Street roots., April 20, 2018, Page 9, Image 9

Street Roots • April 20-26, 2018
News
Page 9
too, in the way places got when no one felt
attached. Broken windows, debris in the
rising rivers that once were roads. People on
gutters, litter blowing down the streets and
foot struggled with suitcases, baskets, and
collecting against the buildings.
babies. Cars, trucks and buses jammed the
“Cardboard palaces” was what they called
long incline of Victory Boulevard, their only
ft
the apartments. Corners cut everywhere you
way out.
looked. Walls as thin as tissue paper so you
Within the hour all the buildings were
could hear every nose blow, every radio show,
adrift in muddy, swirling waters. Towers
<1
every go at it, your neighbors banging the
toppled over. Cars and buses bobbed like
bed. In winter they turned off the heat and
bathtub toys. Some residents were stranded
hot water at night and too bad for you if you
on the roofs. Kids were tossed into boats
IB
worked the swing shift and might have liked a
from the second floors. A chain of men in
shower before hitting the sack. And vermin?
water to their knees pulled one person after
You had rats and flies and mice and fleas and
another to higher ground.
bedbugs and cockroaches. Plus, like any place
Eighteen thousand homeless. Scores
built on the cheap, Vanport was frighteningly
injured. Fifteen dead. That was the official
combustible. Some 200 fires broke out in the
count, but certainly there were more. Some
first two years of the project.
of the missing bodies were never recovered,
Families moved out in droves, the white
and never counted among the dead. Rumors
ones mostly. In 1943 the Housing Authority
circulated about dozens of bodies trapped in
H
of Portland (HAP), Vanport’s landlord,
the Vanport Theater, stashed away in cold
commissioned a survey, later published in
storage or shipped out to sea to be returned
À *
American Sociological Review. As
disguised as dead soldiers. The stories were
■
S IS »
documented by authors Charlotte Kilbourn
fed by the suspicion that authorities were
and Margaret Lantis, respondents said they
secretly delighted to see Vanport destroyed
didn’t like African Americans and whites in
■Hg
and hoped to deflect attention from their own
the same neighborhood, especially not in the
culpability.
: S»
same schools. The shopping facilities were
Families lost nearly everything they owned.
P H O T O S C O U R T E S Y O F P O R T L A N D C IT Y A R C H IV E S
Devastation in Vanport after the flood waters receded,
inadequate and the cooking facilities stank.
The buck was passed back and forth between
The place was too noisy, too crowded, and
city, state, and feds so fast it flew through the
the mud just too much. To top it off,
air in a blur. Not until 1952 did a federal court
At the end of the war, developers were
Portlanders discriminated against them.
decide that no one was to blame for the
the police were exonerated, a near riot broke
slavering to get their hands on the land to
In fact, the neighborhoods of Vanport were
catastrophe and no one, therefore, was
out in Vanport. In 1946 sheriffs chased
build a new industrial park. But what to do
entitled to compensation.
largely segregated and the hospital was Jim
African-American suspect Bennie Sellers
with all those people? White families blew out
Crow. Illegally and by design, although HAP
In her book, Perimeters of Democracy, a
from the site of a burglary in Vanport and
of
there
as
fast
as
they
could.
But
most
of
the
study of wartime “inverse utopias” including
denied it. Not until after the war did activists
shot him to death. In 1948 Vanporter and
African
Americans
were
stuck,
not
welcome
Vanport, Heather Fryer documented the
force HAP to admit to their practice of
African-American veteran Wardell Henderson
in Portland, not wanting to go back home to
aftermath of the flood. The Vanport Tenants’
keeping secret and
was executed for the murder of a white man,
even worse
League joined with other activists to form the
separate waiting lists
after two jurors signed affidavits that
Vanport Citizens’ Emergency Disaster
conditions. Vanport
for African Americans
Henderson was sent to the gas chamber
Committee. They protested not only the lack
and reserving certain
because he was African American, to make an
B shrunk to less than
of compensation, but the housing of flood
half its wartime
neighborhoods for
example of him. The serial injustices further
victims in rotten conditions, in dilapidated
population. HAP
African Americans
inflamed and organized African Americans
non­
trailers and former dormitories for shipyard
began to neglect
only.
and their allies. There was no going back.
profit, will commemorate Vanport City
workers. Meetings were disrupted. Marches
Vanport’s upkeep in
HAP wanted to
In 1946 hope for rejuvenation in Vanport
were staged. A caravan to Salem was
earnest. The
came in the form of Vanport College,
segregate the schools
organized. Pickets were dispatched. “No
infrastructure
in Vanport too. But
intended to serve the overflow of vets seeking
Home Sweet Home for Us, Just Trailers!”
