WEBVTT - SYMHC Classics: Vanport Flood 0:00:02.400 --> 0:00:06.600 Happy Saturday. The Vanport flood took place on May thirtieth, 0:00:06.720 --> 0:00:10.319 nineteen forty eight, or seventy eight years ago today, so 0:00:10.360 --> 0:00:14.280 we have chosen our episode on it as Today's Saturday Classic. 0:00:15.000 --> 0:00:22.320 This episode originally came out February third, twenty sixteen, Welcome 0:00:22.360 --> 0:00:30.960 to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio. Hello, 0:00:31.160 --> 0:00:32.880 and Welcome to the podcast. 0:00:33.000 --> 0:00:35.640 I'm Tracy B. Wilson and I'm Holly Fryne. 0:00:36.200 --> 0:00:39.760 Today's podcast is yet another listener request, but it's one 0:00:39.760 --> 0:00:41.879 that was already on my to do list, so I 0:00:41.920 --> 0:00:43.720 haven't made a note of who I'll ask for it. 0:00:44.400 --> 0:00:48.760 On May thirtieth of nineteen forty eight, a flood destroyed Vanport, Oregon. 0:00:49.280 --> 0:00:52.479 Fifteen people were killed, which, in light of some of 0:00:52.520 --> 0:00:55.600 the other disasters we've been talking about on the show lately, 0:00:56.280 --> 0:00:59.920 probably seems like a relatively small number, but the proper 0:01:00.280 --> 0:01:04.240 damage involved was colossal. And what really makes the story 0:01:04.400 --> 0:01:07.720 more than a historical footnote is how it is tied 0:01:07.760 --> 0:01:10.920 into the racial makeup of both Portland and Oregon as 0:01:10.959 --> 0:01:15.640 a whole, and a lot of the stresses and difficulties 0:01:15.640 --> 0:01:18.360 that went on with racism and race relations both before 0:01:18.400 --> 0:01:19.640 and after the flood. 0:01:20.040 --> 0:01:23.000 The historical context for the Vanport flood goes back to 0:01:23.080 --> 0:01:26.640 before Oregon became a state in eighteen fifty nine. The 0:01:26.680 --> 0:01:30.440 issue of slavery within Oregon wasn't a totally simple one. 0:01:30.760 --> 0:01:33.399 While it ultimately joined the Union as a free state, 0:01:33.840 --> 0:01:36.600 there were people living there who were in favor of slavery. 0:01:37.160 --> 0:01:39.200 This is one of several reasons why the people of 0:01:39.200 --> 0:01:43.880 Oregon voted against holding a constitutional convention three separate times 0:01:44.160 --> 0:01:47.960 before a vote finally succeeded. Among other things, putting off 0:01:47.960 --> 0:01:51.960 a constitutional convention meant putting off a final decision on slavery. 0:01:52.720 --> 0:01:55.920 Oregon did actually out lost slavery while it was still 0:01:55.960 --> 0:01:58.880 a territory. In eighteen forty three, its residents voted to 0:01:59.000 --> 0:02:02.520 incorporate language from the Northwest Ordnance into its own laws. 0:02:03.080 --> 0:02:06.800 That language was quote, there shall be neither slavery nor 0:02:07.040 --> 0:02:11.040 involuntary servitude in the said territory otherwise than in the 0:02:11.080 --> 0:02:17.239 punishment of crimes whereof the party shall have been duly convicted. However, 0:02:18.120 --> 0:02:20.919 a little less than a year later, the Provisional Government's 0:02:21.000 --> 0:02:24.320 Legislative Council changed that eighteen forty three law with an 0:02:24.320 --> 0:02:28.760 amendment that had the rather odd effect of simultaneously outlying 0:02:28.800 --> 0:02:32.680 slavery and allowing it for a short period of time. 0:02:33.320 --> 0:02:36.880 Slaveholders were given a deadline to remove their slaves from Oregon, 0:02:37.040 --> 0:02:40.600 and if they refused, the slaves would be freed. The 0:02:40.680 --> 0:02:44.760 amendment went on to specify that those previously enslaved persons 0:02:44.800 --> 0:02:48.399 also needed to leave Oregon. Free black males had two 0:02:48.480 --> 0:02:51.840 years to do so, and free black females had three years. 0:02:52.320 --> 0:02:56.360 The punishment for refusing to leave after being freed was lashing. 