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Wednesday • February 12, 2014
Number 7
Established in 1970
Com m itted to C ultural D iversity
years
c community
n m m n n i t\ f service
vervi
Whitelandia
Film examines state ’s racial
dealings past and present
Filmmaker M att Zodrow surveys his heavily gentrified neighborhood £
ment Oregon s storied racial history, including the current issue for pe
eluded blacks from living in the Oregon territory during the m id 1800s
by D onovan M. S mith
T he P ortland O bserver
Oregon s history with race relations even leading up to
present-day dealings would perhaps be best described in a
word as tumultuous; but two local filmmakers have created
photo by D onovan M. S mith /T he P ortland O bserver
and filming-partner Tracy MacDonald have set out to docu-
) their historical neighborhoods, to the racist laws that ex-
a whole other term for it, “Whitelandia.”
Seasoned filmmakers Matt Zodrow and Tracy MacDonald
of Portland recently set out to capture the layered, unique,
and often unattractive relationship black Americans have
had in Oregon since the state’s inception.
Though Zodrow said he was familiar with some of the
state’s back story around being a hotbed for Ku Klux Kian
membership, racist redlining laws, and the more recent talk-
continued
on page 4