Speaker 1: Fellow ridiculous historians, we are returning to you with a
Speaker 1: classic episode, This is True Story, one of the one
Speaker 1: of the first episodes we did when we had decided
Speaker 1: we were going to do an episode about every state.
Speaker 2: It's true and did you know, by sure didn't at
Speaker 2: the time that Oregon, the very progressive and crunchy state
Speaker 2: of Oregon, think of places like Portland, of course, was
Speaker 2: once in fact a completely right leaning white supremacists haven
Speaker 2: where people of color were not allowed to own property,
Speaker 2: were kept out. And it's something that very weirdly has
Speaker 2: affected the legacy of that part of the state in
Speaker 2: terms of like the makeup of its population to this
Speaker 2: very day.
Speaker 3: I can jump in real quick.
Speaker 1: What's kind of sad is there's still a.
Speaker 3: Lot of this in organ Well.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, we talk about that in the fringes, not certainly
Speaker 4: in Portland, where it's very liberal and all that, but
Speaker 4: there are a lot of little pockets of really bad
Speaker 4: in the Anazi activity in Oregon.
Speaker 1: In fact, Oregon is unique in that they never allowed
Speaker 1: slavery as a state, and the reason they didn't allow
Speaker 1: slavery is because they were that racist. This is a
Speaker 1: true story. We couldn't be more happy to welcome you
Speaker 1: to this classic episode featuring the man the myth legend
Speaker 1: are Pal Robert Evans, the creator behind The Bastards. Robert
Speaker 1: just an advanced man. Thanks for hanging out with us.
Speaker 1: He's always such a gas back in twenty eighteen. Thank
Speaker 1: you to past Robert. You're a good guy and a
Speaker 1: great podcaster and researcher and super excited to have this
Speaker 1: one come out as a classic. Let's roll it. Ridiculous
Speaker 1: History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome to the show,
Speaker 1: ladies and gentlemen. I'm Ben No.
Speaker 3: Wow, this is like a very standard intro. We're trying today.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're going. We're going straight forward. But we are
Speaker 1: only able to make this show, of course, with the
Speaker 1: assistance of our esteemed third member friends and neighbors, super
Speaker 1: producer Casey Pegram.
Speaker 3: Sort of a vanilla opening. Would you marry Whitebread?
Speaker 1: A little homogeneous? Yes? Yes, today we are. Well, let's
Speaker 1: start in the modern day, Noel, for a long time,
Speaker 1: neither of us had ever been to Portland until pretty recently.
Speaker 3: It's true I only spent a little bit of time there.
Speaker 3: I think you had a little bit more of a
Speaker 3: fully fleshed out Portland experience. But will you tell me then,
Speaker 3: is the dream of the nineties in fact still alive
Speaker 3: in Portland.
Speaker 1: Yes, I thoroughly enjoyed the town. I thought it was surprising.
Speaker 1: I was diplomatic enough not to directly mention the comedy
Speaker 1: show Portlandia to anybody that gets really old. I am
Speaker 1: sure it does. It's like when people visit our city
Speaker 1: and call it Hotlanta.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well I would say this is even more egregious.
Speaker 3: Probably people running around say, put a bird on it.
Speaker 1: Yes, And Portland has this national reputation, at least for
Speaker 1: being a very progressive city. Right face tattoos are cool,
Speaker 1: marijuana is decriminalized, the.
Speaker 3: Streets are paved in marijuana. In fact, in Portland.
Speaker 1: It does have a particular smell, and in general people
Speaker 1: would see it as sort of a bastion of left
Speaker 1: leaning culture.
Speaker 3: Yeah, super chill. You know, you can buy a sandwich
Speaker 3: for a song in Portland. Literally, it doesn't have to
Speaker 3: be a good song.
Speaker 1: It's just a song.
Speaker 3: A song or you know, a little soft shoe, or
Speaker 3: maybe you got a one man band. Kind of Dick
Speaker 3: Van Dyke situation going on that.
Speaker 1: I did see a one man band when I was there.
Speaker 1: Did you see that, guy?
Speaker 3: No, I just pulled that out of my ear.
Speaker 1: Well, you are correct, and there are one man bands
Speaker 1: in Portland. There are also numerous amazing things, amazing bits
Speaker 1: of history. One of our coworkers, a guy named Nathan,
Speaker 1: is actually from Oregon, and he assured us that Portland
Speaker 1: is more of a cultural exception to the rule nowadays.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I could see that. I'm actually wearing my Timberline
Speaker 3: Lodge hat right now, are But I bought at the
Speaker 3: Portland Airport, and, as you might imagine, at the Portland Airport,
Speaker 3: not a chain restaurant in sight, my friend, all of
Speaker 3: the shops sell handmade artisanal goods. I bought some really
Speaker 3: cute little pieces of pottery there for me Mom.
Speaker 1: That's sweet of you, man, And that's really dope hat.
Speaker 1: It is a great hat. So it's safe to say
Speaker 1: that you and I are fans of Portland and would
Speaker 1: travel there again in the future. Sure, at least modern Portland,
Speaker 1: right right.
Speaker 3: I don't think I would want to travel there in
Speaker 3: a time machine to the past.
Speaker 1: Yes. Yes, today's episode is about the origins of Oregon
Speaker 1: Portland in particular, Wow One Take, or.
Speaker 3: As it's called here, I'm in some of these articles
Speaker 3: that we're looking at the Oregon Country.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Oregon Country. That might sound weird to some people.
Speaker 1: What is Oregon Country?