0:02:57.120 --> 0:03:00.200 This law was nicknamed Peter Burnett's Lash Law, after the 0:03:00.200 --> 0:03:03.520 head of the legislative council that passed it. A little 0:03:03.560 --> 0:03:06.399 later in the year, the punishment was shifted from being 0:03:06.560 --> 0:03:10.040 lashing to force labor, and the law itself was repealed 0:03:10.080 --> 0:03:13.079 in eighteen forty five before its punishment clause went into 0:03:13.160 --> 0:03:18.440 effect after Jesse Applegate replaced Peter Burnett on the council. Then, 0:03:18.520 --> 0:03:22.440 on September twenty first, eighteen forty nine, the territorial legislature 0:03:22.600 --> 0:03:26.440 enacted another racial exclusion law in Oregon, which remained on 0:03:26.440 --> 0:03:29.799 the books until eighteen fifty four. This law stated that 0:03:29.840 --> 0:03:32.960 in Oregon, quote, it shall not be lawful for any 0:03:33.040 --> 0:03:37.760 Negro or mulatto to enter into or reside. When Oregon 0:03:38.000 --> 0:03:41.360 finally did assemble a constitutional convention on the road to 0:03:41.400 --> 0:03:45.000 becoming a state in eighteen fifty seven, two proposals were 0:03:45.040 --> 0:03:49.360 placed before its delegates. One would have legalized slavery. The 0:03:49.400 --> 0:03:52.520 other was an exclusion clause similar to the one enacted 0:03:52.560 --> 0:03:54.360 in eighteen forty nine. 0:03:54.400 --> 0:03:58.400 Both of these passed by a wide margin. Oregon ultimately 0:03:58.440 --> 0:04:00.880 did not want to be a slave state, but it 0:04:00.960 --> 0:04:03.520 also did not want African Americans living there. 0:04:04.480 --> 0:04:07.160 As a result. Article one, section thirty five of the 0:04:07.200 --> 0:04:10.880 Constitution of the State of Oregon read quote, no free 0:04:10.960 --> 0:04:14.360 negro or mulatto not residing in this State at the 0:04:14.400 --> 0:04:18.200 time of the adoption of this Constitution shall come reside 0:04:18.400 --> 0:04:21.839 or be within the state, or hold any real estate, 0:04:22.360 --> 0:04:26.440 or make any contracts, or maintain any suit therein. And 0:04:26.520 --> 0:04:29.800 the Legislative Assembly shall provide by penal laws for the 0:04:29.839 --> 0:04:34.080 removal by public officers of all such Negroes and mulattos, 0:04:34.360 --> 0:04:37.760 for their effectual exclusion from the state, and for the 0:04:37.800 --> 0:04:40.640 punishment of persons who shall bring them into the state 0:04:41.000 --> 0:04:47.120 or employ or harbor them. These articles made Oregon's constitution 0:04:47.400 --> 0:04:50.000 unique among the free states. It was the only one 0:04:50.000 --> 0:04:53.240 whose constitution was written to try to exclude black people. 0:04:53.920 --> 0:04:56.920 The legislature did not, in the end provide penal laws 0:04:57.000 --> 0:04:59.799 for the removal of African Americans from the state, though 0:05:01.120 --> 0:05:04.760 the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified on 0:05:04.880 --> 0:05:09.720 July ninth, eighteen sixty eight, nullified Oregon's exclusion clause. As 0:05:09.720 --> 0:05:12.640 a refresher, the Fourteenth Amendment was one of the reconstruction 0:05:12.680 --> 0:05:15.440 amendments that followed the end of the Civil War. It's 0:05:15.480 --> 0:05:18.040 the one that gives all citizens of the United States 0:05:18.040 --> 0:05:21.000 the right to do process and equal protection under the laws. 0:05:21.480 --> 0:05:26.040 The Fifteenth Amendment, ratified in eighteen seventy, also invalidated a 0:05:26.080 --> 0:05:29.680 different article in the Oregon Constitution that denied quote Negroes, 0:05:29.839 --> 0:05:35.400 Chinamen and Mulatto's the right to vote. However, even though 0:05:35.400 --> 0:05:39.800 the Fourteenth and fifteenth Amendments invalidated them, those two exclusionary 0:05:39.880 --> 0:05:43.760 articles weren't actually repealed in Oregon until nineteen twenty six 0:05:43.839 --> 0:05:48.400 and nineteen twenty seven, respectively, and their obsolete text, along 0:05:48.440 --> 0:05:51.560 with other language that alluded to race, like specifying the 0:05:51.560 --> 0:05:54.640 white population needed to increase the number of state Supreme 0:05:54.640 --> 0:05:58.600 Court justices, was actually still present in the Oregon Constitution 0:05:58.760 --> 0:06:01.720 until a measure to remove it passed in two thousand 0:06:01.720 --> 0:06:04.640 and two, and even then it only got seventy one 0:06:04.680 --> 0:06:07.920 percent of the vote, and people cited as their reasons 0:06:07.920 --> 0:06:12.680 for voting now things like unwillingness to tamper with the 0:06:12.839 --> 0:06:16.680 historical document. So it's not clear exactly what the motivation 0:06:16.720 --> 0:06:19.440 of everyone was, but it was definitely clear what the 0:06:19.440 --> 0:06:22.800 