.720 I've known this before, but I can't think of it. 0:09:50.720 --> 0:09:54.880 It was eight or nineteen fifty nine. Nineteen fifty nine, 0:09:55.000 --> 0:09:57.040 they were like, all right, we'll ratify the amendment. That 0:09:57.120 --> 0:10:01.120 let's black guys vote, just black guys. Uh. Yeah. It 0:10:01.200 --> 0:10:04.760 did not reratify the fourteenth Amendment until nineteen seventy three. Yes, yeah, 0:10:04.800 --> 0:10:07.600 I definitely remember that date. I think it's important when 0:10:07.600 --> 0:10:10.199 we talk about like why this stuff still lingers, because 0:10:10.200 --> 0:10:13.280 it didn't. It's not we're not talking about like, you know, 0:10:13.320 --> 0:10:15.760 a hundred eighteen sixty five. Really isn't that long ago 0:10:15.960 --> 0:10:18.520 when you talk about generations because the last Civil War 0:10:18.520 --> 0:10:22.280 widows pension just stop getting paid like three years ago. Absolutely. Um, 0:10:22.480 --> 0:10:24.760 but we'll say that all the time, like, oh, racism 0:10:24.840 --> 0:10:29.439 is done, slavery is over. Okay, interesting, let's talk about redlining. 0:10:29.440 --> 0:10:31.080 Oh well that was a long time ago too, we 0:10:31.120 --> 0:10:34.640 will be talking about Yeah, I'm sure. Yeah, Oregon ratified 0:10:34.679 --> 0:10:37.320 the amendment that gave birthright citizens ship to people fifteen 0:10:37.360 --> 0:10:41.280 years before. I was not that long. Disco might have 0:10:41.280 --> 0:10:42.760 been a thing. I don't know when that. I think 0:10:42.800 --> 0:10:44.840 that may have been a thing. Yeah, it's about as 0:10:44.880 --> 0:10:49.000 old as disco. It's about as old as disco. Although 0:10:49.040 --> 0:10:51.439 that does feel that that does feel old now. Disco 0:10:51.520 --> 0:10:58.360 actually feels older than white supremacy in orger Absolutely so. Um, 0:10:58.520 --> 0:11:00.600 it's probably not hard to see why the state of 0:11:00.640 --> 0:11:04.280 Oregon has stayed so white even though after eighteen sixty 0:11:04.320 --> 0:11:06.880 eight there was nothing legally the state authorities could do 0:11:06.920 --> 0:11:09.079 to keep black people out of Oregon. So again, it's 0:11:09.120 --> 0:11:12.320 not whites only after that point. By eighteen ninety there 0:11:12.320 --> 0:11:15.240 were only around a thousand black people in the entire state. 0:11:15.360 --> 0:11:18.240 By nineteen twenty, there were just two thousand. Now, the 0:11:18.280 --> 0:11:20.319 nineteen twenties would have been a rough time to be 0:11:20.360 --> 0:11:23.600 a black person in Oregon because Oregon was the highest 0:11:23.640 --> 0:11:25.840 per capita membership of the Ku Klux Klan of any 0:11:25.880 --> 0:11:28.520 state in the Union. They marched in, Yeah, they gathered 0:11:28.559 --> 0:11:31.960 in Portland proper all the time, thousands of them, thousands 0:11:32.000 --> 0:11:34.880 of the thousands. They're Claverns, I think, Yeah, that's the name. 0:11:35.520 --> 0:11:40.720 They're Grand Wizards, Burnings cross Burns Center in the city. Yeah, 0:11:40.720 --> 0:11:44.040 I prefer to it's easier to focus on the ridiculous names. 