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<\/p>\nThe celebration was lively: in the small town of Waldport, Oregon, a few hundred finally gathered to see the statue\u2019s unveiling. We heard a Gulf Coast guy, Truman Price, a violinist, play music on his fiddle reminiscent of the tunes of 1880s which would have been played by the historical person cast in bronze. A sculptor showed up, Peter Helzer, and his daughter, too, who was on the banjo with Truman and another fellow playing guitar. The story is of a slave, brought to Oregon by his \u201cowner,\u201d James Southworth. Oh, those Oregon Black Exclusion laws initiated in 1844, stating that any Black individuals or families attempting to settle here would be whipped 39 times, and repeated until they left. The Oregon Constitution in 1859 made it illegal for African Americans to live in Oregon. That law was repeated in 1926.<\/p>\n
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The state of Oregon, man, whew. When I was working in downtown Portland, two of my social services colleagues, both Black, said they had not seen the amount of racism in Portland compared to Texas and Georgia where they had came from. \u201cIt\u2019s not overt, more like sort of hidden, but these white colleagues, liberals, they say some pretty racist stuff to say, profess. They might think it\u2019s passive bigotry, but the state\u2019s history, the sundown laws, and the racist cops and sheriff departments all speak to me as a black man who is definitely feeling the racism.\u201d<\/p>\n
So, Louis Southworth was sent to the Nevada and California gold fields in the 1870s by his enslaver, and he came back with money he saved from work, but mostly from entertaining camps with his fiddle. He bought his freedom at age 28, lived in Buena Vista, did blacksmith work while learning how to read and write.<\/p>\n
He came out to this area, Oregon, on the Pacific, Alsea, homesteading with his wife; about five miles up the river from Waldport.<\/p>\n
He ran a ferry, moving people, hay and other cargo. He ended up chair of the school board, and donated land for the schoolhouse and still played his fiddle.<\/p>\n
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<\/figure>\n<\/div>\nSo, 2022, November 19, the fun was had by all, and there is land dedicated to a Southworth Park, and the statue will be placed there, and there will be more ceremonies. The donated land Southworth gave for the first schoolhouse is now a field where the park will be built, named after him, with the statue.<\/p>\n
I have the text of the dedicatory remarks made by an African American, Zachary Stocks, who is executive director of\u00a0Oregon Black Pioneers<\/a>. He set the record straight on the life and times of not only Southworth, but how his story is that of all Blacks, then, and now. It is an odd thing that this town, which is partially built on burial grounds of the first people, Alsi (Salish folk), is putting up a statue of a Black American, who bought his freedom using the fiddle as his conduit to freedom.<\/p>\n There are no dedicatory memorials to the Siletz and Alsi. I\u2019ve written about that before, and down at Devil\u2019s Churn, there is a cemented-and-walled-in cave with a really hard-to-read sign telling the odd visitor who might stray off the path and go over rocks to see the sign mostly covered by bushes. Traditional clamming grounds of tribes. I\u2019ve talked to people who have lived here 50 years and they never ventured off the paved path at Devil\u2019s Churn and seen the sign. Here\u2019s my poem about Amanda, a Native Woman forcefully marched to Yachats, barefoot and blind. \u201cNot Just One of those Tales of Another Dead Indian<\/a>\u201c<\/p>\n Again, these stories, these events, since I\u2019ve been around the world, embroiled in social justice movements, anti-racism movements, and, well, I have my take on the history of the USA and the world. Here, Peter and Zach, taking off the cover to give the crowd the Louis statue of him fiddling.<\/p>\n Here, Alison plays the banjo as his father walks the crowd as a sort of dignitary. He\u2019s got over a 100 public sculptures around the state and Pacific Northwest<\/a>.<\/p>\n Here, Carol Van Strum, next to Louis. She\u2019s been featured in several stories I\u2019ve written, and her fiction novel,\u00a0The Oreo File<\/em>, has a mixed race protagonist and lots about Louis Southworth. Read my piece on Carol and her fight against the forest service and state with their sprays (pesticides) that have caused genetic damage and other chronic illnesses: “A real-life Toxic Avenger<\/a>“.<\/p>\n She also has her own story of a Black son, Jordan, who was put in jail for a murder he did not commit: Read my piece on his story, and Carol\u2019s here:\u00a0 “A letter a day for 15 years and 9 months<\/a>“. She came down from her Five Rivers house, 30 minutes away, to meet the artist and to give him a copy of her book, signed. I was there taking 100 photos, talking to various people I knew and those I just met.<\/p>\n Here, Peter is messing with a 110 year old violin an elderly lady from Waldport (she actually is from all over, and said this violin was made in Iowa, and she was a concert violinist until she broke her neck and could no longer play).<\/p>\n Here\u2019s Zach\u2019s organization website,\u00a0Oregon Black Pioneers.<\/a>\u00a0Here\u2019s just some of what he said at the ceremony:<\/p>\n Just before his death in 1917, it was reported that Louis Southworth was denied a military pension because his name wasn\u2019t recorded in the volunteer lists. And this, despite a testimonial written on his behalf by his former commanding officer. In response, 218 Oregonians sent in donations totaling $243 to help cover Louis\u2019 living expenses in his final days. Some of those people might be relatives of folks in this room. But it saddens me, that someone who had achieved so much would be forced to live on the charity of others.<\/p>\n All of this demonstrates how Louis Southworth seemed to live multiple lives. Slave and freeman; laborer and entrepreneur; squatter and homesteader; soldier and pauper; excluded and included. Louis was not just a jolly old man living quietly in the background. He actively participated in some of the most significant events in the history of Oregon.