Portland bus tour showing city’s anti-Asian, anti-Black past enters 16th year
By Carl Samson
A unique bus tour in Portland, Oregon, sheds light on the city’s dark past of housing discrimination against Asian and African Americans.
Key points:
- The tour, titled “Fasten Your Seat Belts,” is organized by the Fair Housing Council of Oregon and has recently entered its 16th year.
- One stop is the Portland Expo Center, which served as a temporary detention center for Japanese Americans during World War II.
The details:
- Oregon has an infamous history of racial discrimination. When it joined the Union in 1959, it was the only free state that had an exclusion clause in its constitution.
- Exclusion laws passed between 1844 and 1857 outright banned African Americans from living in Oregon. It was not until 1926 when voters repealed related provisions, and it was not until 2002 when racial references were removed from obsolete sections of the state’s constitution.
- Chinese Americans suffered housing discrimination with the passing of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, which restricted further Chinese immigration. Subsequently, the signing of Executive Order 9066 in 1942, which authorized Japanese “internment,” forcibly removed Japanese Americans from their homes to detain them in incarceration camps.
- The four-hour bus tour includes stops at key locations in the state’s history of housing discrimination. Among them, as per KGW News, is the Portland Expo Center, which detained more than 3,600 Japanese Americans between May and September of 1942.
- A two-hour facilitated discussion follows the tour, giving participants an opportunity to reflect on their experiences and share personal stories and perspectives.
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