Speaker 3: They kept seeing it and it was a little weird
Speaker 3: sounding and it was confusing, but I figured it out
Speaker 3: with my internet sleuth skills. What would now be modern
Speaker 3: day Oregon, Washington State, and Idaho was all kind of
Speaker 3: clustered together in this one big old chunk of land
Speaker 3: collectively referred to as the Oregon Country.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And this was, let's see, way back in eighteen eighteen, right,
Speaker 1: the US and Britain agreed to jointly occupy this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that seems like a like an odd couple in
Speaker 3: a situation. And then I think the US started getting
Speaker 3: a little greedy and being like, you know what, we
Speaker 3: kind of want this for our own. We're going to
Speaker 3: turn this into some states.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because the British wanted to be in the area
Speaker 1: in Oregon Country mainly to engage in the fur trade.
Speaker 3: That's right. And James K. Polk, who was an expansionist president, right,
Speaker 3: really wanted to make this our own and not share,
Speaker 3: not go have these with the Brits anymore. So that
Speaker 3: ultimately happened. They negotiated, They decided it wasn't worth going
Speaker 3: to war over at the britz In anyway, and there
Speaker 3: was some back and forth. And there's a really great
Speaker 3: slogan that the Northerners used. It was fifty four forty
Speaker 3: or fight, And fifty four forty was talking about the
Speaker 3: coordinates the latitude that marked the northernmost part of this territory.
Speaker 1: And during these negotiations, the US's first proposal was that
Speaker 1: the territory be cut in half, right with that, with
Speaker 1: that border at the forty ninth parallel, and the British
Speaker 1: rejected it. And so the expansionists, many of whom were
Speaker 1: anti slavery Northerners, which is super important for this part
Speaker 1: of the story. Yep, they are the ones who called
Speaker 1: for more American aggression. Get out, there be a big dog.
Speaker 1: Fifty four to forty or fight.
Speaker 3: It's hard to say you did really well with that bet,
Speaker 3: fifty four forty or fight.
Speaker 1: It's tough.
Speaker 3: It's fun when you really get it right, though. It
Speaker 3: gives you a sense of accomplishment, as I'm sure they
Speaker 3: felt when they finally arrived at a pretty decent deal
Speaker 3: with the Brits, where they divided the territory along the
Speaker 3: forty ninth parallel. Yeah, so that's pretty close to fifty four.
Speaker 3: I guess what's the forty though? A fifty four to forty.
Speaker 1: Like minutes divisions of degrees, it's like a decimal kind
Speaker 1: of right, Yeah, kind of interesting.
Speaker 3: So this is where we end up with Oregon needing,
Speaker 3: you know, to become a state. And when you become
Speaker 3: a state, what do you do. You have to have
Speaker 3: a state constitution.
Speaker 1: And as we know, constitutions are not generally made overnight.
Speaker 1: They often reflect common practices, goals, or even existing laws
Speaker 1: that a community has practiced or written down beforehand. And
Speaker 1: Oregon had its own pre existing laws. In eighteen forty four,
Speaker 1: they passed something called the Exclusion Law and this was
Speaker 1: this was enacted by the provisional government of the region
Speaker 1: at the time. What did the Exclusion Law do?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was this guy named Peter Burnett who was
Speaker 3: like a kind of an Oregon Trail kind of blazer.
Speaker 3: I guess Peter Hardeman Hardiman Burnett. And actually, spoiler alert,
Speaker 3: we're going to dig into him in a little more
Speaker 3: detail later in the show. Foreshadowy, big time foreshadowing. But
Speaker 3: here's what this dude did, just just to give you
Speaker 3: a taste of what his medicine was like. He was
Speaker 3: a former slave owner and has a really crazy resume,
Speaker 3: did all kinds of interesting things in his life, but
Speaker 3: by all accounts an alarming, dastardly racist, virulent racists big time.
Speaker 3: So this exclusion law that was enacted sort of pre
Speaker 3: proper government and constitution basically allowed slaveholders to hold on
Speaker 3: for dear life to those slaves for a maximum of
Speaker 3: up to three years. And at first I was like, wait,
Speaker 3: is this because of emancipation? And then I'm no, that
Speaker 3: was decades later. This is eighteen forty four. That wasn't
Speaker 3: until like eighteen sixties, and I realized, oh no, Oregon
Speaker 3: outlawed slavery in the territory. Right, But here's the key, UK,
Speaker 3: Then your thing is gonna be like, Oh, that's that's nice.
Speaker 1: What a great bunch of people.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, but there's more. So Yeah, this grace period
Speaker 3: of three years, but then all of those freed black
Speaker 3: people work required to leave.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the thing. The government of Oregon passed this
Speaker 1: exclusion law of eighteen forty four, and in it they
Speaker 1: did place a ban on slavery with a requirement that
Speaker 1: slave owners eventually freed their slaves. But they did this
Speaker 1: with the understanding that any African American who remained in
Speaker 1: Oregon after they were freed would be flogged, whiplash and
Speaker 1: forcibly expelled from the country. If they were caught in
Speaker 1: the Oregon country again within six months, then the punishment
Speaker 1: would be repeated. And then eventually the law was amended
Speaker 1: in another version to substitute forced labor, so essentially slavery
Speaker 1: instead of flogging, and then it was repealed in eighteen
Speaker 1: forty five. So this community was so racist that the
Speaker 1: didn't even condone slavery. They were so such white supremacists.
