White supremacy has crept back into the headlines in recent years: right-wing nationalists have staged rallies across the state, while the Jeremy Christian murder trial continues in Portland. As KLCC’s Brian Bull reports, a new publication reminds residents that the problem persists throughout Oregon’s history.
The Oregon Historical Quarterly’s Winter 2019 issue explores the state’s settlement, which displaced Native Americans and barred African-Americans from land ownership. Other articles revisit the 1988 murder of immigrant Mulugeta Seraw by Aryan skinheads, racist stereotypes in advertising, and labor unions’ discrimination against non-white workers during World War II.
Eliza Canty-Jones is editor of the publication. She says the issue also examines resistance to white supremacy.
“There were abolitionists in Oregon who were vocal about the atrocity of slavery. People who had worked with enslaved people who had freed themselves through the underground railroad," she tells KLCC.
"So there are always people speaking up about these things. And about the atrocity of these kinds of caricatures and stereotypes.”
Canty-Jones says she’d like everyone from parents to policy makers to learn more about this aspect of state history.
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