From Displacement to Restoration: Portland’s Black Community and the Struggle Against Racism

This week, I am excited to bring you our first guest blog post for our discussion on racism and greed. Our guest this week is Kimberly S. Moreland. Kim is the Founder and CEO of Moreland Resource Consulting, LLC., the wife of Michael Moreland Sr., and mother of four talented and accomplished young adults, Katie, Mike, Kristen, and Karina. She has a passion for educating others and preserving historic places significant to African American history in Oregon. She does this work through a variety of boards, organizations, and committees, including her position as President of the Oregon Black Pioneers.

It has been a pleasure to learn from and work with Kim in our discussion on racism and greed, and I am very excited to share her work with you. I hope you learn as much as I did from her post and look more into all the work she has done sharing the incredible history of the Black community in Portland and all of Oregon!

-Travis Jones, General Editor

By Kimberly S. Moreland

Racism plays a significant role in undergirding poverty and other injustices in the United States. Authors Goldblum and Shaddox, in their seminal work, Broke in America: Seeing Understanding, and Ending U.S. Poverty, say that racism and poverty are each other’s evil twin.¹ This combination creates many forms of oppression targeting our most impoverished and marginalized citizens. What is behind this dynamic duo, Malcolm Foley says, is that greed undergirds racism and oppression.² Foley’s book, The Anti-Greed Gospel; Why the Love of Money Is the Root of Racism and How the Church Can Create a New Way Forward, continues by saying that greed is insidious because it is a sin that we are conditioned to both ignore and justify.

Unfortunately, Portland, and the entire state of Oregon, is no stranger to poverty as well as racist policies, often sanctioned by state and local governments, that have a crippling impact on people of color, particularly African Americans. One stark example of this is the fact that Oregon was the only state accepted into the union with an exclusion law in its constitution, prohibiting Black individuals from residing in the state, which remained until 1926. This and other oppressive government policies have disrupted the social fabric of the Portland Black community and intentionally stripped away generational wealth, resulting in generational poverty for many.  

African American Heritage in Portland

Portland has a rich African American heritage dating back to when Portland became incorporated as a city on February 8, 1851. Before WWII, a small population of African Americans were scattered throughout the city; many were homeowners, business owners, and laborers. 

Due to the transcontinental railroad’s completion in Portland in 1883, Black families settled downtown near the present-day Union Station and the Veterans Memorial Coliseum, living in the area located between the Broadway and Steele Bridges. Eventually, as the Black community migrated to the east side of Portland, the historic center of the African American community became located in Lower Albina, north of the Broadway Bridge. 

Black Economic Oppression

The Black community grew during and after WWII, from roughly 2,500 in 1940 to about 12,000 in 1950. While Black communities have always been unwelcome guests in Oregon, by 1950, a proliferation of oppressive policies were introduced that intentionally and severely displaced Black landowners and business owners while also stripping away affordable housing. This onslaught of racist policies included enforcement of real estate board practices that encouraged race-based restrictive covenants, civic capital projects, highway systems, bridges, and transportation improvements that displaced Black families, businesses, and social institutions. Housing discrimination in the form of redlining and lending practices also restricted housing mobility for African Americans. 

A national policy that drove land speculation and neighborhood disinvestment in poor communities was urban renewal. According to “Reconciliation Project: The Emanuel Hospital Urban Renewal Project,” prepared by Jeana Woolley, Portland’s Eliot neighborhood, where Emanuel Hospital is currently located, was about 69% African American.³ The heart of the black commercial district, located at Williams and Russell, was demolished during the urban renewal era, and the land was undeveloped for over 40 years. Finally, when living closer to the central city became popular, rapid gentrification priced out new Black homeowners, and today, many families have been displaced to East County, where African American families join other communities of color. 

Fueled by greed to build wealth for white people or benefit their comfort without regard to wealth redistribution, economic prosperity, and the public safety of others, creates a continual systemic racism that thrives in poverty and other injustices.

As the young folks say, we need to stop playing…with the Most High

The Most High God consistently grieved the unfair treatment of the poor and oppressed and passed judgment on those who harmed them. In fact, according to Luke 4:17-18, our Lord and Savior, Yeshua, introduced his ministry, reading the book of the prophet Esaias,* proclaiming to preach the gospel to the poor, brokenhearted, and deliverance of the captives, healing to the blind, and set liberty to the bruised and preach the acceptable year of the Lord. Psalms 82:1 commands the faithful to “Defend the weak and the fatherless; uphold the cause of the poor and the oppressed.”

As we speak, community leaders are celebrating the effort to restore affordable housing and reconnect the historic Black community of Portland. The William& Russell project is restoring the community lost to urban renewal in the 70’s. The Portland Housing Bureau created a N/NE Housing Strategy that supports a N/NE Preference Policy targeting descendants of displaced families. The Albina Vision Trust celebrated the opening of a new affordable housing project located within the historic center of the Black community. Phil Knight of Nike funded the 1803 Fund, named after the date an African American explorer, and member of the Discovery Corp, York, visited Portland. The Lord is pleased with these restorative projects. Psalm 41:1 states, “Blessed is the one who considers the poor; the Lord delivers him in the day of trouble”.

¹ Joanne Samuel Goldblum and Colleen Shaddox, Broke in America: Seeing, Understanding, and Ending US Poverty, (Dallas, TX: BenBella Books, 2022).

² Malcolm Foley, The Anti-Greed Gospel: Why the Love of Money Is the Root of Racism and How the Church Can Create a New Way Forward, (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2025).

³ Reconciliation Project: The Emanuel Hospital Urban Renewal Project, https://www.portland.gov/sites/default/files/2019-10/emanuelurbanrenewalprojecttimeline.pdf

* Isaiah in Greek.