Have you ever wondered about the people depicted on our website? These are not random photos; many of the folks featured on each page have made meaningful contributions to Oregon’s Black history. Here is a quick glimpse at some of their stories!
Obo Addy
Obo Addy was an internationally renowned Ghanaian-American musician. He moved to Portland in 1978 and taught African drumming to Portland college and high school students for thirty years.
Edwin “Bill” Berry (pictured with Ruth Fong)
Bill Berry served as the first president of Portland’s chapter of the Urban League. He was one of the city’s most visible civil rights leaders from 1945-1956.
Richard Bogle and America Waldo Bogle
Richard and America were Oregon pioneer settlers. Their 1863 marriage in Salem is one of the earliest known Black weddings in Oregon.
Beatrice Morrow Cannady
Beatrice Morrow Cannady was the first Black woman in Oregon to graduate from law school (1921), and the first to run for public office (1932). She was the editor of The Advocate newspaper from the 1910s-1930s.
Mary Jane Holmes Shipley Drake
Mary Jane Holmes Shipley Drake was one of the first African Americans to live nearly their entire life in Oregon and was the matriarch of a large family of early Black residents. She was freed from slavery in Rickreall, Oregon following a court battle won by her father in 1853. more here
George Fletcher
George Fletcher is Pendleton, Oregon’s hometown rodeo hero. He competed in the earliest Pendleton Round Ups and is a member of the National Cowboy Hall of Fame. more here and here
Allen and Louisa Flowers with their sons
The Flowers family was among the most wealthy and socially active members of Portland’s Black community during the 1890s-1910s, and one of the first Black families to settle in the historically-Black Albina area. more here
Louisa Thacker Flowers (seated) with unidentified woman. Louisa Thacker was born in Boston and later migrated with her parents to join the Black community in Victoria, Canada. There she met and married Allan Flowers and moved to Portland in 1885. more here
Carrie Halsell
Salem native Carrie Halsell was the first Black student to graduate from Oregon State University in 1926.
Sybil Harber
Sybil Harber was a nurse and midwife who ran a boardinghouse and bakery in Lakeview, Oregon in the early 1900s. more here
George Hardin
George became Portland’s first Black police officer in 1894, and served as a Multnomah County Sheriff’s deputy from the 1910s-1930s.
Ben Johnson and Amanda Gardner Johnson
Ben and Amanda both came to Oregon on the wagon train of 1853. They reconnected in Salem in 1868 and were married in 1870. The couple lived the rest of their lives in Albany, Oregon. more here
Hattie Redmond
Hattie Redmond was one of Oregon’s women’s suffrage champions. In 1912, she was President of the Colored Women’s Equal Suffrage Association.
Louisa Sewell
Louisa and her husband Columbus raised a family in Canyon City, Oregon in the 1870s-1890s, making them the first Black family to live in Eastern Oregon. more here
Louis Southworth
Southworth was brought to Oregon as an enslaved person in 1853, and purchased his own freedom from money earned playing the fiddle. He later became a blacksmith, farmer, and ferry operator in Alsea, Oregon. more here
Thelma Johnson Streat
Johnson Streat was a Portland painter and dancer who became a nationally-renowned artist in the 1930s. She worked as a muralist for the Federal Art Project with Diego Rivera, and was a dance instructor in the 1940s. more here
Unidentified student
This student activist was photographed at a University of Oregon demonstration in 1970.
George Washington
Washington arrived in Oregon in 1850. Barred from settlement because of an 1849 Black exclusion law, he chose to settle in Washington Territory instead. He later founded the town of Centralia, Washington.
Freddie Whitlow
Freddie was a member of the Portland Chapter of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense in the 1970s.
York (illustration)
York was the first known Black person to reach Oregon by land, and the first to set foot in present-day Portland, in 1805, while traveling as a member of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. more here