Portland Civil Rights: Lift Ev'ry Voice

Lift Ev’ry Voice explores Portland’s African American history with a focus on the turbulent 1960s, ’70s and early ’80s. At the time, issues surrounding urban renewal, school desegregation and brittle police relations were exploding both nationally and locally.

By the mid-20th century, Portland was still considered the most segregated and prejudiced city on the West Coast.

World War II would fuel racial tensions in the city. During that time, thousands of African Americans migrated north to work in the shipyards. In Portland most were funneled into a hastily constructed public housing project called Vanport. After the war, many continued to live there because of a severe housing shortage.

A spring day in 1948 would change everything. The Columbia River flooded and washed away the town, leaving hundreds of both black and white families homeless. African Americans had little choice where they could move because of discriminatory real estate and banking practices. Most were forced to relocate to an inner northeast district called Albina. As blacks moved into the area, whites moved out into newly created suburbs — off limits to people of color.

The 1950s became a time of hard-fought civil rights victories led by organizations like the NAACP and the Urban League of Portland. The early pioneers helped break the color barrier in housing and jobs, but racist policies and powerful negative stereotypes would prevail in the city.

By the late 1950s, Portland’s disinvestment in the Albina district, lack of capital for mortgages and home improvements, and high unemployment among young African American men had created what was being called Portland’s Negro ghetto. The “ghetto” would soon be targeted for federally funded urban renewal projects.

In 1957 Portland voted to build the Memorial Coliseum and the East Bank freeway in Albina. The construction uprooted the southern and oldest end of the district first — destroying hundreds of homes and businesses owned by both blacks and whites.

In the late 1960s the Emanuel expansion project would displace hundreds more in Albina’s central core. Displaced African-American families were continually shifted further north and east.

In Portland and across the country, a new generation of young black activists was emerging with more militant strategies for changing the status quo. They began demanding equal rights as first class citizens, more jobs and better housing, and an end to police harassment and brutality.

By the late 1970s the Portland chapter of the Black United Front had emerged and gained tremendous power. Its members advocated for equal and effective educational opportunities for all children in their own neighborhoods, and demanded an end to the forced bussing of black children to white schools.

Continual pressure from the black community would ultimately end mandatory bussing in the city. At the same time, activists would focus attention on institutional racism in the Portland Police Bureau and demand accountability of the bureau and its officers.

Portland Civil Rights: Lift Ev’ry Voice is told largely through the words of men and women who lived through and led the struggles for human rights in Portland, and with archival film and images illustrating these remarkable times.

For more, including links to extensive resources, see:
https://www.opb.org/television/programs/oregonexperience/segment/portland-civil-rights-lift-evry-voice/

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