motivation of some of them was. Although the state had 0:06:22.839 --> 0:06:25.560 never passed enforcement measures to go along with these racial 0:06:25.560 --> 0:06:28.840 exclusion laws, and the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments had been 0:06:28.960 --> 0:06:32.000 invalidated those laws after the Civil War, the fact that 0:06:32.000 --> 0:06:35.680 they were written into the state's foundational documents and had 0:06:35.720 --> 0:06:38.680 been passed at all had a big effect on who 0:06:38.760 --> 0:06:43.200 did or didn't move to Oregon in the migration that 0:06:43.279 --> 0:06:46.320 followed the Civil War. The people who moved into Oregon 0:06:46.360 --> 0:06:49.800 were overwhelmingly white, and some of those who did did 0:06:49.839 --> 0:06:53.800 so because they found that constitutional language appealing. By the 0:06:53.880 --> 0:06:57.360 nineteen hundreds, the Ku Klux Klan, perhaps the most notorious 0:06:57.360 --> 0:07:00.920 white supremacy organization in the United States, had more than 0:07:01.000 --> 0:07:05.200 fourteen thousand members in Oregon, nine thousand of them in Portland. 0:07:05.800 --> 0:07:09.200 By comparison, very few black people moved into Oregon after 0:07:09.240 --> 0:07:12.320 the Civil War. According to the United States Census Bureau, 0:07:12.320 --> 0:07:15.480 by nineteen forty, just a few years before the Vanport Flood, 0:07:15.600 --> 0:07:19.080 more than a million people lived in Oregon, only two thousand, 0:07:19.200 --> 0:07:21.920 five hundred and sixty five were African American, or less 0:07:21.960 --> 0:07:24.960 than a quarter of a percent of the population. Nearly 0:07:25.040 --> 0:07:28.960 all of them lived in one small, segregated district in Portland, which, 0:07:29.040 --> 0:07:32.560 thanks to racist laws, housing policies, and real estate practices, 0:07:33.040 --> 0:07:36.080 was the only place in Oregon most black people could 0:07:36.120 --> 0:07:40.800 find housing. The racial demographics of the area around Portland 0:07:40.920 --> 0:07:44.680 changed dramatically before and during World War II, and the 0:07:44.760 --> 0:07:48.440 circumstances are tied directly to the Vanport Flood. And we're 0:07:48.480 --> 0:07:50.320 going to talk about that. But first we are going 0:07:50.360 --> 0:08:01.280 to have a word from one of our fabulous sponsors. 0:08:02.320 --> 0:08:03.880 To get back to our story. We're going to talk 0:08:03.920 --> 0:08:07.840 about the beginnings of the city of Banmport. During World 0:08:07.880 --> 0:08:11.080 War Two, the shipbuilding industry in Portland, Oregon and Vancouver, 0:08:11.240 --> 0:08:15.880 Washington grew really tremendously in response to military needs. Most 0:08:15.880 --> 0:08:18.080 of this growth came by a shipyards that were owned 0:08:18.080 --> 0:08:21.920 by the Kaiser Company. Later Kaiser Shipbuilding Corporation, which began 0:08:22.040 --> 0:08:24.960 working with the British Navy to build ships in nineteen forty. 0:08:25.560 --> 0:08:28.440 The industry as a whole grew from a few thousand 0:08:28.520 --> 0:08:32.000 people to more than one hundred and forty thousand employees 0:08:32.080 --> 0:08:35.360 by late nineteen forty three. The Kaiser Company, which was 0:08:35.440 --> 0:08:39.480 named for its founder, employed nearly all of them. This 0:08:39.679 --> 0:08:42.520 huge influx of workers really put a strain on the 0:08:42.559 --> 0:08:45.920 housing supply in and around Portland, thanks in part to 0:08:46.000 --> 0:08:50.120 a long standing resistance to public housing. Many residents were 0:08:50.160 --> 0:08:53.280 afraid that affordable housing would lower their property values and 0:08:53.320 --> 0:08:57.520 bring in a quote undesirable class of people when it 0:08:57.520 --> 0:09:01.160 came to the Kaiser Company's wartime employee. Another issue on 0:09:01.240 --> 0:09:03.520 the mines of the Portland majority was that many of 0:09:03.520 --> 0:09:06.920 them were black. Particularly in the earlier years of World 0:09:07.000 --> 0:09:09.440 War two, black men were not seen as fit for 0:09:09.480 --> 0:09:12.480 military duty. We've talked about this in other episodes before, 0:09:13.240 --> 0:09:16.440 so as white men were drafted into the military, black men, 0:09:16.480 --> 0:09:19.040 along with women of all races, were the ones to 0:09:19.320 --> 0:09:22.079 very