Celebrate Juneteenth by bike in Portland

I’ve been doing some legal research into Oregon’s racist laws targeting African-Americans, and I thought I’d share what I found since I cannot go on the ride:

In 1843, a small group of white men formed the Oregon Territory and created its original colonial laws. By popular vote, they made the territory slavery-free. The language of the law is similar to what would later become the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution (outlawing slavery). The voters were mostly farmers from non-slaver states who favored excluding Blacks entirely due to what they saw as unfair competition with others who used slave labor. But of course by then some slavers and their captives had already settled in the part of the territory that would become Oregon.

The following year, the first territorial legislature set a time limit for slavers to “remove” their slaves from the territory. This effectively legalized slavery in Oregon for three years (the time limit for removing a male slave). Although the law made the slavers responsible for removing their “property,” the law punished the “property” for not being removed. The prescribed punishment was beating with a lash.

The law became known as “Peter Burnett’s lash law,” and here’s what he had to say about it:

“The object is to keep clear of that most troublesome class of population [Blacks]. We are in a new world, under the most favorable circumstances and we wish to avoid most of those evils that have so much afflicted the United States and other countries.”

Voters soon rescinded the punishment, apparently before anyone was actually punished under it.

In 1849, the territorial legislature passed the first infamous exclusion law, which said “it shall not be lawful for any negro or mulatto to enter into, or reside” in Oregon. The law was based on the legislature’s concern that Blacks might “intermix with Indians, instilling into their minds feelings of hostility toward the white race.” Some people were expelled under the law, until it was rescinded in 1854.

Oregon flirted with slavery again at statehood, when delegates to the constitutional convention in 1857 submitted to voters a proposal to legalize slavery and to exclude free Blacks. The voters rejected slavery, but approved exclusion. In addition to prohibiting Blacks from entering the State, the new constitution prohibited them from owning property and from making contracts.

This made Oregon the only “free” state to deny fundamental human rights to Blacks. It would have also had a disastrous impact on any free Blacks in Oregon, as it would have allowed State officials to confiscate any property the person had purchased and to deny the person any benefits he or she had earned under any contract (eg, pay for work).

The law was effective in discouraging Black settlement in Oregon, even though it was generally not enforced. It was invalidated by enactment of the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution (guaranteeing equal protection under law on the basis of race and imposing the restrictions of the Bill of Rights on State governments) after the Civil War.

The 14th Amendment also invalidated any other Oregon law targeting African-Americans. However, discriminatory practices against African-Americans in several key sectors of the economy (eg, housing, employment) has remained rampant, becoming marginally less severe after passage of the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964. Oregon law has been largely ineffective in redressing this systematic deprivation of human rights.

Current Oregon law provides distinct criminal penalties for any private party who assaults or threatens a person based on the assailant’s perception of the victim’s race. There are prosecutions in Oregon each year for such crimes against African-Americans.

However, current Oregon law (and federal law) privileges State agents to use force in the course of duty in a manner that enables racially-motivated violence by State actors. This has become perhaps the most salient example of the legal system’s ongoing role in the systemic deprivation of the human rights of African-Americans.

Courtesy of the Oregon Historical Society: https://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/exclusion_laws/#.YMqAlC1h1p9

And your friendly neighborhood member of the Oregon State Bar.