Speaker 3: They just didn't want him around like at all. And
Speaker 3: there's there's some language we'll get into and in a second,
Speaker 3: but I do just want to point this out. That
Speaker 3: law you mentioned about flogging or that penalty was called
Speaker 3: the Burnett lash law because our buddy Burnett was so
Speaker 3: into this that he wanted to brand it with his
Speaker 3: own his name. I was like his signature thing. And
Speaker 3: it required that or it declared rather that offenders who
Speaker 3: refused to leave would be punished with quote not less
Speaker 3: than twenty or more than thirty nine stripes, and that
Speaker 3: would be a cycle that would recur every six months
Speaker 3: until they left.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately, this lash law did get amended and repealed, so
Speaker 1: as far as we know today, no people were or
Speaker 1: lashed as a result of that law. But this was
Speaker 1: just the first of three different laws like this that
Speaker 1: all were meant to ban people of color from Oregon Country,
Speaker 1: which again at that point is like Washington, Oregon and
Speaker 1: part of Idaho. It's a huge swath of land.
Speaker 3: That's right, And we're getting some of this information from
Speaker 3: a few different places. One of my favorites was a
Speaker 3: Washington Post article by Daneen L. Brown called when Portland
Speaker 3: banned Black's Oregon's shameful history as an all white state,
Speaker 3: or as I've seen it referred to as an all
Speaker 3: white utopia. Kind of right, Yes, they were after at least.
Speaker 1: There's this weird history of intentional communities and utopian thinking
Speaker 1: in Oregon. So it's not all examples are racist, but
Speaker 1: this definitely was. The idea for the people who were
Speaker 1: supporting this concept was that somehow society would be better
Speaker 1: if they all felt like if they all somehow identify
Speaker 1: with the same ethnicity. Now, did they have the same
Speaker 1: sort of racism that would be common in the Northeast
Speaker 1: at the time, where in for instance, Italian or Irish
Speaker 1: immigrants or children of those immigrants are still considered not
Speaker 1: wide enough. I don't know, but what was on the
Speaker 1: books was specifically targeting people of color. In eighteen forty eight,
Speaker 1: this provisional or territorial government passed the law making it
Speaker 1: illegal for any quote negro or mulatto to live in
Speaker 1: Oregon Country. But they did have a provision for people
Speaker 1: who had Native American blood.
Speaker 3: Which they weirdly referred to as half breeds because they're
Speaker 3: despicable people. They are despicable people. But it's interesting that
Speaker 3: all it takes is just to get a little white
Speaker 3: in you. They really didn't like black people. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: that's what it boils down to, all right then, Yeah,
Speaker 3: so it's state time, baby, here we go.
Speaker 1: What do you need to make a state, as we
Speaker 1: established earlier.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you need you gotta have some dirt. You gotta
Speaker 3: have a delineation between your dirt and the other people's dirt.
Speaker 1: You have to have some people, yep, in both sides,
Speaker 1: so that you can differentiate a constitution there we go. Yes.
Speaker 1: In eighteen fifty seven, the government of what would become
Speaker 1: Oregon was working on its constitution. They did a couple
Speaker 1: of things. They grossly plagiarized constitutions from other states at
Speaker 1: the time.
Speaker 3: Well that's the thing, you know, there's going to be
Speaker 3: some of that, right. A constitution is not exactly a
Speaker 3: great work of poetry that you know, pilfering from is
Speaker 3: looked down upon it. So that's almost sort of like
Speaker 3: stealing a boiler plate release form, right, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's a very good point. Being that
Speaker 1: Oregon was going to be a state in the US
Speaker 1: and have voters and such. They asked about ten thousand
Speaker 1: residents to vote on the new state constitution, and they
Speaker 1: had three questions, burning questions, burning questions. One, do you
Speaker 1: vote for the constitution? Overwhelmingly voters supported it. Two, do
Speaker 1: you vote for slavery in Oregon? And the voters of
Speaker 1: Oregon rejected the institution of slavery by a pretty wide margin.
Speaker 3: Yeah, also pretty overwhelmingly.
Speaker 1: And then three, this is a quote again, this is
Speaker 1: problematic language. They say, do you vote for free negroes
Speaker 1: in Oregon?
Speaker 3: Hey?
Speaker 4: What?
Speaker 1: And the answer was, oh, yeah, it was a no. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was a big no. And they explicitly baked in
Speaker 1: this racist language into their constitution. In fact, we have
Speaker 1: a quote from the state constitution.
Speaker 3: Yes, it goes as such, again quoting some offensive language
Speaker 3: here quote no free negro or mulatto not residing in
Speaker 3: this state at the time of the adoption of this
Speaker 3: constitution shall ever come reside or be within this state,
Speaker 3: or hold any real estate, or make any contract, or
Speaker 3: maintain any suit therein. And the Legislative Assembly shall provide
Speaker 3: by penal laws for the removal by public officers of
Speaker 3: all such free negroes and melattos, and for their effectual
Speaker 3: exclusion from the state, and for the punishment of persons
Speaker 3: who shall bring them into the state or employ or
Speaker 3: harbor them Therein right, that is bonkers.
Speaker 1: It is categorical as well. So pay attention, folks to
Speaker 1: that very last line where it says that anyone who
Speaker 1: helps a person of color is also guilty in the
Speaker 1: eyes of Oregon law. And that's a terrifying thing. But
Speaker 1: it passed. People were supportive. Oregon became a state in
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty nine, and it was the only state in history,
Speaker 1: only state, only state in history so far that entered
Speaker 1: as a white's only state, so anti slavery, but only
Speaker 1: because they were such white supremacists, And that's mind boggling.
