The Vanderpool Project:
The History
When the emancipation proclamation was written, when the Civil War had ended, and when soldiers arrived in Galveston, TX, newly freed African slaves were able to pursue freedom as American citizens everywhere across this country…except for one place…the state of Oregon. It was illegal to be Black in Oregon, and it would stay that way until 1926.
Oregon's Black Exclusionary Laws
Oregon was founded with three Black exclusionary laws. The first was when Oregon outlawed slavery. The law gave slaveholders two years to remove their male slaves and three years to remove their female slaves. At that point, the free Blacks had to leave Oregon and any free Black who refused to leave would be subject to lashing.
It was called Peters Burnett’s Lash Law and the law stated that the lashings had to be no less than 22 times but no more than 39 times. Peter Burnett is quoted as saying, “the object is to keep clear of that most troublesome class of population [Blacks]. We are in a new world, under the most favorable circumstances and we wish to avoid most of those evils that have so much afflicted the United States and other countries.’’
Again, Oregon passed a law stating that “it shall not be lawful for any negro or mulatto to enter into, or reside” in Oregon. Finally, when Oregon became a state it included in its Bill of Rights a clause that prohibited Blacks from being in the state, owning property, and making contracts. Thus, Oregon was the first state to enter into the Union as a “whites only” state.
Laws Create Culture
This racial exclusion fomented a climate of racial animus that would run deep in the heart of Oregon. In 1864, a Democratic legislator from Yamhill County named George Lawson proposed to his fellow legislators an amendment to Oregon’s Constitution “that a negro, Chinaman or Indian has no right that a white man is bound to respect, and that a white man may murder, rob, rape, shoot, stab and cut any of these worthless and vagabond races, without being called to account.”
While this amendment was never taken up to a vote, George Lawson represented a constituency of Oregonians that believed that people of color lacked any rights that a white person was bound to respect in this white utopia of Oregon.
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