often fill those jobs. The same was also true 0:09:22.120 --> 0:09:26.120 for newly created wartime work, in part because so many 0:09:26.160 --> 0:09:28.840 of the people were moving into Portland to get these 0:09:28.920 --> 0:09:31.920 jobs were black. Meetings in the city about how to 0:09:31.960 --> 0:09:35.400 address the housing shortage were met with pickets and protests, 0:09:35.640 --> 0:09:38.080 so in the summer of nineteen forty two, the Kaiser 0:09:38.120 --> 0:09:41.000 Company worked out a deal with the US Maritime Commission 0:09:41.120 --> 0:09:45.160 to build a town to house its workers, situated outside 0:09:45.200 --> 0:09:48.160 the city limits of Portland in the Columbia River floodplain. 0:09:48.320 --> 0:09:52.560 The town was originally called Kaiserville because it was being 0:09:52.600 --> 0:09:56.120 built in bottom land and a floodplain. Thirty foot tall 0:09:56.240 --> 0:09:58.520 dykes were built on two sides of the town to 0:09:58.600 --> 0:10:01.920 keep the water out. On a third side, a railroad 0:10:01.920 --> 0:10:04.920 embankment fulfilled the same function, but it had not been 0:10:05.040 --> 0:10:08.679 constructed as a dyke. It was built by filling dirt 0:10:08.840 --> 0:10:11.240 in and around a wooden railroad trestle. 0:10:12.360 --> 0:10:15.640 Going through The US Maritime Commission let the Kaiser Company 0:10:15.720 --> 0:10:18.559 do an end run around the Housing Authority of Portland. 0:10:19.520 --> 0:10:22.400 Neither the Housing Authority nor the people of Portland got 0:10:22.480 --> 0:10:24.320 much of a say in what was being built or 0:10:24.320 --> 0:10:27.720 who would live there. The homes were built quickly and cheaply, 0:10:27.840 --> 0:10:31.000 and they were intended as temporary wartime housing, not as 0:10:31.000 --> 0:10:34.880 permanent structures. They were apartment buildings made of wood on 0:10:34.960 --> 0:10:37.920 wooden foundations, and in the end there were nearly ten 0:10:38.000 --> 0:10:39.160 thousand of these units. 0:10:39.640 --> 0:10:43.480 This housing was really pretty incredibly basic. The units had 0:10:43.480 --> 0:10:45.960 a small bedroom, a kitchenette with a hot plate, and 0:10:46.040 --> 0:10:48.560 only one window that could open that was in case 0:10:48.559 --> 0:10:52.000 of a fire. Units were furnished with tenants expected to 0:10:52.040 --> 0:10:55.319 supply only personal items like linens and dishes and silverware. 0:10:56.040 --> 0:10:58.320 But because the buildings were so cheaply made, they were 0:10:58.360 --> 0:11:01.080 also quite noisy. There was very little to dampen the 0:11:01.120 --> 0:11:04.720 sound between the units, and since the shipbuilding industry during 0:11:04.760 --> 0:11:09.680 wartime ran literally around the clock, Vanport was also really noisy. 0:11:09.720 --> 0:11:13.920 Around the clock. Fires were a problem, although fortunately these 0:11:14.200 --> 0:11:17.360 were mostly small and none of them swept through the 0:11:17.520 --> 0:11:20.839 nearly all wooden city, which would have been a definite possibility. 0:11:21.960 --> 0:11:25.920 This temporary housing became the largest wartime housing development in 0:11:25.960 --> 0:11:29.560 the United States and the second largest city in Oregon, 0:11:30.000 --> 0:11:32.920 although since the government owned it it wasn't technically a 0:11:32.960 --> 0:11:37.679 real city. It was renamed Vanport by combining the names 0:11:37.679 --> 0:11:41.440 of Vancouver and Portland in November, and its first residents 0:11:41.520 --> 0:11:45.080 moved in on December twelfth. Headlines hailed it as a 0:11:45.160 --> 0:11:48.920 quote masterpiece of urban planning. Now all that happened in 0:11:49.000 --> 0:11:50.839 nineteen forty two u s. You can tell how quickly 0:11:50.880 --> 0:11:53.520 all of this was put together, since the Kaiser Corporation 0:11:53.559 --> 0:11:56.560 only started working on it in the summer. As those 0:11:56.600 --> 0:12:00.520 first families moved in, Vanport mostly offered housing anding else. 0:12:01.040 --> 0:12:05.439 Although the city was roughly equidistant from Kaiser's three shipbuilding facilities, 0:12:05.440 --> 0:12:08.240 which meant that there were shortages of rubber and gasoline. 0:12:08.240 --> 0:12:11.360 People could walk to work, it was not really convenient 0:12:11.480 --> 0:12:14.160 to getting into Portland or to any kind of transit. 