Speaker 1: People in Portland are so nice.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it really does blow my mind, and it makes
Speaker 3: me wonder like why, like Mississippi didn't try to do
Speaker 3: anything like this, Probably because there were just too many
Speaker 3: black people already living there. It was just it would
Speaker 3: have been like a massive round up kind of like
Speaker 3: deportation kind of situation.
Speaker 1: And they were economically dependent that controlling the powers of
Speaker 1: this state were economically dependent on this.
Speaker 3: Because it feels like Oregon was probably pretty largely white already,
Speaker 3: and then the slaves that were there were kind of
Speaker 3: like imported kind of for that purpose. And then they
Speaker 3: free them and they give them the boot, and this
Speaker 3: largely worked. There were a couple of examples though, of
Speaker 3: folks trying to get around it, not very many though,
Speaker 3: and one in particular of somebody being kicked out pretty heinously.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Vanderpool, Right, that's right. Yeah, in eighteen fifty one,
Speaker 1: before the Constitution was written and before Oregon became a
Speaker 1: US state, but after these exclusion laws were in full swing.
Speaker 1: The owner of a saloon, restaurant and boarding home. A
Speaker 1: fellow named Jacob Vanderpool was forcibly expelled from the territory,
Speaker 1: not because he did anything wrong, just because he was
Speaker 1: not white.
Speaker 3: Yep, yeah, that's pretty oh boy, Okay, he.
Speaker 1: Was literally according to Salem Public Library records, he was
Speaker 1: literally quote reported for the crime of being black in Oregon,
Speaker 1: and Judge Thomas Nelson gave him thirty days to leave
Speaker 1: the territory.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I'm sorry, I keep pausing because this is just
Speaker 3: like hurting my brain and my heart. In an article
Speaker 3: from How Stuff Works, we spoke to Walita Imrisha, who's
Speaker 3: a professor in Black studies at Portland State University, and
Speaker 3: she actually travels around Oregon kind of working on nurturing
Speaker 3: some positive connections with the African American community in Oregon
Speaker 3: because it's still spoiler alert to this day, pretty largely white.
Speaker 3: But here's how she sums up the whole thing. Quote,
Speaker 3: Oregon was birthed at this intersection of being anti slavery
Speaker 3: and anti black. But in no way was Oregon anti
Speaker 3: slavery because they believed in racial justice. They were anti
Speaker 3: slavery because they considered this to be white man's land,
Speaker 3: and they came to build a racist white utopia. Their
Speaker 3: goal was to keep out or push out all people
Speaker 3: of color.
Speaker 1: Right, and you will see multiple academics who explain that
Speaker 1: Portland's reputation as a progressive city is, in their opinion,
Speaker 1: largely a myth. Winston Grady Willis, who's director of Portland
Speaker 1: State University's School of Gender, Race, and Nations, points out
Speaker 1: that as of July twenty fifteen, the city had six
Speaker 1: hundred and twelve two hundred and six people, seventy seven
Speaker 1: point six percent white, five point eight percent black, and
Speaker 1: Grady Willis went on further to call it a key
Speaker 1: site for Clan activity. We know the clan was very
Speaker 1: active there in the early nineteen hundreds as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean apparently members of the clan were actually cops.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they were deputized.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, yeah, like as though they were sort of
Speaker 3: a para military organization given the same powers as like
Speaker 3: law enforcement.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: So not a pretty scene.
Speaker 1: But there is good news here. This is a story
Speaker 1: of oppression, but it is also a story of inspiration
Speaker 1: and righteous struggle for justice and equality. There was this
Speaker 1: great documentary called Local Color, which traces the history of
Speaker 1: racism in Oregon and the actions of people who were
Speaker 1: working for civil rights in the area. And of course
Speaker 1: you know this center is often on Portland itself, as
Speaker 1: it is the capital city of the state. And to
Speaker 1: be honest, folks, there are some pretty disturbing stories in
Speaker 1: that documentary, but if you would like to learn more,
Speaker 1: we highly recommend you check it out. It is available
Speaker 1: for free online. So thanks again, Public Television.
Speaker 3: And so the Fourteenth Amendment happened, and surprise, surprise, Oregon
Speaker 3: was one of I think only six states in the
Speaker 3: Union that voted against it. And I had forgotten what
Speaker 3: the fourteenth Amendment is, but it is really hella important.
Speaker 3: Is what it says. All persons born or naturalized in
Speaker 3: the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are
Speaker 3: citizens of the United States and of the state wherein
Speaker 3: they reside. No States shall make or enforce any law
Speaker 3: which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of
Speaker 3: the United States. Nor shall any State to any person
Speaker 3: of life, liberty, or property without due process of law,
Speaker 3: nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal
Speaker 3: protection of law. So this completely neutered these exclusion rules.
Speaker 1: Right. So this was passed by Congress in eighteen sixty six,
Speaker 1: and the explicit intention there is to safeguard the rights
Speaker 1: of recently manumitted or freed people in the South, where
Speaker 1: a lot of the white population is working hard to
Speaker 1: still subjugate them still somehow practice chattel slavery enforced labor.
Speaker 1: So Oregon actually, because it was a divisive issue, Oregon
Speaker 1: ratified the Fourteenth Amendment by a very narrow margin in
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty six, with two legislators protesting that the amendment
Speaker 1: would quote change, if not entirely destroy, the Republican form
Speaker 1: of government under which we live and crush American liberty.
Speaker 1: They also around the same time past law banning misagenation
Speaker 1: or interracial marriages.
