Did You Know...

Portland has the oldest continuously chartered NAACP chapter west of the Mississippi.

In 1952 Marian Anderson, the famous singer who performed at the Lincoln Memorial in 1939, appeared in Portland as a soloist with the symphony. Little did she know that 28 years later her own nephew, James DePreist, would become music director of the Oregon Symphony.

Three of Portland’s oldest churches are part of the African-American community. AME Zion Church (109 N. Skidmore St., 503.287.4969) was founded as The People’s Church in 1862; Bethel AME Church (5828 N.E. Eighth Ave., 503.288.5429) was established in 1895; and Mt. Olivet Baptist Church (8725 N. Chautauqua Blvd., 503.240.7729) is in its third location after being founded in 1906.

Portland has two African-American newspapers: The Skanner and The Portland Observer.

Kwanzaa, the word denoting the African-American harvest festival, is spelled with two final As because at the first celebration in 1966 seven children volunteered to hold up the letters of the Swahili word “Kwanza.” An extra “a” was added for the seventh child.

Vanport
During World War II, about 20,000 blacks were recruited nationwide to work at shipyards in the Portland- Vancouver area. They lived in wartime housing projects, such as Vanport, built next to the Columbia River. Vanport became the second largest city in Oregon and was an early model of integration. But on Memorial Day 1948 the river flooded and Vanport disappeared. The flood killed 15 people and left 18,500 homeless, 5,000 of them African Americans, most of whom were then relocated to the Albina district.

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