0:12:14.559 --> 0:12:18.600 The first residents had trouble getting basic supplies. Often it 0:12:18.720 --> 0:12:21.400 was pressure from the Kaiser company, who was afraid that 0:12:21.440 --> 0:12:23.600 they would lose their workers if they couldn't get the 0:12:23.640 --> 0:12:27.840 basic staples that they needed that got things done. But 0:12:27.960 --> 0:12:31.560 eventually Vamport did get a lot of amenities that you 0:12:31.559 --> 0:12:34.760 would expect in a city, including a hospital, a movie theater, 0:12:34.960 --> 0:12:38.680 and some shopping centers. Since it was built as worker housing, 0:12:38.800 --> 0:12:41.959 it also had twenty four hour childcare services. In addition 0:12:42.040 --> 0:12:46.160 to schools, the Vamport Extension Center, which would eventually grow 0:12:46.160 --> 0:12:50.480 into Portland State University, taught classes there during the war. 0:12:50.679 --> 0:12:55.000 Vanport eventually got its own ration board. The housing Authority 0:12:55.040 --> 0:12:58.080 of Portland wound up essentially acting as a landlord and 0:12:58.160 --> 0:13:02.160 in some ways as the city government. The housing Authority oversaw, 0:13:02.240 --> 0:13:04.720 among other things, the creation of a fire department and 0:13:04.760 --> 0:13:08.760 a school district. Law enforcement came from the county sheriff Department. 0:13:10.360 --> 0:13:14.079 The relocation of black workers from all over the United States, 0:13:14.120 --> 0:13:17.120 but especially from the Deep South and the Southwest into 0:13:17.200 --> 0:13:21.199 Vanport was the first major migration of African Americans into 0:13:21.240 --> 0:13:25.720 Oregon in the state's history. Between nineteen forty and nineteen fifty, 0:13:25.880 --> 0:13:29.200 the percentage of Oregon's population that was African American grew 0:13:29.200 --> 0:13:32.880 from point two to point eight percent. It's a still 0:13:32.920 --> 0:13:37.000 tiny percentage, but a massive increase in all going into 0:13:37.040 --> 0:13:40.599 the same place. In the face of this influx of 0:13:40.640 --> 0:13:45.720 African Americans to the area around previously overwhelmingly white Portland, 0:13:45.880 --> 0:13:48.960 White's only signs that are more often associated with the 0:13:49.040 --> 0:13:52.520 South became a lot more common, especially in the parts 0:13:52.559 --> 0:13:55.120 of Portland that were closest to the railroad station, which 0:13:55.120 --> 0:13:58.080 would have been how most people were getting there. Vamport 0:13:58.120 --> 0:14:02.560 itself was also informally but fairly strictly segregated, with housing, 0:14:02.679 --> 0:14:07.280 medical facilities, and recreational facilities all separated along racial lines. 0:14:07.840 --> 0:14:11.520 The schools, however, were integrated, including hiring black teachers. 0:14:12.240 --> 0:14:15.880 Overall, White residents of Portland were so distressed by the 0:14:15.920 --> 0:14:19.640 influx of Black Americans that the Portland Art Museum arranged 0:14:19.680 --> 0:14:23.200 a series of special exhibitions to try to calm their fears. 0:14:23.880 --> 0:14:28.640 They were titled Wartime Housing, Ships for Victory and Migration 0:14:28.760 --> 0:14:32.560 of the Negro, and they framed Portland as a tolerant, welcoming, 0:14:32.720 --> 0:14:37.200 diverse place full of patriotic duty. Wartime Housing was an 0:14:37.240 --> 0:14:40.200 adapted Museum of Modern Art exhibition that had been used 0:14:40.240 --> 0:14:43.640 in other cities that, for various reasons, objected to the 0:14:43.640 --> 0:14:47.400 building of mass housing for wartime workers. Migration of the 0:14:47.440 --> 0:14:50.760 Negro was a Museum of Modern Art exhibition as well, 0:14:50.840 --> 0:14:53.320 and was chosen because of a huge amount of anti 0:14:53.360 --> 0:14:57.360 Southern bias being shown in Portland's white and black residents alike. 