Speaker 3: Surely, Ben, there's some sort of fun food fact we
Speaker 3: can pull out now to lighten the mood a little bit. Wait,
Speaker 3: where do we go from here?
Speaker 1: Well, we've got one more thing I have to add.
Speaker 1: There's a great paper by Cheryl A. Brooks called Race
Speaker 1: Politics and Denial. Why Oregon forgot to ratify the fourteenth Amendment?
Speaker 1: Because you see, although they ratified it in eighteen sixty six,
Speaker 1: in eighteen sixty eight, the legislature rescinded that ratification, and
Speaker 1: they did so on a technicality, so they were still
Speaker 1: in an uncertain situation. In fact, these laws, or some
Speaker 1: version of these exclusion laws stayed on the books until
Speaker 1: what nineteen twenties.
Speaker 3: Yeah exactly. I think it was like twenty four or
Speaker 3: something like that.
Speaker 1: Wow, it's insane, but we do have, luckily a happy
Speaker 1: ending progress grinds on.
Speaker 3: Yeah, except sorry. In nineteen twenty two, a guy named
Speaker 3: Walter Pierce, who was a clan member, was elected governor
Speaker 3: of Oregon. And there's this great quote in this article
Speaker 3: from the Washington Post as well. It just kind of
Speaker 3: goes back into the history of this talking about how
Speaker 3: many of the Jim Crow laws that you'd see in
Speaker 3: the South were kind of encouraged there and like legal.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, they still tried to do de facto acts
Speaker 1: of oppression and segregation. And again, I can't recommend that
Speaker 1: documentary enough because it contains interview It's only about an
Speaker 1: hour long. You can find it through opb dot org.
Speaker 1: It contains interviews with people who survived these circumstances. I
Speaker 1: feel like we're almost wrapping up on this, but there
Speaker 1: are a couple more things that we need to mention.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, just the fact that you know, it's come
Speaker 3: a long way, obviously, and Portland still does have that
Speaker 3: reputation as being a pretty culturally interesting dream of the
Speaker 3: nineties kind of place. But even like in the eighties
Speaker 3: and nineties, especially in Portland, it was very dangerous to
Speaker 3: be a person of color. This Washington Post article mentions
Speaker 3: the fact that it was just a hotbed of skinhead
Speaker 3: movement and white supremacy. And I'm not sure if you've
Speaker 3: seen the movie Green Room. Yeah, Patrick Stewart plays the
Speaker 3: head of this neo Nazi group that has like a
Speaker 3: punk rock house in the woods and just pretty intense
Speaker 3: and awful and a really really cool, little slice of
Speaker 3: life kind of I don't know, it's a horror in
Speaker 3: that there's a lot of crazy stuff that happens, but
Speaker 3: it's really just more like a very contained, claustrophobic movie
Speaker 3: where it all kind of takes place in this one
Speaker 3: on space.
Speaker 1: I feel like it's a more almost more of a thriller.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's so weird to seeing Patrick Stewart play a
Speaker 3: psychotic neo ntsis.
Speaker 1: A very restrained, subtle performance from Patrick as well. I
Speaker 1: just call him Patrick, but yeah, but it's true. So
Speaker 1: Oregon in the nineteen eighties and nineteen nineties became a
Speaker 1: destination for the largest skinhead movement in the country, according
Speaker 1: to several scholars. And you can see, unfortunately no shortage
Speaker 1: of stories of racially motivated hate crimes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there was that guy recently who was arrested for
Speaker 3: I believe, stabbing some people to death on a light
Speaker 3: rail train. When he some folks came to the aid
Speaker 3: of an African American woman and a Muslim woman who
Speaker 3: he was shouting racial epithets at and then he like
Speaker 3: stabbed several people. And this happened like last year. And
Speaker 3: his name is Jeremy Joseph Christian. And yeah, when he
Speaker 3: goes to this hearing, he walks into the courtroom and
Speaker 3: immediately starts rambling and saying free speech or die Portland.
Speaker 3: You call it terrorism, I call it patriotism.
Speaker 1: Right, So circumstances of this event were the following he
Speaker 1: was shouting religious slurs at several people. He fatally stabbed
Speaker 1: two people and wounded one other. This is indefensible. This
Speaker 1: is very much not what free speech is. And is
Speaker 1: it strange how some of the most ardent supporters of
Speaker 1: so called free speech completely don't understand what it is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, it really is. And admittedly this guy does
Speaker 3: seem like he's got some mental illness going on. Sure
Speaker 3: that's just me speculating, but it's a sad case and
Speaker 3: a sad example of how these kind of attitudes are
Speaker 3: around and possibly given a little more fuel on the
Speaker 3: fire considering some of the you know, nazi Nazi marches
Speaker 3: we're seeing in Charlottesville, and some of these attitudes that
Speaker 3: have maybe come a little more into the forefront of
Speaker 3: not acceptability, but at least just kind of are being
Speaker 3: a little more mainstream days. So it's interesting to see
Speaker 3: where it came from in a place like the Pacific Northwest.
Speaker 1: Which might surprise a lot of people. The long story short,
Speaker 1: too late. The exclusion clause that we examined today was
Speaker 1: ultimately removed from Oregon's constitution in nineteen twenty seven. However,
Speaker 1: as we I think have pretty clearly established, that did
Speaker 1: not remove the actual practices of racial segregation and discrimination.
Speaker 1: But there's one thing, one more thing I think we
Speaker 1: should add. Because we've been talking about the states, right,
Speaker 1: we've been talking about the territory We've been talking about
Speaker 1: the people, but we have yet to talk in detail
Speaker 1: about the guy who was at the forefront of it all.
