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Wednesday, March 04, 2015

The Time Nature And Racism Teamed Up To Wipe Out A Whole Town

Thousands of people crammed into a haphazard housing project, surrounded by a massive river, and secured only by a system of dikes. It was a recipe for disaster, one that saw a growing city reduced to flooded marshlands in less than a day.

In the 1940s, Vanport, Ore. was the center of a booming World War II-era shipyard industry, quickly becoming the second largest city in the state. But both its origin, and its destruction, came about thanks to the racially discriminatory housing practices of neighboring Portland across the river.

As the Smithsonian's Natasha Geiling reports, Oregon's history of racism (it was illegal for blacks to move there until 1926) created a "pristine utopia, where land was plentiful and diversity was scarce." But as World War II saw white males drafted to serve overseas, a labor shortage pulled in a great migration of blacks from the south.

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6 comments:

  1. This was a terrible tragedy regardless of race!
    The most successful societies on Earth are void of people of color. That fact speaks for itself.
    Combine that with the fact that the LEAST successful societies on Earth are comprised completely of people of color, and it's very easy to see why people of color are not liked or wanted in places they weren't.
    Hmmm?
    Fox Chase or the reservation?

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  2. That depends on what you call success , If you call stealing and robbing the Aboriginal people of the Earth of their resources, murder and enslavement success then you are right however success is finding peace of mind which hard to find with you , because you are the arch rival of THE DEVIL.

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  3. We need to do this again and provide housing for all the homeless, then after they are filled, a dam breaks, end of homeless problem.

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  4. I bet Portland had a very low crime rate.

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  5. 9:27 this would also be a good thing to do with the Gay and Lesbian communities. Goodby Mayor!

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  6. Democrats will not allow us to move beyond racism.

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