crumbled; the piles
to better themselves. HAP set aside
Superintendent James
“Billions for Europe, This for America!”
of trash grew. They
Hamilton refused.
apartments around the college for vets, called
This “memory activism’1 effort takes
“Investigate Vanport disaster!”
shut down summer
Veterans’ Village, which boasted new paint
Then he made a point
in various venues in
Six years later many of those same
school and after
and picket fences and gardens. In another
of hiring African
activists, like Sam Markson and reporter Julia
school programs.
point of bitter contention, Veterans’ Village
American teachers at a
Ruuittala (who was fired for writing
The kids ran wild. A
did not admit African-American veterans. But
time when the
incendiary reports about the failures of HAP
quarter of the
Vanport College did. Some of the Vanport
Portland school system
in the wake of the flood), would be hauled in
apartment buildings
kids, white and African American alike, seized
former Vanport residents, oral history
had none. His schools
front of the House Un-american Activities
were dismantled and
the opportunity to enroll and launch careers
became the crown
Committee and interrogated about their
shipped off to house
their parents would never have dreamed of.
jewels of the
area,
activities after the flood.
construction
The rain began toward the end of May
community, winning
The land was never reclaimed for industrial
workers elsewhere.
1948, a warm deluge. Winter’s snowpack ran
awards for their
or residential purposes. It now hosts a golf
By then the
off the eastern peaks and poured into the
innovations, their meal
course, a race track and Delta Park. Vanport
Vanport Tenants’
Columbia River. Army Corps engineers stood
programs, infirmaries,
.or&email
College was reborn as Portland State
League, or VTL, had
atop the levees surrounding Vanport,
24-hour child care,
info@vanportmosaic.org, or call
University. The railroad embankment was
organized to
measured and probed and conferred. The
after-school activities
971-319-0156.
rebuilt, again not as a levee, but only as a
challenge the
lakes below the western dike swelled to twice
and summer school.
railroad berm.
discriminatory
their size. The folks who’d scrambled up the
Kaiser liked
Vanport was never built to last, but rather
practices of HAP,
muddy slopes to watch might have overheard
Hamilton’s vision,
to service the industrial needs of a wartime
their Jim Crow
one of the engineers say to the other: This
because workers who weren’t worried about
economy and, in the process, to maintain
housing scheme and their failure to apply
isn’t a levee at all. It’s just a railroad berm.
their children showed up for work every day.
- certain race and class boundaries. But
federal rent relief policies. The VTL staged
Memorial Day dawned sunny and warm.
Survivors of Vanport, most of whom were
Vanport activists and their allies took up the
large, angry demonstrations, alerted the
Early that morning a flyer was slipped
kids at the time, have fond memories of the
fight for a better future for their kids. With
federal overseers to HAP’s deliberate and
beneath the door of every apartment:
place. They had basketball teams and sewing
their mass demonstrations and pickets and
illegal circumvention of federal rules. They
classes and marching bands and field trips to
REM EM BER:
marches and impolite disruptions of official
wrote letters and challenged authorities. They
the beach and the mountains. They could
DIKES ARE SAFE AT PRESENT.
meetings, they were the first to challenge the
drew the NAACP and the newly formed
swim in Force Lake or hitch a ride up to
YOU WILL BE WARNED IF NECESSARY.
politics of accommodation that characterized
Urban League of Portland into the fight.
Jantzen Beach to ride the Big Dipper and the
YOU WILL HAVE TIM E TO LEAVE.
the prewar African-American community. It
Eventually they forced HAP to back down.
Rollo-plane, though if you were African
DON’T G E T EXCITED.
was these men and women who set the stage
During the war African-American trainman
American you couldn’t swim in any of their
for the civil rights protests to come.
Robert Folkes was framed for a murder of a
Shortly after 4 p.m. the sirens went off.
three giant pools. The kids made friends of all
white war bride just south of Portland. He
The dike-not-really-a-dike had burst.
The author is indebted to E d Washington and
colors. If they were African American, it was
was executed in 1945 in the face of of
The first rush of water hit the western­
Bea Gilmore for sharing with her their
likely the first time they’d ever gone to school
widespread protest. Eight months later
most sloughs, which filled and overran their
personal remembrances and to Vanport
with white kids or studied from brand new
Portland Police would shoot and kill African-
banks. The second wave was a half hour away. Mosaic for its collection o f oral histories of
text books. They were largely shielded from
American father and shipyard worker Ervin
Vehicles plowed down shallow but rapidly
Vanport survivors.
the discrimination their parents faced.
Jones while in pursuit of another man. When
is
lig i
Vanport Mosaic Festival