Page 10
February 20, 2019
Arts &
ENTERTAINMENT
Oregon’s
Black Pioneers
Largely
unknown history
explored in new
documentary
OPB will premiere a new
historical documentary on
Monday, Feb. 25 at 9 p.m.
called “Oregon’s Black Pi-
oneers,” which explores the
largely unknown history of
African-Americans who have
helped shape the state. From
fur trappers and explorers,
to farmers and merchants,
the earliest black Oregonians
lived, worked and built com-
munities despite the racist
laws of white settlers who
tried to force them out.
This half-hour Oregon Ex-
perience documentary ex-
plores the many stories of
black pioneers, including that
of Markus Lopeus, the earli-
est-known person of African
descent in the state. He was
a sailor who arrived at Tilla-
mook Bay in 1788 with mer-
chant sea captain Robert Gray.
It is documented that Lopeus
died during a dispute with lo-
cal Native Americans.
In the years that followed,
more African-Americans ar-
rived in the Far West as fur
trappers and explorers. Some
were brought to the region as A Lakeview woman and an unknown man are images of black Americans living in Oregon in
slaves, and others were free- the mid to late 1800s. The photos are courtesy of the Oregon Historical Society.
men looking for a new life.
They opened boarding hous-
es and stores; worked farms
and mined for gold. At the
same time, as more white set-
tlers arrived over the Oregon
Trail, the newcomers not only
brought their own prejudices
with them, they passed dis-
criminatory laws against black
people.
In the 1840s, the region’s
provisional government for-
bid slavery while also banning
black people from settling in
the area. When Oregon be-
came a state in 1859, it was
the only state admitted to the
union with an exclusion law
in its constitution. That law
remained until voters removed
it in 1926, while the original
racist language stayed on the
books until 2002.
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