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Full-Text Articles in African American Studies

Reclaiming Public Space: How Black Portlanders Transformed Irving Park, 1960s-1980s, Ana Bane Jun 2023

Reclaiming Public Space: How Black Portlanders Transformed Irving Park, 1960s-1980s, Ana Bane

University Honors Theses

Although we often take their existence for granted, public parks are imperative for the vitality of a functioning democratic society. Parks are more than just sites for recreation–an important arena for community building in its own right; occupying public space is an inherently political act that takes on new dimensions in resistance movements. This project explores the role that public space played in the history of Black community organizing and resistance in Portland. Irving Park is a sixteen acre park in the heart of the Albina district, Portland’s historic African American neighborhood. Though the area is now heavily gentrified, from …


Myths, Museums, Mothers, And The Power Of Letitia Carson, Hailey Brink Jun 2023

Myths, Museums, Mothers, And The Power Of Letitia Carson, Hailey Brink

University Honors Theses

Letitia Carson was a trailblazing Black Oregon pioneer woman whose life offered remarkable and unprecedented departures from the white pioneer status quo. Letitia's story presents numerous points at which she could be heralded for her successes; her pregnant journey across the Overland Trail, giving birth in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains, cultivating and maintaining two separate homesteads, challenging and conquering two lawsuits against administrator Greenberry Smith, her midwifery and community involvement, and lastly, becoming the first Black woman to own land in Oregon in 1862. And yet, her story fell to obscurity, only to be revived nearly a century …