0:14:58.320 --> 0:15:00.680 Ships for Victory, on the other hand, and was funded 0:15:00.720 --> 0:15:03.240 in part by Kaiser Corporation, and, in the words of 0:15:03.240 --> 0:15:06.840 an article on the matter in Pacific Northwest Quarterly Quote, 0:15:07.120 --> 0:15:10.680 by the time the final object list was completed, Ships 0:15:10.720 --> 0:15:14.920 for Victory violated nearly every curatorial convention and would by 0:15:14.920 --> 0:15:18.160 no means have been considered a worthy exhibition or a 0:15:18.280 --> 0:15:21.960 museum of art, but for the exigencies of war, basically 0:15:22.000 --> 0:15:25.600 it was propaganda. By December of nineteen forty four, the 0:15:25.600 --> 0:15:29.520 city of Vamport was filled nearly to capacity. Its population 0:15:29.640 --> 0:15:32.640 was about forty two thousand people, but as the war 0:15:32.720 --> 0:15:36.760 neared its end and wartime manufacturing slowed down, its population 0:15:36.840 --> 0:15:39.920 started to drop. Most of the people who moved out 0:15:39.920 --> 0:15:42.560 were white. They had the means and the opportunity to 0:15:42.600 --> 0:15:47.560 find housing elsewhere. Vanport's black residents, though, were effectively stuck. 0:15:48.040 --> 0:15:51.120 There wasn't enough room for them in Portland's tiny, segregated 0:15:51.120 --> 0:15:54.840 black neighborhood, and they weren't welcome anywhere else. And because 0:15:54.920 --> 0:15:57.760 many of them were laid off from their wartime shipbuilding jobs, 0:15:57.800 --> 0:16:00.720 they also didn't have the financial means to just relocate 0:16:00.760 --> 0:16:04.160 to a completely different state. As the war drew to 0:16:04.200 --> 0:16:08.360 a close, authorities started talking about what to do with Vanmport. 0:16:08.840 --> 0:16:12.440 On June seventeenth, nineteen forty five, The Oregonian reported that 0:16:12.520 --> 0:16:15.280 city officials hoped that the black residents of Vamport would 0:16:15.400 --> 0:16:20.520 leave to prevent any quote racial problems. After the war, 0:16:20.800 --> 0:16:24.720 Vamport quickly developed a bad reputation, even though its crime 0:16:24.800 --> 0:16:27.800 rate wasn't statistically very different from the city of Portland 0:16:27.920 --> 0:16:31.120 and there was no disproportionate crime among its black residents. 0:16:31.600 --> 0:16:35.600 People perceived Vanport as being crime written and shoddily built. 0:16:36.200 --> 0:16:38.960 The latter criticism was valid, but as to the former 0:16:39.440 --> 0:16:42.520 Captain j Earl Stanley, head of the County Sheriff's office 0:16:42.520 --> 0:16:46.000 in Vamport, was quoted in a nineteen forty seven article 0:16:46.120 --> 0:16:48.800 on the city as saying, quote, I have been stationed 0:16:48.840 --> 0:16:51.400 at Vamport for only a year, but I am constantly 0:16:51.440 --> 0:16:54.080 surprised that we have as little major crime as we do, 0:16:54.480 --> 0:16:57.400 considering the conditions under which people are forced to live. 0:16:58.120 --> 0:17:01.080 The walls between the apartments are certainly far short of 0:17:01.080 --> 0:17:04.760 being sound proofed. This makes for trouble, particularly when two 0:17:04.840 --> 0:17:09.080 families have children. The decades that have passed since that time, 0:17:09.119 --> 0:17:13.200 there's been a lot of research on what the psychological 0:17:13.200 --> 0:17:17.040 effect is of just being constantly immersed in noise. This 0:17:17.080 --> 0:17:20.479 is a real issue in Vamport. Like it was constantly noisy, 0:17:20.480 --> 0:17:22.439 and it was noisy around the clock because there were 0:17:22.480 --> 0:17:26.439 people working literally every shift. So what he's remarking on 0:17:26.560 --> 0:17:30.199 here was later proved by science. That was probably a 0:17:30.200 --> 0:17:33.720 little surprising that, given the fact that people were immersed 0:17:33.760 --> 0:17:37.159 in a noisy, chaotic environment they couldn't escape, things were 0:17:37.160 --> 0:17:39.639 actually running along the same lines as they were in 0:17:39.720 --> 0:17:44.000 Portland in terms of things like crime. All of the 0:17:44.040 --> 0:17:46.959 powers involved in this were still debating what to do 0:17:47.040 --> 0:17:49.680 about Vamport in the spring of nineteen forty eight, when 0:17:49.680 --> 0:17:52.640 the Columbia River started to rise due to a combination 0:17:52.720 --> 0:17:56.000 of heavy rains and melting snow from the mountains. Flood 0:17:56.040 --> 0:17:59.040 stage for the Columbia River was considered to be fifteen feet, 0:17:59.080 --> 0:18:02.359 which which the river reached and passed early in May. 0:18:03.040 --> 0:18:06.119 By May twenty fifth, the river had reached twenty three feet. 0:18:06.520 --> 0:18:09.040 That was the day that patrol started inspecting the dikes 0:18:09.040 --> 0:18:13.399 that surrounded Vamport. On May twenty eighth, the river reached 0:18:13.400 --> 0:18:15.960 twenty eight point three feet and the tracks along the 0:18:16.040 --> 0:18:19.080 railroad embankment started to sink by a couple of inches. 