<\/p>\n And more than perhaps any other person, Louis\u2019s time in Oregon spans the most transformational moments for Black Americans in the state. Consider this\u2013 around the year Louis Southworth was born, York, the first Black person to reach Oregon by land, died, likely less than 200 miles away. The year Louis Southworth died, Mercedes Diez, who would go on to become Oregon\u2019s first Black judge in the 1970s, was born. Louis is a link in the chain of historic Black individuals that stretches from 1770 to 2005!<\/p>\n That is how close we are to the past. A great colleague of mine named Richard Josey once posed an amazing question at a museum conference. He asked, \u201cWhat kind of ancestor will you be?\u201d. Let\u2019s look to the example of Louis Southworth, whose story and accomplishments have inspired people, then and now. And whose resiliency was matched only by his generosity. A truly\u00a0historic<\/em>\u00a0person.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I did stories on Hanford, the Washington nuclear facility. Won a couple of awards for magazine articles. \u201cNearly nature, nearly perfect But, near Hanford (part 1)<\/a>\u201d and \u201cNuclear Narratives \u2013 When Cold War Starts, the Hot Milk Gets Poured (part 2)<\/a>“.<\/p>\n I did learn from several farmers, including Tom Bailey, that when the facility was being built, many African Americans were brought into this dryland of Washington on the Columbia River. The Tri-Cities of Richland-Kennewick-Pasco. There was a part of town where the blacks lived, there were a few black establishments including bars and stores, and black churches. The justice for these workers was harsh, or should I say, the injustice. That facility was being built in the 1940s. I was shown some of the places, both still standing and others decrepit and falling apart.<\/p>\n Then, in Portland, Vanport, I got my education on that racist history. Here, a website,\u00a0Hidden History<\/em>:<\/p>\n Race is not a topic we often discuss in public settings, at least not explicitly. We are told we are in a \u201cpostracial\u201d landscape, yet race is the number one determinant of access to health care, home ownership, graduation rates, and income, as the data from the Urban League of Portland below show.<\/p>\n We can\u2019t understand these disparities without understanding history. I didn\u2019t grow up in Oregon; I moved here to attend high school. It wasn\u2019t until I had the privilege of attending a presentation by Darrell Millner, founder of Portland State University\u2019s Black Studies Department, that I learned Oregon was created as a white utopian homeland. That Oregon was the only state that entered the Union with a clause in its constitution forbidding Black people to live here. That the punishment originally meted out for violating this exclusionary law was the \u201cLash Law\u201d: public whipping every six months until the Black person left the state. That this ideology shaped Oregon\u2019s entire history and was reflected in the larger history of this nation. \u2014\u00a0Walidah Imarisha<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Again, laborers, workers, coming to Portland in the 1940s to help sustain the construction of homes, warehouses, other buildings for its rapid growth. Vanport was built as a temporary housing solution to Portland\u2019s rapidly growing population. At its peak it housed nearly 40,000 residents, close to 40 percent were African-American. But an unusually wet spring in 1948 created a hole in the railroad dike blocking the Columbia River, and it erupted into massive flooding. City officials didn\u2019t warn residents of the dangerously high water levels and opted not to evacuate. The town was wiped out within a day and 18,500 families were displaced, more than a third African-American.<\/p>\n So, the Albina section of Portland was the only place for Blacks, but with these displaced folk, some of which were taken in by other families, black and white, they had not other place in Portland to live. Many left the area. Now? Gentrification, racist policing, and, yep, with my Masters in Urban Planning, lots of redlining and zoning issues tied to making African Americans personas non grata<\/em>. It\u2019s disgusting.<\/p>\n The great Southern Migration, years after Southworth passed on in 1919. Many now living in Stumptown know nothing about that migration of Black men and women arriving to Portland by the many thousands, increasing Portland\u2019s black population tenfold in a few years. Between 1940 and 1950, the city\u2019s black population increased more than any West Coast city other than Oakland and San Francisco.<\/p>\n It was part of a demographic change seen in cities across America, as blacks left the South for the North and West in what became known as the Great Migration, or what\u00a0Isabel Wilkerson<\/a>, in her acclaimed history of the period,\u00a0The Warmth of Other Suns<\/em><\/a>, calls \u201cthe biggest underreported story of the 20th century.\u201d From 1915 to 1960, nearly six\u00a0million blacks left their Southern homes, seeking work and better opportunities in Northern cities, with nearly\u00a01.5 million leaving in the 1940s<\/a>, seduced by the call of WWII industries and jobs. Many seeking employment headed West, lured by the massive shipyards of the Pacific coast. (Source<\/a>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Here we are in this complicated story, 2022, where Native Americans have been pushed out by the Old World coming into this continent for making money, exploiting land, moving immigrants to lay claim on land for farming and settlements with no regard to the hundreds of American Indian tribes. The Indian war lasted over three hundred years, from 1602 to 1926. Almost every buffalo in the 60 million population was exterminated, as a way to kill American Indian culture.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve got some time at Fort Huachuca, the home of the Buffalo Soldier, the African American union soldiers who also did their duty to help pacify and exterminate the Indians. The First African American troops to arrive in Arizona at Fort Huachuca were the Buffalo Soldiers in the 1890s \u2014 the 9th and 10th Cavalries. The Fort Huachuca Buffalo Soldiers distinguished themselves in the Spanish American War and the charge up San Juan Hill.<\/p>\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/paulhaeder.files.wordpress.com\/2022\/11\/image-38.png?w=640\")
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