Oregon Historical Society guide to Portland area African American historical resources

Oregon Historical Society Research Library

Sources for African American History

A Selected List of Library Holdings

Compiled by Scott Daniels and Geoff Wexler

Revised January 15, 2015

MANUSCRIPT AND PHOTOGRAPH COLLECTIONS

Vancouver Avenue First Baptist Church Records

Accession 26598

Records of the largest African American congregation in Portland. Includes photographs, documents, scrapbooks, and artifacts.

Skanner photographs collection

Org. Lot 1286

Photograph archive of the key African American newspaper in the Pacific Northwest, with images dating from the late 1970s through the 1990s. Includes images of community events and personalities.

First African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church Records

Mss 2304

Includes minutes of board meetings, 1942-1952; cash books, 1942-1945; choir record books, 1962-1964.

Lee Owen Stone Papers (Urban League of Portland). 1903-1977

Mss 2423

Includes correspondence, sermons, awards and certificates, files from activity in the Urban League of Portland and other civic and philanthropic associations.

Thomas Alexander Wood, Autobiographical Notes, 1837-1904

Mss 37

Served as a Methodist Episcopal preacher and a real-estate salesman. Includes autobiographical sketch which recount his church work, and a paper titled “First admission of colored children to the Portland Public Schools.”

Jean Bauer Brownell Research Notes, 1925-

Mss 1468

Notes on African Americans in Oregon before the Civil War.

Stella Maris House Records

Mss 1585

Ranging in date from 1940 to 1973, the Stella Maris House Collection consists of printed material, correspondence, and administrative, financial, and legal records created and collected by the Stella Maris House. Led by Mary C. Rowland, Irene Chavin, and Jim Guinan, the Stella Maris House was an Oregon-based offshoot of the Madonna House Apostolate, a Catholic social justice group. The collection demonstrates the local evolution of issues key to the history of the United States during the 1960s; over a third of the archive's content is dedicated to Oregon's migrant labor rights movement, and it also features records documenting the area's civil rights movement, housing discrimination, city planning, urban renewal projects, the building of the local interstate highway infrastructure, and the creation of social welfare programs initiated by the Economic Opportunity Act. Notable local and national social justice groups featured in the archive include the Albina Citizens' War on Poverty Committee, Albina Neighborhood Council, the Black Panther Party, the Community Action Program, the Housing Authority of Portland, the Metropolitan Interfaith commission on Race, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the National Urban League, the Neighborhood Service Project, the Valley Migrant League, and the United Farm Workers. Social justice and religious publications contained in the archive include New City, the Portland Observer, and the Black Panther.

NAACP. Portland Branch Records.

Mss 2004

Correspondence, printed documents, newspaper clippings, scrapbooks.

Oregon Black History Project Research Notes

Mss 2854

The collection consists of research notes collected during the project, including information on Ku Klux Klan activities, suffrage, and transcripts of oral histories. Two reels of microfilm contain the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Portland Branch files for 1914 to 1955.

Oregon Black History Project Photograph Collection

Org. Lot 679

Photographs documenting African American history in Oregon, circa 1850-1960 that were collected during the Oregon Black History Project and some used to illustrate "A Peculiar Paradise: A History of Blacks in Oregon, 1788-1940," by Elizabeth McLagan. Subjects include portraits of African-Americans in Portland and elsewhere in Oregon; residences of African-Americans in Portland, including images of Vanport, Or. and the Vanport flood of 1948; African-American clubs, social groups, sports, and other activities; and African-American businesses in Portland, among other subjects. Some of the photographs are copies of images originally printed in newspapers such as the Portland Times and the Advocate.

Rev. Lee Owen Stone photographs

Org Lot 651

Photographs of Rev. Stone, family and church. He was active in the

Urban League and the Portland Branch of the NAACP.

Flowers Family Collection

Org Lot 865 and MSS 1049

Photographs and Memorabilia of a prominent African American family of

Portland including ephemera, legal papers, and a scrapbook concerning

African Americans in Oregon, 1871-1964.

