From black enterprise editors
August 18, 2025
Even if the federal administration brings back protection, the agreement sends a message about the authority of the organization of the community and the local officials to remedy racist damage, said lawyers and plaintiffs.
The Albina district in Portland, Oregon, was the center of the city's black community for decades. Local musicians converted the districts into a hotspot for the scenes jazz, blues and soul music of the west coast and bought the nickname “Jumptown” in the 1940s and 50s. Milestones in the civil rights struggle in Oregon emerged from meetings in Albina Parks and Gathering Hallen. They were inhabitants of Albina who initiated an urban tree plant program that is responsible for many of the now famous cherry trees in Portland.
Much of them disappeared in the 1970s. Government officers had built the area on behalf of the urban renewal and displaced hundreds of black families, reports the next city.
Cities nationwide have stories like Albina. But last month in Portland, the organizers of the municipality helped write a new chapter, since the city became one of the first in the USA that solves a legal claim that blamed the public authorities for the racist guidelines that driven families decades ago. The comparison includes a payment of $ 8.5 million of survivors and descendants as well as other non-monetary support.
Even if the federal administration brings back protection, the agreement sends a message about the authority of the organization of the community and the local officials to remedy racist damage, said lawyers and plaintiffs.
“It is important [address] Historical racist behavior, they understand that it still lives and has an effect today and that we can and should approach it, regardless of what the federal government is thinking, ”says J. Ashlee Albies from Albies & Stark, lawyer of the plaintiffs.
Twenty -six individual survivors and descendants of families who were driven out of the quarter of the historic district of Central Albina submitted the lawsuit of German citizenship against the city of Portland. The development commission of the city of Portland Prosper and a hospital was involved in an old program for the renovation of the neighborhood in December 2022. The Emanuel Association 2 (EDPA2), an organization of survivors and descendants, was also a plaintiff.
In the lawsuit it was claimed that from the 1950s to 1970s, the accused forced hundreds of families from their houses and shops in central -Albina. Historically, Albina was 80% of the black population in Portland.
Between 1971 and 1973, the predecessor of the city of Portland and Portland Prosper, Portland Development Commission (PDC), demolished more than 180 properties in the neighborhood, including houses, companies and buildings that belong to church and community groups. Of the displaced people, 74% were black. Many were homeowners. Byrd, founder of EDPA2, calls the episode “A Real Estate Massacre”.
At that time, the city of Portland and PDC claimed that the real estate in the neighborhood had merged and used an important domain to force some residents out of their houses. They argued that the demolition was necessary to expand the Emanuel Hospital, which was now called Legacy Emanuel Hospital. However, the expansion of the hospital was never realized.
Decades later, a large part of the country confiscated by black families in central -Albina remains free or is only used for parking. Survivors remember another central Albina. “It was a flourishing black neighborhood, a flourishing community,” said Donna Marshall, whose family in the 1970s the last to leave the neighborhood to Oregon Public Broadcasting.
With the kind permission of the Oregon Law Center
The plaintiff's grandparents Mike Hepburn, Donald and Elizabeth Hepburn had a duplex that had been in the family since the early 1900s. Above is a photo from 1969 of the Hepburn family, which was demolished against the will of the family to expand Emanuel. Below you will find a 2022 photo of the still facultural property, on which the Hepburns house once sat.
With the kind permission of the Oregon Law Center
For many families, the loss of houses in Central -Albina meant a loss of the community, inheritance and access to education, employment and other opportunities. “I lost all my friends. We lost our business,” recalls Marshall, who was a teenager when her family was forced to move. “Everything just fell apart.”
Byrd, a trained librarian who became the archivist of the community, revealed a lot about the past of Central Albina by careful research, which laid the foundation for the legal entitlement. “I searched this by talking to Portland archives, old newspaper articles, with people, even looking at advertising, brochures and death ads,” she explains.
During her research, Byrd discovered something unexpected and personal about the destruction of Central Albina. “I saw my grandmother's name in one of the documents I came across,” she recalls. “I was like 'waiting for a minute, this is my grandmother', and then it was on because I really wanted to find out what had happened.” She also learned more about the original union of the Emanuel displaced persons, a group that gathered in a church basement and tried to prevent the removal of black families from central -albina decades ago.
Later, EDPA2 worked with doctoral students at Portland State University, who mapped deposits and calculated the value of the lost assets in the entire neighborhood. In this report it was found that if displaced persons in Central -Albina still had “probably in the amount of almost 100 million US dollars in residential property, the value of [seized] Commercial properties. “In the report, it was recommended that the city of Portland created a reimbursement -Ask force for the management of a repayment plan.
The research of PSU also showed that the Emanuel Hospital began buying real estate that was scattered in Central Albina long before the plans for an urban renewal project were approved or announced. The hospital allowed buildings that had bought to sit empty or tear them down, and later made claims for damage in the neighborhood. As soon as PDC had approved a project for renewal in Central Albina, it paid the hospital to the purchase price of the real estate that the hospital had previously acquired and the demolition costs.
With the kind permission of the Oregon Law Center
A 1962 brochure produced by Portland Bureau of Buildings that promoted the term “Blight” in Central -Albina. (Image with the friendly approval of the Oregon Law Center)
“The conclusion that we have drawn from this story is that the hospital would never have spent all this time and money for the purchase of this random real estate if it had no certainty that the city and Prosper Portland would come in and end the job,” said Ed Johnson from Oregon Law Center, one of the lawyers for the complaint, said Oregon Public Singing.
Details of what the plaintiffs claimed to violently displace a conspiracy, black residents of Central -Albina, enabled the lawyers to create a case that was looking for justice for survivors and descendants. “It was a demanding legal argument, but a justice,” says Albies. “It apologized to these institutions, but no real reimbursement was offered, and and and and [the lawsuit] was an opportunity to really talk about the effects on these families. “
The latest settlement aims to compensate for part of the economic loss and non-economic damage that families from Central Albina have experienced. The agreement recognizes “Portland's systemic discrimination and displacement of black communities”, including the exception of homeowners and “maintaining segregation, shift and harmful stereotypes”.
The accused initially agreed to pay 2 million US dollars for setting up the case. However, the city council of Portland unanimously voted to increase the settlement to 8.5 million US dollars after thinking about survivors and descendants about how the city's racist actions had affected them and their families.
“It was a remarkable and important experience to see that the city council recognized the scope and depth of the damage,” says Albies. “Although this increase is not sufficient to ensure completely refund, it is an important moment when it shows what can happen if you choose managers who come from the community who understand the effects of the damage of past practices and try to tackle this.”
The settlement also includes the handing over of real estate in EDPA2, which sets up a permanent exhibition area for the memory of the history of Central -Albina and Portland's Black Community in Keller Auditorium, supports a documentary about the repression and announces an annual day of descendants in Portland.
While the case in Portland is unique because the researchers revealed what they revealed for a conspiracy for the demolition of parts of central -albina and the twisting of black families, he offers teachings about the importance of archiving and organizing the community.
The latest examples of historical reimbursement packages in Tulsa, Oklahoma to deal with the damage to the Tulsa Race Massacre from 1921 and California in order to compensate for black and Latinx families that were replaced in racist urban renewal systems, also based on the organization of the base and the upbringing of historical evidence in earlier damage.
Back in Portland, Albies and Byrd hope that the latest settlement is only the beginning. “Although it is not perfect and it is not appropriate, it is still very important,” says Byrd. “We opened a door that nobody knew that it existed.”
This story was produced by Next City and checked and distributed by Stacker.
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