History of Racism in our Neighborhood

Original Peoples Acknowledgment

We honor and celebrate the Original Peoples of North America and Alaska whose communities lived in harmony with this land for generations. Their beautiful traditions, creative expressions, advocacy as caretakers and protectors of land, and insight into sustainability have established a rich legacy. As colonizers landed on these shores, a campaign of dehumanization was created, leading to centuries of ethnic cleansing, stolen land, historical erasure, biological warfare, tribal massacres, and genocide. We lament the relentless evil and tragic injustice that Indigenous Peoples have endured.

What we now call Portland, OR and Multnomah County are the traditional lands of the Cowlitz, Multnomah, Kathlamet, Clackamas, Tumwater, Tualatin Kalapuya, Wasco, Molalla, and Watlala bands of the Chinook, and many other nations of the Nch’i Wána (“The Big River”), also known as the Columbia. The land we occupy as a nation, as a city, and as a church was taken unjustly.

Today, people from these bands have become part of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians, as well as the Chinook Nation and Cowlitz Nation in Washington State.

Neighborhood Segregation

Portland has a longstanding history of racist housing and land use practices that created and reinforced racial segregation and inequities. Exclusionary zoning, racially restrictive covenants, and redlining are early examples of this, with their effects still visible today. These discriminatory practices have all played a role in shaping the city’s urban form—and in exacerbating inequities along lines of race and class.

The property that Bridgetown owns was developed in a neighborhood that once enforced race-based restrictions. Irvington, Alameda, Beaumont-Wilshire, Laurelhurst and other nearby neighborhoods excluded families of color from purchasing property or becoming residents.