History Minutes: Oregon's Exclusion Laws

Portland Chapter NAACP 50th Anniversary // OrH 44523

Race was central to the debate over Oregon statehood. In November 1857, Oregon

Territory voted overwhelmingly in favor of a new state constitution, which was to be submitted to the U.S.  Congress in a bid to gain statehood.  They also approved a clause prohibiting slavery and another excluding free blacks from living in Oregon.  The territory had a history of excluding blacks through a series of exclusion laws.  The first law, in 1844, outlawed slavery but ordered all blacks out of the Oregon territory, and in 1849, a bill excluded black settlement.  Blacks were also denied the right to vote. 

The U.S. Senate quickly approved Oregon’s constitution, but the question of statehood lingered in the House, where both northern Republicans and southern Democrats objected the would-be state's constitution.  The exclusion of free blacks was by far the most controversial of the constitution’s provisions.  Ohio Representative Bingham called this clause “injustice and oppression incarnate,” while Massachusetts Representative Henry L. Dawes charged that Oregon’s constitution “makes odious distinctions among classes of men and among individuals of the same class.  It ruthlessly tramples the rights of the citizen in the dust.”

Despite these objections, the Oregon Constitution retained its exclusion laws until 1926, when it was voted out of the Bill of Rights.  In 1959, Oregonians voted in favor of the Fifteenth Amendment—almost 90 years after its addition to the United States Constitution.

On November 11, 2008, a majority of Oregonians (57 percent) voted for Barack Obama for president, making him the first black president of the United States.