Speaker 1: We have yet to talk in detail about Peter Hardiman Burnett,
Speaker 1: who some would call a real bastard.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and he also managed to make it all the
Speaker 3: way down the Oregon Trail and not even get dyssentry
Speaker 3: right or die of exposure. Yeah, he was just a dick.
Speaker 1: Well, how about this, This is a surprise that we
Speaker 1: nol in casing I worked on for you all off air.
Speaker 1: What if we have a little extra credit?
Speaker 3: That's right, folks, extra credit the segment where and we get,
Speaker 3: you know, some human person that's tangentially familiar with the
Speaker 3: topic by varying degrees. My favorite of late has been
Speaker 3: the Colonel Gladwyn Bowlin. Oh boy man, he really set
Speaker 3: the Internet on fire with that segment. Gladwin.
Speaker 1: I led him into the Facebook group folks. So I
Speaker 1: hope we're all still cool.
Speaker 3: Did you create a monster?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't know.
Speaker 3: Well, today we have another quite informed gentleman joining us
Speaker 3: the host the new House Stuff Work show Behind the Bastards,
Speaker 3: which does deep dives into horrible people throughout history from
Speaker 3: Saddam Hussein's hobby writing erotic fiction to Hitler's spanking fetish.
Speaker 3: I believe Friends and Neighbors, Ben if I may, Robert Evans, Hey, all,
Speaker 3: how's it cracking, man, It's weird. It's just weird. There's
Speaker 3: been a lot of like silent headshaking on this episode,
Speaker 3: which doesn't really translate super well on the podcast. But yeah,
Speaker 3: who knew.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean we're talking about Oregon, which is if
Speaker 5: you like, yeah, if you go to like Portland or whatever,
Speaker 5: it seems on the up and out. I've spent a
Speaker 5: lot of the last three years in like rural southern Oregon,
Speaker 5: and it's it's a pretty racist place. Like Josephine County
Speaker 5: where I was, is chock full of Nazis. There are
Speaker 5: quite a lot of them out there, so it's it's
Speaker 5: a fascinating place even in the modern day. Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 5: tons of them. It's one of the most racist counties
Speaker 5: and one of the highest density of hate groups anywhere
Speaker 5: in the United States.
Speaker 3: Chock full of Nazis. As it turns out, not a
Speaker 3: good coffee.
Speaker 5: No, no, terrible coffee, terrible craft beer that the Nazis make.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So when we when we originally talked off air, Robert.
Speaker 1: One of the things that we were very interested in,
Speaker 1: both as colleagues but also as fans of your show
Speaker 1: was seeing whether there was a specific person associated with
Speaker 1: the the supremacist origins.
Speaker 3: Of Oregon kind of setting the tone that we.
Speaker 1: Could we could learn a little bit more about with you.
Speaker 1: And you found the guy, right, Oh.
Speaker 5: My god, I sure did. I think Peter Burnett. I
Speaker 5: think Peter was his first name. Yeah, just a tremendous
Speaker 5: piece of crap and maybe, like there's a long list
Speaker 5: of super racist politicians in American history, but he's in
Speaker 5: the running for most racist. He's he's he's definitely like
Speaker 5: in conversation for sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: We set him up briefly as just having been the
Speaker 3: one that kind of came up with the idea of
Speaker 3: these exclusionary laws early on before Oregon became a state,
Speaker 3: and he loved this idea so much they named it
Speaker 3: after himself, the Burnett Lash Law, which permitted black people
Speaker 3: who refused to leave the state to be given lashes
Speaker 3: like every six months, six months or something like that,
Speaker 3: and he loved it so much that it was such
Speaker 3: a genius idea. The Burnett Lash law.
Speaker 5: Yeah, he was so proud of his whipping people rule
Speaker 5: that he stuck his name on it, which is a
Speaker 5: special kind of terrible. But he was actually like a
Speaker 5: violent jerk way before he went to Oregon. When he
Speaker 5: was still living in Clear Creek, Tennessee, he was a
Speaker 5: shop owner, like a general store owner. He suspected this
Speaker 5: enslaved black man was every now and then breaking into
Speaker 5: his store at night to drink from his whiskey barrel,
Speaker 5: because they stored whiskey and barrels back then. It was
Speaker 5: a different time. So he, rather than like taking any
Speaker 5: of the other actions you might take in this situation,
Speaker 5: he sets a trap using a rifle with like a
Speaker 5: string tied to the trigger, tied to the window shutter,
Speaker 5: so that when the guy crawled in in the middle
Speaker 5: of the night, this rifle shot him dead. And he
Speaker 5: wasn't charged with the crime because it was an enslaved man,
Speaker 5: And he said he was sorry. But that's like Peter
Speaker 5: Burnett before he gets into politics. They must have had
Speaker 5: like a standiard ground law back in.
Speaker 3: Those days too. I guess I just don't think they
Speaker 3: had laws.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you know, you're talking about the eighteen twenties or whatever,
Speaker 5: like there was no rules and.
Speaker 1: That's such a cartoonish sort of Rupe Goldberg esque kind
Speaker 1: of contraption.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he probably got the kit from ACME. That's insane. Okay,
Speaker 3: go on give us some more.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 5: So one of his early jobs before he gets off
Speaker 5: to Oregon, I think after he murders this guy with
Speaker 5: a Looney Tunes trap, is he's a lawyer. And some
Speaker 5: of his probably the most prominent clients were Joseph Smith,
Speaker 5: founder of the Mormon religion, and all of Joseph Smith's
Speaker 5: you know, apostles or whatever, all of his friends because
Speaker 5: they were on trial for kind of sort of fomenting
Speaker 5: a frontier war that had broken out in and around Misserra.
