Perseverance: A History of African Americans in Oregon's Marion and Polk Counties by Sheridan McCarthy and Stanton Nelson

Abstract

 OHQ vol. 113, no. 2 the order in a period when white supremacy, anti-Catholicism, and anti-Semitism were widely shared.Appropriately,Baker points out that themes of declension,secular and religious enemies, and codified patriotism still figure in American public discourse. David A. Horowitz Portland State University Perseverance: A History of African Americans in Oregon’s Marion and Polk Counties by Sheridan McCarthy and Stanton Nelson Oregon Northwest Black Pioneers, Salem, Oregon, 2011. Illustrations, maps, tables, index. 279 pages. $25.00 paper. Perseverance is a brief history of AfricanAmericans in two Oregon counties from 1788 through thepresent.Basedonresearchconductedbythe Oregon Northwest Black Pioneers (ONBP), a heritage organization based in Salem, Oregon, the completed work is clearly a labor of love by all who were involved in its production. Indeed, the ONBP has done yeoman’s work in researching and collecting the scattered, fragmented, and obscure material necessary to reconstruct the lives and experiences of a group of people often overlooked in the telling of Oregon’s history. Perseverance contains biographical profiles of a number of Marion and Polk counties’ African-descended pioneers, many of whom walked as slaves along the wagon trails leading to Oregon Territory. Those black pioneers managed to carve out lives for themselves in spite of the inhospitable environment in this territory (and, after 1859, state), where their presence either as slaves or as free people was not welcome.It was not until 1927 that Oregon repealed the law, written into its constitution, that forbade blacks from residing in the state. Although slavery’s demise and the passage of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution voided Oregon’s exclusion law, African Americans in the state faced an uphill battle in obtaining acknowledgement and acceptance by the state’s white majority well into the twentieth century. Marion and Polk Counties were no exception . Black people there struggled to maintain equal access to education, work, housing, and leisure spaces. Individuals occasionally managed to break through the walls of prejudice and interacted with whites on common ground. More frequently, blacks attempted to create and sustain their own communities of support,though their relatively small numbers then and now made and make such associations difficult to sustain in the long term. In spite of the odds, in recent years, African Americans in both counties have obtained a degree of success and recognition for their contributions to their communities. Perseverance concludes by highlighting the achievements of some of this most recent generationof AfricanAmericansinOregon.Avaluable companion to Elizabeth McLagan’s 1980 work A Peculiar Paradise: A History of Blacks in Oregon, 1788–1940 and other histories of blacks in Oregon, Perseverance is recommended for anyone wishing to learn a bit more about the African American experience in Oregon. Melissa Stuckey University of Oregon Don’t miss Culture Captured: the Photography of Marian Wood Kolisch on view at the Oregon Historical Society through September 2. Details at www.ohs.org/exhibits ...