History Minutes: Oregon's First Segregated Schools

Admission of Colored Children to the Public School // Mss 37

In 1867, when William Brown attempted to admit his children to Central School, one of two public common schools in Portland, the board of directors refused him because his children were black.  In the earliest years of statehood, Portland’s small black community was fighting for equal access to public education.

Brown was not deterred.  On behalf of the sixteen eligible black children in the school district, Brown solicited the aid of Methodist missionary Thomas Wood to reason with the directors.  Wood suggested that the school district provide a segregated school for the black community.

When the directors originally refused this offer, Wood and Brown hired David Logan, an attorney and former Portland mayor to file a legal action, but the school board voted to fund a separate school before the case went to court.

The historical record offers little insight into the black community’s feelings about this compromised victory.  Newspapers in 1869 reported complaints of harassment of the black pupils by white passers-by, which may have compelled the school board to replace the woman teacher with a man in 1870.

The decision to cut funding for the segregated school appeared often on the agenda at annual school board meetings.  Finally, at a meeting in 1872, a motion to abolish the school carried and the remaining schools in the district were integrated.