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I want to talk about Vanport.
Far-right groups are gathering in Delta Park today, on the sight of what used to be Oregon's second-largest town. That site is a place of avoidable tragedy, and the story of Vanport is an object lesson in why white supremacy makes everything worse.
Far-right groups are gathering in Delta Park today, on the sight of what used to be Oregon's second-largest town. That site is a place of avoidable tragedy, and the story of Vanport is an object lesson in why white supremacy makes everything worse.
Portland, as a lot of people here know, has a bad history with racism and xenophobia. Folks often talk about how Oregon banned slavery in 1859, but also banned free Black people from living here. That's only the beginning of the story, though.
In addition to anti-Black racism, Portland was also happy to indulge anti-Asian bigotry and general xenophobia. Enforcing vice laws against gambling or sex work often meant raiding Chinese-American businesses, while white-owned businesses that did the same thing alone.
This is something I happened upon again and again while writing Storied and Scandalous Portland, Oregon. Law enforcement and vice laws were more about enforcing social order and making sure vice was in its "proper" place rather than actually applying universal standards.
Portland and Oregon continued with this kind of thing into the 1920s, when the KKK had a surge of popularity here. Walter Pierce, Oregon's 17th governor, was a klansman. George Baker, Portland's longest-serving mayor, almost certainly was.
I wrote about the KKK for the @portlandmercury a while ago. More here: https://www.portlandmercury.com/feature/2017/11/15/19472650/echoes-of-the-klan
George Baker, by the way, was Portland's very own conservative demagogue. He was a theater owner who embodied every stereotype of the glad-handing, cigar-chomping 20th century politician. In addition to being a racist, the dude also hated unions and leftists.
The thing Baker was proudest of was kicking the IWW out of Portland and setting up what were known as "red squads." Those were groups of cops who dealt with socialists and organizers, usually by arresting them for vagrancy.
Anyway, this all sets the scene for why Vanport happens. Baker was out of office by the 1930s, but his brand of politics still carried the day for a while. Even before WWII the US was industrializing, and populations were shifting.
The Depression and Dust Bowl were in full swing. Folks were transitioning from the countryside to cities, in particular Black Americans who were moving from the South and into urban centers. People were desperate for jobs and new lives.
The Federal Housing Administration as we know it started in 1934. There's a lot of problems with racism and unfairness in the FHA historically, but that's another rant.
What's important here is that Portland turned down federal housing assistance in 1938.
What's important here is that Portland turned down federal housing assistance in 1938.
It was the largest city in the US to not take the federal government's money. Allowing for federal housing assistance reeked of socialism, and Portland was not a city that was historically welcoming for newcomers, especially people who were not white.
By the time WWII rolled around, though, Portland was going to have an even bigger influx of newcomers whether it liked it or not. Because of this thing: The Bonneville Dam.
The newly constructed Bonneville Dam meant that Portland had a then high-tech source of cheap electricity. Also, this place was a historical port city. The federal government knew that Portland would be a great place to build ships for the war effort.
This meant more jobs in Portland, and more job seekers, and a bigger need for housing. Portland gave about subsidizing public housing, but in 1942 the new Portland Housing Authority only authorized 4,900 new units. The city needed 37,000 new units.
To make matters worse, a lot of the migrant workers who came to Portland seeking jobs couldn't just get market-rate housing anywhere in the city. Black Portlanders were relegated to the Albina neighborhood, which did not have enough housing for them.
During the first part of 1942, Black Americans who came to Portland for wartime jobs were often sleeping in churches and poolhalls in Albina because they could not obtain housing elsewhere. They were only "allowed" to be in that neighborhood.
Portland also had room for other bigotries. Rural white workers were often dismissed as "okies" or "arkies" and were not particularly welcome here, either.
Looming over all of this is the Kaiser Shipbuilding Company, which is extremely eager to get this all sorted about because, you know, WWII. They and the federal government want things a bit less ramshackle. But Portland itself is not fixing the problem.
Instead of working with the city that's historically dismissed public projects as socialism, the feds and Kaiser just said "whatever, we'll do it ourselves," and decided to build their own company town on a patch of unincorporated county land on an island just north of Portland.
The town was originally called "Kaiserville," but given that that was a self-aggrandizing and kind of weird name for a place, they quickly changed it to "Vanport," as it was between Portland and Vancouver.
I can't emphasize enough how surprised Portland was to see Vanport suddenly go up at the end of 1942. The feds and Kaiser completely did an end-run around the city to put up the new town. Portlanders were amazed that they could just... do that.