0:11:44.040 --> 0:11:48.800 But yeah, it was cross burnings and murders and yeah, yeah, 0:11:49.120 --> 0:11:51.000 we have to talk about that now, No, I mean 0:11:51.000 --> 0:11:52.679 we can. That's what we're here for, Yeah, that is 0:11:52.720 --> 0:11:56.800 what we're here. So Democrat Walter Pierce was elected governor 0:11:56.840 --> 0:12:00.240 in nineteen twenty two after receiving the enthusiastic endorsement of 0:12:00.280 --> 0:12:02.640 the Oregon Ku Klux Klan. In fact, it may have 0:12:02.679 --> 0:12:04.760 been why he won, According to an article in The 0:12:04.800 --> 0:12:08.280 Guardian quote photos in the local papers show the Portland 0:12:08.360 --> 0:12:11.480 Chief of Police, sheriff, District Attorney, U s Attorney, and 0:12:11.559 --> 0:12:14.280 mayor posing with klansmen, accompanied by an article saying them 0:12:14.280 --> 0:12:17.880 in we're taking advice from the clan. So again, really 0:12:17.920 --> 0:12:20.840 not weird that it took until the seventies to ratify 0:12:20.880 --> 0:12:24.920 the fourteenth raified it. Yeah, So World War two is 0:12:24.960 --> 0:12:27.440 when things really started to change demographically in Oregon. This 0:12:27.520 --> 0:12:29.360 was the first time that a large number of black 0:12:29.400 --> 0:12:31.200 people began to move to the state. And it was 0:12:31.280 --> 0:12:34.079 because America was in this whole war thing, and we 0:12:34.080 --> 0:12:36.120 need to build a shipload of boats. And if there's 0:12:36.120 --> 0:12:38.240 one thing Portland's great at, it's being a place to 0:12:38.240 --> 0:12:41.439 build a shipload of boats. You guys, we got our boats. 0:12:41.480 --> 0:12:43.679 If I ever need to build a navy, this is 0:12:43.720 --> 0:12:46.040 the city. I'm gonna build that navy and go for it. Yeah, 0:12:46.240 --> 0:12:48.720 we're here. I'm gonna crowdfunded like a like a like 0:12:48.760 --> 0:12:51.200 a go fundmate, but instead of for medical bills, for 0:12:52.160 --> 0:12:53.839 like a battleship or three. What are you going to 0:12:53.960 --> 0:12:56.400 use it for? I don't know. You'll sail around like 0:12:56.440 --> 0:12:58.360 what Elron Hubbard did, just sail around for eight or 0:12:58.440 --> 0:13:03.840 nine years. Podcasting, podcasting, podcast boat, a podcast boat, a podcast, 0:13:03.920 --> 0:13:10.440 cult boats podcast. I was going to say, uss past us, 0:13:11.080 --> 0:13:14.439 that's more catchy than mine, exactly catchy than mine. I'm 0:13:14.440 --> 0:13:17.760 not the namer in this well, in fairness, I'm not 0:13:17.800 --> 0:13:20.840 the name or either somebody else figured that out there. No, 0:13:20.960 --> 0:13:24.560 I I feel your pain. So, by the end of 0:13:24.559 --> 0:13:28.840 World War two, more than black people had moved to Oregon. 0:13:29.000 --> 0:13:32.440 Many of them resided in Vanport, a small city between 0:13:32.480 --> 0:13:36.640 Portland and Vancouver, Washington, calling it a city at first 0:13:36.640 --> 0:13:41.720 at least, yeah, small town, small town it was. Most 0:13:41.760 --> 0:13:44.120 of it was temporary housing that was built because they 0:13:44.120 --> 0:13:46.760 had so many workers coming in and they needed the 0:13:46.800 --> 0:13:48.960 ability to host them in. Portland was a very tiny 0:13:49.120 --> 0:13:52.600 city at this point. Still, here's how the Smithsonian described 0:13:52.720 --> 0:13:56.720 the creation of Vanport quote completed in just a hundred 0:13:56.720 --> 0:13:59.040 and ten days. The town, comprised of ten thousand, four 0:13:59.440 --> 0:14:02.240 fourteen apartments and homes, was mostly a slipshod combination of 0:14:02.280 --> 0:14:05.120 wooden blocks and fiber board walls built on marshaland between 0:14:05.120 --> 0:14:08.000 the Columbia Slough and the Columbia River. Vanport was physically 0:14:08.080 --> 0:14:10.680 segregated from Portland and kept dry only by a system 0:14:10.679 --> 0:14:13.120 of dikes that held back the flow of the Columbia River. 