NE Portland History

union-alberta193921

NE Union Avenue (Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd) at NE Alberta, ca. 1939.

Articles

The Racist History of Portland, the Whitest City in America. The Atlantic, 2016.

Vanport, Oregon (1942 – 1948). BlackPast.org.

Bleeding Albina: A History of Community Disinvestment, 1940-2000. Dr. Karen Gibson, Portland State University, 2007.

Albina Community Plan. Portland Bureau of Planning, 1993.

King, Portland, Oregon. A Neighborhood in Transition. Edward J. SanFilippo, University of Pittsburgh, 2011.

NE Alberta and NE Union, 1947.

Videos

  • Albina: Portland’s Ghetto of the Mind. KGW, 1967. This award-winning documentary, originally aired in 1967, brought into focus the question of how the African-American citizens of Portland had historically been marginalized and how the Albina neighborhood had been overlooked by city leaders for development and educational opportunities.
  • Local Color. OPB. 1999. This documentary chronicles the little known history of racism in Oregon and the moving story of people, both black and white, who worked for civil rights.
  • NorthEast Passage: The Inner City and the American Dream. Spencer Wolf & Cornelius Swart, 2002. A feature-length documentary about gentrification and affordable housing in the African American neighborhoods of Northeast Portland. Shot in the late 1990s, the film starkly contrasts city and non-profit efforts to provide affordable housing to the inner city, with the life of Nikki Williams, a black single mom struggling to survive in the ghetto. Northeast Passage paints a picture that is more than black and white. When homeowners replace renters in gentrified neighborhoods race and class lines can blur as the colors fly.
  • Vanport: Oregon’s Lost City. Brian Van Pesky, 2008. Vanport City was born out of WWII as the Oregon Shipbuilding Company rushed to provide housing for the influx of workers in the shipyards. By 1943 it was the second-largest city in Oregon and remains the largest government housing project in U.S. History. In 1948 the Columbia River Dike broke and wiped out the entire city in a massive flood. This film explores the flood and Vanport City and its impact on the city of Portland.
  • Lift Ev’ry Voice. OPB, 2015. A documentary that explores Portland’s African American history with a focus on the turbulent 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s. At the time, issues surrounding urban renewal, school desegregation and brittle police relations were exploding both nationally and locally.

Books