10
community
may16
2019
Library Hosts Two Authors
Program was part of Columbia County
Reads 2019
little-known history of black slaves in Oregon. His
book helped inspire the Oregon Public Broadcasting
program Oregon’s Black Pioneers which can be ac-
cessed on OPB’s Oregon Experience website.
Nokes also discussed his other two historical
non-fiction books. The Troubled
Life of Peter Burnett: Oregon
Pioneer and First Governor of
California is the first, full-length
biography of this western explorer
and California’s first governor. A
The Vernonia Public Library hosted a special
event as part of Columbia County Reads 2019 on April
26.
Authors Gregory Nokes and
Phillip Margolin discussed two books
they wrote about a similar subject,
slaves in the Oregon Territory in the
1800s.
Columbia County Reads is a
yearly collaboration between Columbia
County libraries to bring reading to the
forefront of public discourse. If every-
one reads the same book or author at
the same time, it is hoped that it will
inspire discussions, connections, and
a shared perspective among Columbia
County residents. The St. Helens Pub-
lic Library was awarded a $2,000 grant
Gregory Nokes
from the Columbia County Cultural
Coalition to help fund Columbia County Reads 2019.
former slavehold-
Nokes’s book Breaking Chains: Slavery on er, Burnett had
Trial in the Oregon Territory is the true account of a a single-minded
Phillip Margolin
former black slave in Polk County who sued his owner goal of banning
for the freedom of his children. Nokes wrote Break- blacks and other minorities from the West. Massacred
ing Chains after learning that one of his ancestors from for Gold: The Chinese in Hells Canyon is the first au-
Missouri brought a slave named Reuben Shipley to thoritative account of the long-forgotten 1887 massa-
Oregon in 1853. Nokes, a born and raised Oregonian, cre of as many as 34 Chinese gold miners in Oregon’s
discussed how he learned about his ancestors involve- Hells Canyon. The killers were an improbable gang of
ment with slavery and what led him to write about the horse thieves and schoolboys in northeastern Oregon’s
remote Wallowa country. Even though the killers were
known, and one confessed, no one was ever convicted
of the crime. A cover-up followed and the crime was all
but forgotten for the next 100 years, until a county clerk
found hidden records in an unused safe. There will be
a screening of the Oregon Experience documentary,
Massacre at Hells Canyon, based on Nokes’s book on
Tuesday, May 21, 6:30 pm at the Library.
Phillip Margolin’s book Worthy Brown’s
Daughter is a work of fiction based on the account de-
scribed in Nokes’s book Breaking Chains. Margolin
spent over 20 years as an attorney, specializing in crim-
inal defense. He served as an appellate attorney, ap-
pearing before the U.S. Supreme Court, the U.S. Court
of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, the Oregon Supreme
Court, and the Oregon Court of Appeals. He began
writing full time in 1996. His novels, many of which
are legal thrillers, have received numerous awards and
nominations. The Last Innocent Man was made into an
HBO movie and Gone, But Not Forgotten was turned
into a mini-series
At the Vernonia Library event Margolin dis-
cussed Stephen Johnson Fields, a notable lawyer and
judge in the early days of the American west, who later
served as a U.S. Supreme Court Justice.
Although there are no known instances of slave
holding in Columbia County, the Columbia County
Museum Association partnered with the Columbia
County libraries to display images and descriptions of
life in Columbia County around the same time period
as these authors’ accounts of life in Oregon.
Thank You
Volunteers!
A big thank you to volunteers
Steve and Sue Whiteman, and Verno-
nia Mayor Rick Hobart for their work
to make Spencer Park look great!
Steve Whiteman, a member
of the Vernonia Parks Committee, has
been instrumental in organizing the
Memorial Tree program which has
planted 20 trees in the park. Steve
and Sue have been volunteering to
make sure the new trees stay watered.
Mayor Hobart has headed up
several volunteer clean-up projects as
part of the Green Team he helped or-
ganize. We recently caught him trim-
ming these rhododendrons on Bridge
Street in Spencer Park.
Thank you to these great Ver-
nonia volunteers!
Vernonia’s Voice is published
twice each month on the 1 st and
3 rd Thursday. Look for our next
issue on June 6.
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