Speaker 5: And so he he is these guys lawyer, and his
Speaker 5: main achievement as a lawyer seems to be getting the
Speaker 5: venue changed that the court case was being held in.
Speaker 5: And this venue change allowed Joseph Smith and all of
Speaker 5: his guys to escape and run away. And yeah, so
Speaker 5: that's his career as a lawyer before he gets on
Speaker 5: that first big wagon train to Oregon for the Great
Speaker 5: Migration and whatnot.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, yeah, so y'all already covered.
Speaker 5: Yeah, he made the last law he made, the exclusion law,
Speaker 5: which he was he was an abolitionist, but he's like
Speaker 5: an interesting we think when you hear about abolitionists in
Speaker 5: the pre Civil War area, you usually think about just
Speaker 5: the few people who would have been like on the
Speaker 5: right side of history. But some of them were just
Speaker 5: abolitionists because they were that racist. They were so racist.
Speaker 5: And that was Peter Burnett. He was abolitionist that because
Speaker 5: he didn't like the idea of there being black people
Speaker 5: anywhere in his state, and he thought that slave labor
Speaker 5: was bad for white people. So he was like, he
Speaker 5: wound up the right conclusion, which is that slavery was
Speaker 5: a bad thing, but he wound up there through like
Speaker 5: the most racist chain of logic that he could have
Speaker 5: possibly gotten to, which is always interesting to me.
Speaker 3: That was a sentiment that was big time shared by
Speaker 3: the majority of people in Oregon because they did incorporate
Speaker 3: and become a state. The majority of people voted against slavery,
Speaker 3: but also for ousting all the freed black people.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and I did find when I was doing my
Speaker 5: research that in eighteen forty at least Burnett had two
Speaker 5: of the slaves of his own. And this is back
Speaker 5: when he was living in Missouri, and there's some evidence
Speaker 5: that when he immigrated to Oregon, he tried to bring
Speaker 5: one slave with him, a young girl who drowned in
Speaker 5: the Columbia River during the voyage. So not a lot
Speaker 5: of It's kind of an enticing piece of what was
Speaker 5: going on there, but that's all the info I found
Speaker 5: so far on that, right.
Speaker 1: Because she was projected to be somewhere between ten to
Speaker 1: twenty four or something.
Speaker 3: Mm hmm.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it seems like it be kind of a creepy
Speaker 5: Thomas Jefferson sort of situation there.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I suspected that as well.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So this guy we've talked about, like or y'all
Speaker 5: talked about what he did in Oregon. But after he
Speaker 5: got done in Oregon, this dude moved to California and
Speaker 5: he became in eighteen forty nine the first governor of California,
Speaker 5: of the state of California. So California's very first leader
Speaker 5: as a state in the Union was this guy, Peter Burnett,
Speaker 5: who get a lot of terrible things. Maybe my favorite
Speaker 5: thing he did that isn't terrible was in eighteen fifty
Speaker 5: he changed Thanksgiving that year from a Thursday to a Saturday,
Speaker 5: just because it was better for him personally that year
Speaker 5: to do it a different day.
Speaker 3: I mean, I can get behind that. It's always weird
Speaker 3: to me that Thanksgivings on a Thursday.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's whimsical and fun. But he also tried to
Speaker 5: bring racial exclusion to California with the Chinese right well,
Speaker 5: first with black people. He first tried to in his
Speaker 5: first message to the California legislature exclusion like the first important,
Speaker 5: like an issue of the first importance, the most important
Speaker 5: thing that California could do, because he thought black people
Speaker 5: are going to take jobs from white people and that
Speaker 5: they would be unhappy in California and cause disruption because
Speaker 5: they would be second class citizens, because he wasn't going
Speaker 5: to let him be anything but second class citizens. So yeah,
Speaker 5: he tried to. There were like a thousand black people
Speaker 5: already in California, many of them free, and he tried
Speaker 5: to have them all kicked out and to stop any
Speaker 5: more from settling. And that was too racist for eighteen
Speaker 5: fifties California. So he lost on that, and he wound
Speaker 5: up actually like in eighteen fifty one, quitting being the
Speaker 5: governor over this because he tried a couple of times
Speaker 5: to get California to ban black people, and they just
Speaker 5: wouldn't do it. And yeah, I mean there's some pretty
Speaker 5: pretty racist quotes from him that I could read, but
Speaker 5: that's probably not necessary. But it is fun to note
Speaker 5: that after he was no longer a governor and after
Speaker 5: his political career was over, as you know, the world
Speaker 5: continued to advance and modernize in his old age. Yeah,
Speaker 5: his crusade, as you mentioned, was trying to stop the
Speaker 5: Chinese from coming to California. So he was just just
Speaker 5: comprehensively racist across the board every chance he got, which
Speaker 5: is impressive in a terrible way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, at least you can say he was consistent. But honestly,
Speaker 1: good on you, California. For anyone listening who is in
Speaker 1: the state right now, I think that speaks very highly
Speaker 1: to the character of the state. Even as far back
Speaker 1: as the eighteen fifties. He also published an autobiography, right
Speaker 1: at some.
Speaker 5: Point, Yeah, that's where he started ranting about Chinese immigration.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but Robert, surely he got some sort of amazing
Speaker 3: come upance, right, like burned to death and a fire,
Speaker 3: you know, drowned under suspicious circumstances.
