Vanport Flood
Vanport was an area designed to house workers building Liberty ships for World War II, was the largest U.S. housing project at that time, with about 17,000 residents.
May of 1948 had brought heavy rains, and a river gauge in Vancouver, Wash., placed the rising waters at 28 feet, which was 13 feet above flood stage. Vanport residents all had received reassuring letters from the Housing Authority saying that everything was safe.
Memorial Day morning, May 30, 1948 was calm. Picnics and family outings took many away from Vanport City. At approximately 4:17 p.m. the railroad dike gave way, and water suddenly burst through the dike. Within moments a ten-foot high wall of water crashed into the city near Vanport College, while residents near Denver Avenue attempted to save their belongings.
Read "Flood of Memories" by Edna Pittman
During the week following the Vanport Flood, refugees moved to temporary housing at Swan Island where by July 24, 1948 their numbers stabilized at 1,300. The other 16,000 Vanporters lived either in temporary trailers, public housing projects, returned to their hometowns, or fended for themselves. For the five thousand African Americans from Vanport, already limited choices narrowed further.
In Vanport's aftermath, institutionalized discrimination and local "Red line" practices by the Portland Realty Board pushed African Americans into two census tracts (22 and 23) in the Albina neighborhood. By 1950 almost half of Portland's African Americans lived in this previously restricted, white, working class area. As Blacks moved in, whites moved out, and the median income dropped. Since the 1950s, transportation, commercial and industrial development have displaced Black families. Unwritten discriminatory practices have maintained segregation long after civil rights legislation forbade it. The northeast Portland Peninsula still has the largest concentrations of African Americans and other minorities in the city.
"After World War II, there was evidence of 'white flight' from the inner northeast area. While blacks were steadily moving into census tracts 22 and 23, whites were rapidly moving out. According to the 1950 census reports, the tracts with the highest nonwhite population were 22 and 23, covering the inner (Albina) northeast area, where 46 percent of the black population lived. The nonwhite population of tract 22 increased from 792 in 1940 to 2,820 in 1950, while the white population in the area dropped from 6,159 to 4,395. In census tract 23, nonwhites increased from 407 to 1,863 and whites decreased from 6,136 to 5,187. The two tracts together gained 3,484 nonwhites while losing 2,713 whites." Source: Portland Bureau of Planning, The History of Portland's African American Community (1805 to the Present), February, 1993.
1950 Portland Census Tracts. Excerpts from Portland City Club "Report on The Negro in Portland: A Progress Report, 1945-1957"