0:14:13.720 --> 0:14:17.439 So a little bit of foreshadowing there. This is built 0:14:17.480 --> 0:14:19.840 and basically the worst location you could build a town 0:14:19.880 --> 0:14:22.760 to keep it dry. Years later, Manly Maven, who grew 0:14:22.800 --> 0:14:25.960 up in Vanport, would describe it this way. Quote the 0:14:26.000 --> 0:14:28.920 psychological effective living on the bottom of a relatively small 0:14:29.000 --> 0:14:31.400 area dyked on all sides to a height of fifteen 0:14:31.400 --> 0:14:33.840 to twenty five ft was vaguely disturbing. It was almost 0:14:33.880 --> 0:14:36.000 impossible to get a view of the horizon from anywhere 0:14:36.040 --> 0:14:38.480 in Vanport, at least on the ground during the lower 0:14:38.520 --> 0:14:41.080 level apartments, and it was even difficult from upper levels, 0:14:41.120 --> 0:14:44.280 which I can't really imagine this. It sounds like almost 0:14:44.280 --> 0:14:46.920 something you'd see in like a dystopian movie, where these 0:14:46.960 --> 0:14:49.400 people just have these dikes rising like they're walled in 0:14:49.600 --> 0:14:53.880 on all sides. And this is the hub of you know, 0:14:53.920 --> 0:14:56.160 the black community in Portland. You know for the first 0:14:56.160 --> 0:15:01.600 time that it really has any size at all. Um So, yeah, 0:15:01.680 --> 0:15:04.600 the idea was that once folks had settled into Vanport 0:15:04.640 --> 0:15:06.600 and you know, worked at their jobs long enough and 0:15:06.640 --> 0:15:08.080 earn some cash, they would be able to rent your 0:15:08.080 --> 0:15:09.880 by homes elsewhere. It was not intended to be a 0:15:09.920 --> 0:15:14.239 permanent development, but discriminatory housing policy made it nearly impossible 0:15:14.240 --> 0:15:17.560 for black people to uh, you know, live anywhere else 0:15:17.560 --> 0:15:20.320 in the city. Um So, once the war ended, the 0:15:20.320 --> 0:15:23.200 Mayor of Portland wrote a newspaper article telling the black 0:15:23.200 --> 0:15:25.440 people of Vanport that they were no longer welcome in 0:15:25.440 --> 0:15:27.720 the state. Uh. This is the Mayor of Portland has 0:15:27.760 --> 0:15:30.120 basically put up a letter saying like, Okay, thank you 0:15:30.160 --> 0:15:34.600 for building the boats. You can go. You can go now. Yeah. 0:15:34.680 --> 0:15:37.800 The housing authority discussed tearing the town down. A nineteen 0:15:37.880 --> 0:15:41.520 forty seven Oregon Journal article described local attitudes to Vanport 0:15:41.640 --> 0:15:45.360 this way, too many Oregonians, Vanport has been undesirable because 0:15:45.360 --> 0:15:47.840 it is supposed to have a large colored population. Of 0:15:47.920 --> 0:15:50.840 the some twenty three thou inhabitants, only slightly over four 0:15:50.880 --> 0:15:53.880 thousander colored residents. True, this is a high percentage per 0:15:53.920 --> 0:15:56.520 capita compared to other Northwestern cities, but as one resident 0:15:56.560 --> 0:15:58.800 puts it, the colored people have to live somewhere, and 0:15:58.840 --> 0:16:01.960 whether the Northwesterners lie it or not, they're here to stay. 0:16:02.480 --> 0:16:04.480 I think there's a lot to dig into in terms 0:16:04.480 --> 0:16:07.160 of the phrasing. They're both that this this journalist rather 0:16:07.200 --> 0:16:11.200 than being like kind of confronting the racism, is like, well, 0:16:11.240 --> 0:16:13.800 they're not entirely accurate. It's only a quarter color. And 0:16:13.840 --> 0:16:18.440 then also, yeah, whether whether the Northwesterners like it or not, 0:16:18.560 --> 0:16:21.840 they are here to stay. That's the attitude in nineteen seven. 