Black pioneers have been coming to the Willamette Valley since long before Oregon became a state in 1859. Their journeys were often long and arduous, and opportunities were often limited upon arrival.
In the more than 150 years since Oregon’s founding, however, the state’s resilient Black communities have achieved success in a variety of momentous and important ways. We spoke with Zachary Stocks, Executive Director of the nonprofit group Oregon Black Pioneers, about the region’s earliest Black emigrants, the challenges they faced, and how they thrived in the years and decades that followed statehood.
According to Stocks, one of the earliest Black residents of the Willamette Valley was a fur trader named Winslow Anderson (who sometimes went by the name George Winslow). Anderson's time in the valley was marred by his role in the tragic Cockstock Incident in 1844—when he killed a man in a brawl in Oregon City.
Anderson would be joined in the Willamette Valley by other Black residents who traveled the 2,170-mile Oregon Trail throughout the mid-1800s. The trail officially ended in Oregon City, but many of the first Black emigrants traveled further south and deeper into the Willamette Valley—with residents moving to the likes of Marysville (which later became Corvallis), Salem, and Philomath.
One notable resident was Latetia Carson, who came to Oregon as an enslaved person or former enslaved person in 1845—and, just four years later, gave birth to a son, Adam, thought to be the first Black child born in Oregon. Another pioneer is Hannah Gorman, who arrived as an enslaved person in 1844 with her daughter Eliza—who would become an accomplished seamstress in Benton County.
Stocks says those first Black emigrants didn't experience much community in the Willamette Valley, where they worked on farms and scratched out a meager living—often as enslaved people. "Everything was agrarian, so you would have one or two individual Black people—or in rare cases, Black families," he says. "They were really living disparately from other Black people. Their daily interactions with other Black people would have been pretty rare."
Around the same time, the area's first European-American emigrants were meeting to discuss creating a government in what was then known as Oregon Country—which would later become the Oregon Territory and, eventually, the state of Oregon. Early on, slavery was not allowed—but Stocks says that wasn't enforced.
The first Black exclusion law arrived in the mid-1800s; it prohibited Black people from arriving in Oregon while paradoxically banning slavery—a move that Stocks says was meant to appease the state's white farmers and drive out competition. The anti-slavery law was repealed in 1845 and remained on the books until 1853; even so, Stocks says that slavery was never widespread in the state. "The majority of people were never slave owners, because they didn't come from slave states and they probably didn't have the financial means to undertake plantation agriculture," he says.
Oregon was admitted to the United States on February 14, 1859, and the state's constitution kept those exclusion laws in place: Slavery was not permitted, but Black residents were not allowed to live or travel in the state.
It's a contradiction that Stocks says was pretty typical of the time; he cites the likes of Iowa, Illinois, Michigan, and other states that passed similar laws around the same time. But what made Oregon unique, Stocks says, is that the exclusion law was written into the state constitution—and not a rule enacted after the fact. "Oregon's racism was America's racism," he says of the state's earliest years. "And racism in Oregon was imported along the Oregon Trail from other parts of the United States."
Oregon's exclusion clause was rendered moot when the state ratified the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1866—which granted citizenship to all Black Americans; just two years later, lawmakers would rescind that ratification. Even so, the Fifteenth Amendment, ratified in 1870, gave all Black Americans the right to vote.
It was a rocky road to freedom for the first Black Oregonians—one that hadn’t been made easier by statehood. Until that point, covered wagons and steamships had brought the vast majority of Black emigrants to Oregon—mostly as domestic servants or farm laborers for white families. But the most crucial turning points for Black Oregonians came with the end of the Civil War and the construction of a transcontinental railroad. Both developments signaled a change in the relative mobility of Black families. "That's when we start to see a real increase in the Black population statewide," Stocks says. "Now Black people are able to travel very far distances and with a little bit of money in their pocket."
Once they arrived in the new state, Black Oregonians faced a dizzying maze of legal restrictions that impacted and imperiled their basic freedoms and rights.
Stocks says that some would arrive after one exclusion law was repealed but before another was enacted, complicating their path forward in Oregon. Some laws only applied to Black people who weren't yet in Oregon when they were enacted, so longer-term residents had more flexibility to own land and launch businesses. "So depending on what year people came, that would be the difference between whether they would have had civil rights or not," Stocks says.
Despite the confusion, Black communities slowly took root around the Willamette Valley. Black preachers amassed congregations in Salem, shoeshines worked in Oregon City, and Black barbers opened shops in Brownsville, Stocks says. Today, Black-owned businesses dot every corner of the Willamette Valley—including a wide variety of creative restaurants.
Following the Civil War, Black growth in Oregon even outpaced the growth of white communities around the state. "That tells us that, after the Civil War had ended, Black people sought to use their newfound freedoms in Oregon, "Stocks says. "So the motivation to come to Oregon was always there."
If you're interested in learning about Black history in the Willamette Valley and surrounding communities, connect with Oregon Black Pioneers. The nonprofit regularly puts on walking tours, brings exhibits to local museums and libraries, provides resources on its website, and hosts events throughout the state. Stocks, along with Mariah Rocker (the organization's public programs and exhibits manager), also give presentations throughout Oregon, as well.
For more ways to connect with Black communities in the Willamette Valley, visit our page about Black culture in the Willamette Valley—where you’ll find links to museum exhibits, mobile apps, local businesses, and more.
