Early Challenges

Early Vanport: 

   In its short history, from 1942 to 1948, Vanport was the nation’s largest wartime housing development, a site for social innovation and the scene of one of Oregon’s major disasters. 

(Google screenshot of where Vanport would be present day.) 

   Between 1940 and 1943, defense employment in the Portland and Vancouver area rose rapidly from a few thousand to 140,000 people to aid U.S. Maritime Commission's orders. The Kaiser Company shipyards accounted for 110,000 of the total. The influx in population drastically shaped and molded racial and ethical tolerance in the Pacific Northwest. 

   In response, Edgar Kaiser worked with U.S. Maritime Commission to secure funding for a massive housing project. The commission formally approved the project on August 18, 1942.

   Portlanders were not pleased about the new construction. They believed that this would start a racial outrage in the community considering that the population of 90% white. During the time, history perceived Oregon as an anti-foreign and anti-black legislation. Board members of the new Housing Authority of Portland (HAP) was left in the dark about the project, but they agreed to take over management of the project. 

(The legend shows how HAP segregated the African-American residents in Vanport.)  

   I consider Vanport as an early civil rights experiment considering some of the following:

• President Franklin D. Roosevelt authorized the internment with Executive Order 9066 which states that all people of Japanese ancestry would be placed in interment camps (California, Oregon, Washington and Arizona). There are thousands of firsthand records saying that these Japanese citizens were stripped of their documentation and treated like POW. 
•    The KKK recently disassembled in 1940's but smaller charter remains with 30,000 people strong. In the 1922, the Klan focused on transcending their power further in political parties. Klanmen throughout the state were elected in local and county offices. 

 This allowed the amount of African-American's into Oregon double in a course of a three days. As the average Oregonian was hearing more information "Project Kaiservile" (nickname), they sought out for retaliation in many waves.