It's been a bumpy ride - February 2021

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There is a tragically long tradition of racial violence on the west coast and a long-established pattern of racist policy throughout the United States' history. This month's newsletter focuses on the destructive power of mob action. Throughout history, white mobs have acted with the intent to exclude and intimidate people of color.

Racial Violence is part of life on the West Coast

On the bus tour, we tell the story of Dr. DeNorval Unthank, a Black doctor and an important civil rights leader. When Dr. Unthank and his family moved to SE Portland in the early 20^th century, they were the victims of frightening harassment from their white neighbors - their house was vandalized, windows were broken, and a dead cat was left on their front lawn. These acts of violence continued until the family moved out of the neighborhood. They had to move four times before they were able to settle down peacefully.

This is just one of many stories of how racial violence is used to intimidate and exclude people of color from primarily white communities. Our four-hour tour is not long enough to cover the full history of racially violent mob attacks throughout Oregon's history. Below are additional instances of historical racialized mob terror. Click on the links for more details.

On September 18, 1902, Alonzo Tucker, an African American man, was hanged in Coos Bay, OR by a mob of white coal miners. On September 17th, Tucker was accused of assaulting a white woman and was taken to jail. A white mob soon headed to the jail with the intent to lynch Tucker. He managed to escape but was found the next day and shot in the leg. He bled to death after being shoved in the back of a truck on the way to being lynched. Nevertheless, he was hanged from a beam on a bridge as the white mob watched. Despite all these events taking place in broad daylight, no one was held accountable. Tucker is the only African American to have been lynched in Oregon. The Coos Bay community, in conjunction with the Equal Justice Initiative, is currently working on installing a historical marker to tell the story of Alonzo Tucker and the story of lynching in America.

In March 1910, two hundred St. John's locals attacked the town's East Indian population. The mob forced most of the town's East Indian population on trains that took them south to Portland. Very few of the attackers were convicted and those that were received light sentences. Around this same time, other anti-East Indian riots took place in Washington and Vancouver, B.C.

We know that Black, Indigenous, and other communities of color in America today continue to be impacted by racialized mob violence but often is overlooked. On January 6th, the same day that the mob of far-right extremists broke into the capitol, a young Black woman was attacked by a mob in downtown L.A. while she was passing by a pro-Trump demonstration .

History of Discrimination in Oregon

In honor of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day, FHCO hosted a free virtual training exploring the ghosts of our history and insights on fair housing challenges today.

Dr. King played an integral role in the fight for fair housing. In 1965, he co-created the Chicago Freedom Movement, which challenged the systemic discrimination in employment, education, and housing in Chicago. In 1966, the movement negotiated agreements with the Chicago Housing Authority to build public housing in predominately white middle-class neighborhoods, and with Mortgage Bankers Association to stop discriminatory lending practices.

Dr. King was assassinated on April 4, 1968 while he was in Memphis supporting striking sanitation workers. Riots broke out in over 125 cities after his assassination. In order to quell the riots, President Johnson urged speedy approval of the Civil Rights Act of 1968, also known as the Fair Housing Act. On April 11, 1968, Congress passed the Fair Housing Act which prohibits discrimination in housing based on race, color, religion, and national origin.

You can read more about Dr. King's legacy in fair housing here and here.

Watch the recording of the event below to learn more about Oregon's history of racial discrimination. The recording is available until February 20, 2021.

History of Discrimination in Oregon video

Book Recommendation

Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age by Kevin Boyle

In 1925, Detroit was a smoky swirl of jazz and speakeasies, assembly lines and fistfights. The advent of automobiles had brought workers from around the globe to compete for manufacturing jobs, and tensions often flared with the KKK in ascendance and violence rising. Ossian Sweet, a proud Negro doctor-grandson of a slave-had made the long climb from the ghetto to a home of his own in a previously all-white neighborhood. Yet just after his arrival, a mob gathered outside his house; suddenly, shots rang out: Sweet, or one of his defenders, had accidentally killed one of the whites threatening their lives and homes.

And so it began-a chain of events that brought America's greatest attorney, Clarence Darrow, into the fray and transformed Sweet into a controversial symbol of equality. Historian Kevin Boyle weaves the police investigation and courtroom drama of Sweet's murder trial into an unforgettable tapestry of narrative history that documents the volatile America of the 1920s and movingly re-creates the Sweet family's journey from slavery through the Great Migration to the middle class. Ossian Sweet's story, so richly and poignantly captured here, is an epic tale of one man trapped by the battles of his era's changing times.

Movie Recommendation

Detroit

In the summer of 1967, rioting and civil unrest starts to tear apart the city of Detroit. Two days later, a report of gunshots prompts the Detroit Police Department, the Michigan State Police and the Michigan Army National Guard to search and seize an annex of the nearby Algiers Motel. Several policemen start to flout procedure by forcefully and viciously interrogating guests to get a confession. By the end of the night, three unarmed men are gunned down while several others are brutally beaten.

Is there a particular topic we discuss on the bus tour that you are interested in learning more about? Does your organization host events related to racial justice or other topics that come up on our bus tour? Email your events and ideas to edoyle@fhco.org to have them included in our future newsletters.

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