Speaker 1: Give me something in a fight with a locomotive.
Speaker 5: No, I mean I think he died rich and old.
Speaker 5: He was in his eighties or something.
Speaker 3: Oh man, that's a bummer.
Speaker 1: I know.
Speaker 3: It's just that's what always happens with these bastards, right,
Speaker 3: I mean, I bet you're seeing that a lot. Accept
Speaker 3: you did the Cosby episode. He kind of got his
Speaker 3: come up as But even that's sort of like a
Speaker 3: pyrrhic victory where it's like too little, too late for
Speaker 3: a guy that's been screwing people over for years on,
Speaker 3: you know, unchecked.
Speaker 5: Yeah, every now and then you get a Mussolini or
Speaker 5: a Kadafi where they get dragged down into the street
Speaker 5: and punished by the people that they spent decades screwing with.
Speaker 5: But that's almost that almost never happens. Usually they die
Speaker 5: rich in a villa somewhere.
Speaker 1: I'm really glad that you said this, Robert, because I
Speaker 1: was listening to the Goadaffi episode, which I thought was fantastic. Uh,
Speaker 1: And I'm still preparing myself to check out the Weinstein episode,
Speaker 1: which is a two parter. Correct.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that one's a big one.
Speaker 1: What we'd like to do is, again, thank you for
Speaker 1: giving us some more insight on the life of Peter
Speaker 1: Hardiman Burnett. Screw that, Yeah, I know, right, the mate.
Speaker 1: But well, yeah, we were wondering if you could tell
Speaker 1: our h if you could tell our fellow listeners here
Speaker 1: a little bit more about behind the Bastards and what
Speaker 1: they can expect when they tune into your show.
Speaker 5: Well, I mean, our goal is to tell you everything
Speaker 5: you don't know about the very worst people in all
Speaker 5: of history. So you know, you've probably sat you know,
Speaker 5: stoned or whatever in your underpants and watched a lot
Speaker 5: of documentaries about Hitler on the History Channel over the years,
Speaker 5: but you probably don't know that he based a lot
Speaker 5: of his military strategies and his like attitudes on existence
Speaker 5: in life on a series of young adult novels that
Speaker 5: were basically like the German equivalent of Harry Potter back
Speaker 5: in the eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, you know. And for that matter, while we're
Speaker 3: on the.
Speaker 5: Subject of novelists, You've probably haven't read Saddam Hussein's romance novels,
Speaker 5: but I have. And that's one of the things we
Speaker 5: get into in this podcast.
Speaker 3: I referred to it as erotic fiction. Was that was
Speaker 3: that a bridge too far?
Speaker 5: No, no, it is very erotic. In fact, there's a
Speaker 5: long passage where an elderly woman yells at children about
Speaker 5: how sexy ma is olds are.
Speaker 3: So that's it's fun. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Aren't those novels in particular largely considered these meglomaniacal analogies
Speaker 1: about his relationship with the country.
Speaker 5: Yes, and they're there. It's one of those weird things.
Speaker 5: There's a lot of cases, like with the Kims in
Speaker 5: North Korea, of art being credited to dictators who didn't
Speaker 5: actually make it. Saddam definitely wrote these books, and we
Speaker 5: get into that to an extent, but they're like they're
Speaker 5: a mix of rants about modern politics and like utopian fiction,
Speaker 5: and so it's like a mix of Saddam screaming at
Speaker 5: the people he hates and trying to set up the
Speaker 5: ideal government that he never quite got to make in Iraq.
Speaker 5: It's it's a really strange insight into what was going
Speaker 5: on in the man's head.
Speaker 1: That's fascinating. I want to I want to tune in
Speaker 1: and no spoilers, but could you tell us a little
Speaker 1: bit about some episodes that are coming up soon?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 5: Today, right now, there is a new episode on Paul Mannifort,
Speaker 5: part one of which just dropped in part two of
Speaker 5: which will be up Thursday, So that's a big one.
Speaker 3: I check that out.
Speaker 5: And we've been doing an ongoing series about King Leopold
Speaker 5: of Belgium and the Congo and we're recording an episode
Speaker 5: today about what happened after Leopold, who is one of
Speaker 5: the worst people in all of history and doesn't get
Speaker 5: enough acknowledgment for just how terrible he was. Agreed, And
Speaker 5: we're also recording an episode about the serial killer Albert
Speaker 5: Fish with his one of his descendants who is all
Speaker 5: comedian in LA today.
Speaker 3: So that's going to be fun.
Speaker 1: Oh man, that's fascinating.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we've got a good, good slate.
Speaker 1: Well, we are going to wrap it up today. We
Speaker 1: want to thank you so much for coming on the show.
Speaker 1: Robert Evans, friends and neighbors, the mastermind behind one of
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works newest podcasts, Behind the Bastards. If you
Speaker 1: like our show, you will love this one. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: you can find Noel Casey and I Robert as well
Speaker 1: on social media. In twenty eighteen, right, it's everywhere.
Speaker 3: Were all over the place with Facebook and Instagram. We're
Speaker 3: still working on the pinterest page. We haven't fun, we
Speaker 3: haven't committed yet, but we'll get there. Creative differences, Yeah,
Speaker 3: that's true. And you can join our Facebook community at
Speaker 3: Ridiculous Historians, where there's all kinds of memory and fun
Speaker 3: chats going on all the time. Or if you don't
Speaker 3: want to do any of that, right, it's an email
Speaker 3: at ridiculous at HowStuffWorks dot com and we'll see you soon.
Speaker 3: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
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