0:18:20.080 --> 0:18:22.679 On the morning of May thirtieth, nineteen forty eight, a 0:18:22.720 --> 0:18:25.600 bulletin from the Housing Authority of Portland was placed on 0:18:25.720 --> 0:18:29.320 every door in Vanport, which ended in the words quote, 0:18:29.359 --> 0:18:32.560 remember dikes are safe at present. You will be warned 0:18:32.600 --> 0:18:36.440 if necessary, you will have time to leave. Don't get excited. 0:18:37.200 --> 0:18:40.240 The bulletin also contained information on what to do if 0:18:40.280 --> 0:18:43.960 the Army Corps of Engineers ordered an evacuation. I've read 0:18:43.960 --> 0:18:47.760 these instructions and I found them a little patronizing. They 0:18:47.840 --> 0:18:52.439 said things like don't get panicky exclamation point. Well, it 0:18:52.520 --> 0:18:55.960 probably maybe wasn't intended as patronizing. It's hard to know 0:18:56.480 --> 0:18:58.320 the intended tone of the writer on those. 0:18:58.359 --> 0:19:02.040 I always wonder. But that same day, a crew detected 0:19:02.080 --> 0:19:05.359 seepage in the railroad embankment and started reinforcing it with 0:19:05.440 --> 0:19:09.080 sand bags. But at four seventeen PM, a hole formed 0:19:09.119 --> 0:19:12.160 in the embankment and water started rushing toward Vanport. 0:19:13.119 --> 0:19:17.399 Both fortunately and unfortunately, because it certainly saved lives, but 0:19:17.480 --> 0:19:20.240 it also kept people from being able to save any 0:19:20.359 --> 0:19:23.119 of their possessions. It was Memorial Day and the weather 0:19:23.280 --> 0:19:27.080 was good. A lot of Vanport's at that point eighteen 0:19:27.160 --> 0:19:30.639 thousand residents were away from the city, having picnics or hiking, 0:19:30.720 --> 0:19:32.960 or just visiting people who lived elsewhere, so they weren't 0:19:32.960 --> 0:19:36.800 home when the flood happened. A series of muddy swampy 0:19:36.840 --> 0:19:40.960 areas called slews slowed the water down as it approached Vanport, 0:19:41.200 --> 0:19:43.840 giving the people who were home about half an hour 0:19:43.920 --> 0:19:46.560 to escape, and once it reached the town, the water 0:19:46.640 --> 0:19:50.679 knocked the wooden houses completely off their wooden foundations. People 0:19:50.720 --> 0:19:53.800 described the scene as looking like cork floating in a current. 0:19:54.760 --> 0:20:00.879 Vanport was virtually completely destroyed. Fifteen people died, although persisted 0:20:00.920 --> 0:20:04.240 that it was really a lot more, and numerous conspiracy 0:20:04.320 --> 0:20:08.080 theories swirled around the event long after, supposing that there 0:20:08.119 --> 0:20:10.399 was a giant cover up of a lot more deaths 0:20:10.440 --> 0:20:13.679 that wasn't made public. More than a thousand of the 0:20:13.720 --> 0:20:18.600 displaced families, or about six three hundred people total, were black. 0:20:19.080 --> 0:20:22.840 That was about a third of Vanport's population. And we're 0:20:22.840 --> 0:20:25.520 going to talk about the aftermath of the flood and 0:20:25.560 --> 0:20:29.600 what happened after that in Vanport. Right after we pause 0:20:29.720 --> 0:20:40.600 for a word from one of our fantastic sponsors. The 0:20:40.640 --> 0:20:44.320 city of Portland knew ahead of time that it did 0:20:44.359 --> 0:20:48.199 not have adequate emergency housing in the event that something 0:20:48.320 --> 0:20:51.040 like this occurred. The housing authority had said that it 0:20:51.040 --> 0:20:54.199 could house about fifteen hundred people, and the Red Cross 0:20:54.240 --> 0:20:57.200 said that it could house seventy five hundred. This was 0:20:57.320 --> 0:20:59.440 roughly half the population of Vamport. 0:20:59.480 --> 0:21:04.400 At the time. Overall, white families had an easier time 0:21:04.400 --> 0:21:08.640 of finding shelter than black families. Residents resisted the idea 0:21:08.720 --> 0:21:12.040 of using churches and schools in white neighborhoods as shelter 0:21:12.160 --> 0:21:15.199 for black people, and churches in the black neighborhood were 0:21:15.280 --> 0:21:19.800 quickly beyond their capacity. According to local historians. There were 0:21:19.840 --> 0:21:23.280 white families who welcomed black refugees from the flood, but 0:21:23.480 --> 0:21:26.679 according to the oral histories of black survivors, this was 0:21:26.800 --> 0:21:30.400 pretty rare. Many black families displaced by the flood wound 0:21:30.520 --> 0:21:33.920 up being housed in abandoned shipyard barracks on Swan Island. 