Lorna J. Marple

Org Lot 721

Photographs of NAACP personnel and activities

YWCA Williams Avenue Center Records

Mss 2384

The collection includes general correspondence (1942-1961), statistical reports, surveys, and special studies (1926-1956); minutes and agendas (1942-1956); papers on flood refugee work (1948); and study workbook (1955).

Human Relations Council of Yamhill County, Records, 1967-1973

Mss 2542

Correspondence, minutes of meetings, reports, surveys, and papers regarding the Council’s involvement in housing, education, health and child care programs for migrant workers, promotion of low income housing, service for the elderly, and other activities related to civil rights in Yamhill County.

Associations Collection

Mss 1511

Includes materials from the Albina Art Center, Inc.

Ethnology Collection

Mss 1521

Assorted manuscript and printed itmes concerning ethnic groups and race relations.

John Ainsworth Mills Family Papers

Coll 1

Includes manumission documents for two slaves of the Mills family in Long Island, New York, early 19^th century.

Jim Pettyjohn, Black history of Portland Project

Mss 2145

Oral and pictorial essay presented to the Jount Committee for the Humanities of Oregon, 1972.

Pauline Burch, Pioneer Nathaniel Ford and the negro family, Albany, Oregon, 1952.

Mss 1952

Alan Elmer Flowers papers, 1847-1934

Mss 1049

Family memorabilia including a scrapbook with clippings pertaining to the Flowers family and early Portland African Americans.

ORAL HISTORIES (selected from 59 recordings related to African Americans in Oregon)

Arthur A. and Etoile Cox

Arthur Cox came to Portland from Kansas City in 1938, while working on passenger trains. He was transferred to Portland, because the Commissary in Kansas City was abolished. In 1941, Etoile Cox and their three children moved to Portland to join him. Etoile Cox then opened her own beauty shop in 1942. According to Mrs. Cox, in the early to mid 1940's in Portland there were a lot of businesses that had signs that read, " We Cater to White Trade, Only." She also notes that at that time the board of Cosmetic Therapy had no school that would accept African American girls. Mr. Cox says that before World War II, cleaning and pressing establishments wouldn't hire African American women. Mr. Cox went to school to become a mortician at Washington College in Chicago (late 1940's). When he came back, no one would accept him a an apprentice because he was African American. According to Etoile Cox, when Mr. and Mrs. Cox were interested in buying a house near 102nd avenue (ca. 1960?), a realtor refused to sell it to them because they were Black.

Cornetta Smith

Smith discusses her life in Texas, family, education, strict upbringing, religious experiences, black/white relationships, racial discrimination, civil rights, Portland ministers, and Albina Ministerial Alliance, and other matters.

E. Shelton Hill

Mr. Hill first came to Portland in the summer of 1926, returning every summer and worked on the railroad to earn money during his summer breaks from College at Western University in Kansas. He moved to Portland permanently (in the late 1930's?) after getting his master's degree from Ohio State University. When he arrived in Portland, he worked as an Air Force Officer. Mr. Hill says that prior to the boom in the shipbuilding industry in 1942, 98.6% of employed African American men in Portland worked in dining cars on passenger trains. Only 10% of African Americans were employed in private industry and that consisted of maids and stock-girls at Meier & Frank and the men who worked at the Portland hotels. At that time, there were no jobs for African Americans in plumbing, carpentry, maintenance work, the telephone company, etc.

Marie Smith

Marie Smith discusses discriminatory practices in Portland prior to World War II, raising a family, community activities, church, labor relations, and changes in relationships between African Americans and Anglos during and after the war.

Pastor Grace Osborne

Osborne talks about her family, husbands, education, arrival in Portland, ministry, influential ministers and associates, and Albina Ministerial Alliance.

Mercedes Deiz

Deiz was an attorney and District Court Judge.

NEWSPAPERS AND PERIODICALS

The Advocate (Portland), 1923-1933

Afro American Journal, Seattle, 1968-1970.

Albina Neighborhood Improvement Information Center, 1962-1970

New Age, 1900-1907

Portland Challenger, 1952-1954

Portland Observer, 1938-1939, 1970-present

The Skanner (Portland), 1975-present

Urban League of Portland Newsletter, 1961-1977

VERTICAL FILES