0:16:23.160 --> 0:16:26.960 So today you know Vanport as Delta park. Um. That's 0:16:27.000 --> 0:16:28.880 a sort of the land that it's that's on now 0:16:28.920 --> 0:16:32.280 because very little of Vanport City still remains um. In 0:16:32.360 --> 0:16:37.600 ninety eight, it started raining very hard on Memorial Day, 0:16:37.760 --> 0:16:40.240 Residents of Vanport woke up to driving rain. In this 0:16:40.320 --> 0:16:44.800 letter from the Housing Authority of Portland, the HP, Remember 0:16:45.080 --> 0:16:48.200 dikes are safe at present. You will be warned if necessary, 0:16:48.440 --> 0:16:52.880 you will have time to leave. Don't get excited. I 0:16:52.920 --> 0:16:55.480 do feel like if the government's sending you all caps 0:16:55.480 --> 0:16:58.240 notes that they don't get excited, she'd probably get excited. 0:16:58.240 --> 0:17:00.680 To get pretty excited. Should get pretty side it, I mean. 0:17:00.760 --> 0:17:05.639 And what happened next is uh horrendous, Yeah, horrendous and 0:17:05.800 --> 0:17:08.879 very predictable. The dikes did not hold. A hole opened 0:17:08.960 --> 0:17:12.000 up shortly after four pm, and roughly one day Vanport, 0:17:12.040 --> 0:17:15.000 Oregon's second largest city at the time, was completely wiped 0:17:15.000 --> 0:17:18.520 out by floodwaters. Eighteen thousand, five hundred people, sixty three 0:17:18.560 --> 0:17:21.639 hundred of whom were black, were displaced. Hundreds died, but 0:17:21.720 --> 0:17:23.879 we don't know how many, because it really seems like 0:17:23.920 --> 0:17:27.479 the HP may have secretly disposed of hundreds of corpses um. 0:17:28.000 --> 0:17:30.720 Even even with the predictability that you were mentioning, people 0:17:31.520 --> 0:17:35.840 often will trust authority figures, and even if it seems 0:17:35.880 --> 0:17:38.640 predictable in hindsight, at the time, it probably didn't. They 0:17:38.760 --> 0:17:41.320 probably really trusted that that they were safe. Oh yeah, 0:17:41.320 --> 0:17:42.720 and I was sorry. I was not trying to say 0:17:42.760 --> 0:17:46.000 that people bandports should have predicted it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 0:17:45.400 --> 0:17:48.720 The city shaded on something. They didn't give a ship 0:17:48.880 --> 0:17:51.919 with this place that was basically built underwater with the 0:17:51.920 --> 0:17:54.040 water held in by walls, and then the walls start 0:17:54.080 --> 0:17:57.199 getting flooded with water. Absolutely. Um, there's a rumor that 0:17:57.240 --> 0:18:00.080 four fifty seven dead people were shipped to Japan for 0:18:00.080 --> 0:18:01.959 some reason. There's a bunch of weird rumors around what 0:18:02.600 --> 0:18:05.240 that's very god Yeah, it's it's it's kind of hard 0:18:05.240 --> 0:18:07.600 to dig into. I heard they recover ups. I hadn't 0:18:07.600 --> 0:18:10.359 heard that. It seems like a reasonable guests would be 0:18:10.359 --> 0:18:13.720 somewhere between four and SI. But it's it's very hard 0:18:13.760 --> 0:18:16.480 to say. Yeah, let me see that cycle repeating itself 0:18:16.560 --> 