0:21:34.800 --> 0:21:37.480 The feeling of a lot of people who were displaced 0:21:37.480 --> 0:21:40.359 a Swan Island was that it was dangerous, like a 0:21:40.359 --> 0:21:42.680 lot of the housing was right next to the water 0:21:42.800 --> 0:21:45.600 and there was no buffer between the housing and the water, 0:21:45.720 --> 0:21:47.600 and so a lot of these were families with children, 0:21:47.600 --> 0:21:50.320 and people were very concerned about the fact that their 0:21:50.400 --> 0:21:54.119 children could drown just being outside of the house, or 0:21:54.280 --> 0:21:57.320 not even the house outside of the barracks. Five days 0:21:57.359 --> 0:22:00.880 after the flood, refugees asked the housing at the Portland 0:22:00.960 --> 0:22:04.440 for non discrimination policies to be part of any plans 0:22:04.800 --> 0:22:09.000 for repairs or new housing. A Vanport Tenants League was 0:22:09.040 --> 0:22:12.000 formed to try to address former tenants issues with the 0:22:12.040 --> 0:22:16.280 Housing Authority, which, as you remember, had been basically acting 0:22:16.359 --> 0:22:21.200 as the government of Vanport. In response, city officials branded 0:22:21.200 --> 0:22:24.840 the tenants League, which had a significant black membership, as communist. 0:22:26.000 --> 0:22:28.720 Survivors of the Vanport flood also tried to get some 0:22:28.840 --> 0:22:32.439 relief in court, but they hit numerous dead ends. Several 0:22:32.480 --> 0:22:35.840 suits were filed against the Housing Authority, but were dismissed 0:22:35.920 --> 0:22:39.320 under an Oregon's sovereign immunity law, which protected the government 0:22:39.359 --> 0:22:42.919 from being sued. More than seven hundred claims were then 0:22:43.000 --> 0:22:46.320 filed against the United States under the Federal Tort Claims Act, 0:22:47.040 --> 0:22:49.320 but the United States was protected under a law that 0:22:49.320 --> 0:22:52.720 the federal government couldn't be liable for flood damage. The 0:22:52.760 --> 0:22:55.439 fact that the federal government, the railroad, the state of Oregon, 0:22:55.560 --> 0:22:59.160 and a private enterprise were all involved in Vamport's very 0:22:59.240 --> 0:23:02.840 existence made the whole thing an astoundingly complex legal tangle. 0:23:03.480 --> 0:23:06.879 President Harry S. Truman visited Vanport after the flood, and 0:23:06.920 --> 0:23:11.359 cleanup was assisted by the American Red Cross. However, Portland's 0:23:11.359 --> 0:23:17.000 white community strenuously resisted additional public housing, and voters repeatedly 0:23:17.080 --> 0:23:21.680 rejected attempts to build public housing after the flood. Consequently, 0:23:21.840 --> 0:23:25.760 Portland's one segregated black neighborhood, which became known as Albina, 0:23:26.320 --> 0:23:30.240 became even more overcrowded than it had been before the war. 0:23:30.840 --> 0:23:33.960 This effect became even more pronounced in the nineteen fifties 0:23:34.000 --> 0:23:37.280 when a stadium was built in Albina's lower Tip, which 0:23:37.320 --> 0:23:39.880 displaced the people had living there who had been living 0:23:39.920 --> 0:23:43.040 there into the farther north, but into an area that 0:23:43.160 --> 0:23:47.680 wasn't really any bigger. Arguments began in a class action 0:23:47.840 --> 0:23:52.080 lawsuit against the government on August sixth of nineteen fifty one. 0:23:52.119 --> 0:23:54.520 The court issued its opinion more than a year later, 0:23:54.600 --> 0:23:58.320 on September twenty third of nineteen fifty two. The court 0:23:58.400 --> 0:24:00.560 found that the Army Corps of Engineers work at the 0:24:00.640 --> 0:24:04.600 dikes and railroad embankment was quote honest and competent. It 0:24:04.640 --> 0:24:08.280 also found no agency involved, not the Army Corps of Engineers, 0:24:08.359 --> 0:24:11.560 not the housing authority, not anyone to be negligent in 0:24:11.600 --> 0:24:14.720 the matter of the flood, the failure of the railroad embankment, 0:24:14.920 --> 0:24:17.120