Racist history of Oregon

[robnisch]

Ku Klux Klan in Oregon - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Maybe blue today, but it's past was not.
It is interesting that the KKK reappeared in the 1920's in southwest Oregon.
Medford, Grants Pass, Ashland have a long history of logging and mining.
Still a red spot in a blue state.

 

[Politesse]

Oh, the racist history of Oregon goes way farther back than that. It was founded with the explicit intention of becoming a Whites only state. Or at least a state that legally barred any "Black" settlers, to borrow the modern term, at the threatened cost of a lashing. There's debate as to whether the law was ever applied to that extent, but no other state even attempted such a heinous thing.

Oregon was also the focus of a brutal race war against its indigenous population that many locals still revere as a proud part of their history, followed by intermittent violence across the state, one of the rare Congressionally sanctioned Indian wars, and in later times, the subject of the first Termination Acts, a legislative trend that dispossesed thousands of Native Oregonians of their traditional lands by declaring them to simply not exist, thus rendering treaty rights void.

 

[TomC]

Oh, the racist history of Oregon goes way farther back than that. It was founded with the explicit intention of becoming a Whites only state. Or at least a state that legally barred any "Black" settlers, to borrow the modern term, at the threatened cost of a lashing. There's debate as to whether the law was ever applied to that extent, but no other state even attempted such a heinous thing.

Indiana was.
People seem to think that virulent racism was a Southern Confederate thing. It totally wasn't. That's a big part of the reason I don't believe that the Invasion of the Confederate States was a bunch of Northerners trying to rescue darkies from oppression.
Tom

 

[Politesse]

It's important to separate opposition to slavery from empathy with slaves, if you want to understand the 19th century and its politics. For some people those two issues were profoundly connected, but not for all, and maybe not for most.

Doing the right thing does not guarantee you majority support, and it never has.

Are there really people who think there is no racism in the north? Where do they live, these "people" you mention? Not in any of the northern cities, I should think.

 

[bilby]

It always seemed obvious to me that the Union were opposed to slavery because they were seeking to build an industrial economy, and slavery was underpinning the power of the agricultural lobby, and causing friction with the British, who were a major market for industrial products.

Actually caring about the slaves themselves was a nice bit of window dressing, and made for excellent propaganda, but was not a particularly important consideration until quite late on in the piece, when public opinion in the Nkrth had swung hard towards abolition - mainly as a consequence of that propaganda campaign.

 

[Politesse]

There were morally conscious people in 1855 as well. They just did not have a majority. Such folk usually do not.

(In fact, most people usually think we are conceited assholes for daring to question whether society has decided to reward or viciously punish people according to a ethically defensible rubric or not.)

 

[GenesisNemesis]

"Oh so you're saying ALL Oregonians are racist?!" - some right winger probably

 

[steve_bank]

Where in the world is there not racism?

The Klan was everywhere. My grandmother said she saw them as a kid in New England riding on horses in full regalia.

Race music records and literature was a major business. Racist radio.

White racism ran from California up through Canada.

Washington and Oregon while considered progressive today are home to right wing militia. We had one in the Washington legislature. Eastern Washington mostly.

It is certainly not gone. In Seattle hate crimes against Asians top Jews and blacks.

In the early 90s I lived in the Idaho panhandle near the Montana border. The other side of the panhandle was home to Aryan Nation. Extreme violent anti government white supremacists. Thjey are still there.

North Idaho and Spokane are known in the PNW for extreme right wingers. I listened to a black woman in an interview some years back about being fearful of crossing over into North Idaho.

Aryan Nation got financially crippled by a lawsuit over shooting at a black woman driving on public land near their compound.
All that being said I went to watch an amateur boxing tour match in Kellogg. The gym had a big poster of Ali and the boxers were put up by people, including blacks.