0:18:20.960 with Puerto Rico. Yeah, where it's it's weird how things 0:18:21.240 --> 0:18:23.720 rhyme all of the time in history. Ye all, the 0:18:24.440 --> 0:18:27.919 speaking of rhyming, it's time for an ad break. That 0:18:27.960 --> 0:18:30.119 was a bad plot. But do you have any products 0:18:30.160 --> 0:18:32.080 and or services you'd like to plug before we get 0:18:32.080 --> 0:18:35.240 to the ones that paid us? Uh? So it gets 0:18:35.240 --> 0:18:37.280 to just kind of be anything anything you want. I 0:18:37.359 --> 0:18:40.000 usually pick random objects on the table because I just 0:18:40.040 --> 0:18:42.639 love advertising. All Right, I'm going to say that everyone 0:18:42.680 --> 0:18:46.280 should read Man Search for Meaning by Victor frankpl Oh. 0:18:46.400 --> 0:18:48.680 That is much more meaningful than the plug. I was 0:18:48.720 --> 0:18:51.719 going to go, so, yeah, read Man Search for Ye well, 0:18:51.720 --> 0:18:56.560 I was going Vino daily moisturizing lotion. Only daily moisturizing 0:18:56.560 --> 0:19:01.680 lotion currently on this table of it. Let's uh, let's 0:19:01.720 --> 0:19:04.240 let's move over to the products indoor services that actually 0:19:04.280 --> 0:19:13.800 paid us for. We're back. We're back back, and we're 0:19:13.800 --> 0:19:20.080 talking about racism Oregon. Now for something completely different. Well, 0:19:20.119 --> 0:19:22.919 I mean compared to your sponsors. Oh, yes, very different, 0:19:22.920 --> 0:19:28.280 because none of our sponsors support racism in Oregon for sure. Yeah, 0:19:28.320 --> 0:19:32.040 pretty sure. I mean, like they make belts like Croup six. 0:19:32.200 --> 0:19:34.399 I don't see how a belt could be racist. Depends 0:19:34.400 --> 0:19:38.359 on where they're made. Should I be saying this? Should 0:19:38.400 --> 0:19:44.119 I be talking about consumerism under capitalism? Well, yes, I 0:19:44.200 --> 0:19:46.159 mean we do. It's one of those things we uh, 0:19:46.320 --> 0:19:48.199 this is the ocean that we live in. So you 0:19:48.240 --> 0:19:50.879 can't do anything but swim, but you can't try to 0:19:50.920 --> 0:19:54.520 pick products that you feel don't add to the problems 0:19:54.560 --> 0:19:57.119 as long as you're not sponsored by Amazon. We're not 0:19:57.160 --> 0:19:59.600 sponsored by Amazon, and I do believe that it's a 0:19:59.640 --> 0:20:03.200 general good to keep people's pants up. Yeah, let's get 0:20:03.200 --> 0:20:06.080 back into us. Continue. So there's a lot more to 0:20:06.119 --> 0:20:08.640 say in terms of Portland's history being terrible to the 0:20:08.760 --> 0:20:10.760 black people who lived there. There was the time when 0:20:10.840 --> 0:20:14.080 voters in nineteen fifty six approved the construction of an 0:20:14.080 --> 0:20:17.439 arena that necessitated the destruction of four hundred and seventy 0:20:17.480 --> 0:20:21.840 six films, half of which were black people's homes, And 0:20:21.880 --> 0:20:24.159 of course black people made up like less than two 0:20:24.240 --> 0:20:25.800 percent of the city at this point, so we're not 0:20:25.840 --> 0:20:29.360 talking about a proportional sort of Yeah, and the expressway 0:20:29.400 --> 0:20:32.439 as well. Yeah, that's exactly what I'm about to say. Well, actually, no, 0:20:32.480 --> 0:20:33.959 I was about to go into a completely different time 0:20:34.000 --> 0:20:38.120 that they did that. There's yeah, there was the time 0:20:38.160 --> 0:20:40.239