watch:

Transferring Homes to Black Ownership: An Interview With Annie Moss

A video about how one homeowner and one home seeker found an impactful solution together. The story of Annie Moss and Randall Wyatt that launched our organizing collective!

Priced Out: 15 Years of Gentrification in Portland, Oregon

A documentary in which filmmaker Cornelius Swart approaches the complex and dramatic history of gentrification in northeast Portland by telling the personal story of Nikki Williams, a single mother living in Portland’s historic African American part of town. Williams first welcomed gentrification only to see it transform beyond all recognition the community she once called home.

The Cost of Inheritance: Reparations in the United States

Beginning in the 1800s, the reparations movement started with Mrs. Callie House, who led the National Ex-Slave Mutual Relief, Bounty and Pension Association. In this PBS documentary, Historian Mary Frances Berry tells of House's efforts to organize Black Americans to ask for compensation from the government and the backlash against her that would not slow the activist down until her death.

Driving While Black: Race, Space, and Mobility in America

A two-hour PBS special on both the gifts and the burdens of driving for Black Americans.

Read:

Bleeding Albina: A History of Community Disinvestment, 1940-2000

A path-breaking research article on the effects of racist city planning on Albina, the geographic heart of the historic African American community of Portland. 

Social Justice Organizations Return 43 Acres of Land to Black and Indigenous Stewardship in San Francisco Bay Area

An overview of a new, long-term partnership to care for land as part of broad Indigenous land back movement by the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust, an urban Indigenous women-led nonprofit that facilitates the return of Indigenous land to Indigenous people, and Movement Generation.

Reclamation Toward the Futurity of Central Albina

An analysis by Dreamworld Urbanism of the deep and lasting impacts of forced removal from the Emanuel Hospital Project’s expansion area in the heart of Central Albina.

Albina: District Effectivity; Identifying the areas of highest risk to Portland's African American heritage resources

A study of some of the risks facing African American heritage resources in Portland by Jeronimo Roldan.

I’ve Worked With Reparation Efforts Across the US: Here’s What You Need to Know

A reflection by Kwolanne Felix on some of the complex conversations many people are engaging in as they struggle to understand what reparations are and what they mean for the future of a country.

The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America

A comprehensive look at the legal footprints of American racism. A crucial resource for understanding the realities of systemic racism and how past racist intentions persist into the present in the form of legal structures and practices.  

Historical Context of Racist Planning: A History of How Planning Segregated Portland

A 32-page report by the City of Portland from 2019 seeking to come to terms with its racist history. An important local resource documenting the entanglement of local governing authorities with exclusionary, racist practices. 

A Dream Rezoned: Navigating Possibilities Within Portland’s Long History of Racist Planning

An 11-page illustrated educational pamphlet by Cleo Davis, Kayin Talton Davis, and Carolyn M. Leonard describing some of the practices documented in the City of Portland’s 2019 “Historical Context of Racist Planning” report, drawing on the artistic gifts of Cleo and Kayin to dramatize the impact of this painful, destructive history.

Bridge City: When does local pride become exclusionary?

An essay by Anna Vo on how the prideful localism of Portlandia is more entangled with exclusionary politics and practices than many Portlanders would care to admit.

Using Homeownership to Advance Economic Well-Being and Health Equity in Low-Income Communities and Communities of Color

In this landscape analysis, Abt Associates reviews the existing evidence on homeownership and health, and identifies the key attributes of homeownership needed to advance health and racial equity.  The analysis then explores specific opportunities to use homeownership to offer stability and wealth-building opportunities for individuals and families, while also fostering healthy, diverse, and economically vibrant communities. The Summary of Recommendations highlights the highest-priority actions in the report.

The Case for Reparations

The highly influential essay by Ta-Nehisi Coates about reparations, published in The Atlantic in 2014, that emphasized the devastating effects of housing discrimination and redlining on African Americans. The essay significantly boosted the profile and career of its author and renewed the cause of reparations for a new generation. 

Why We Need Reparations for Black Americans

A 2020 report by Rayshawn Ray and Andre M. Perry of the Brookings Institution marshaling empirical evidence to make the case that the American commitment to equal opportunity should lead to widespread support for reparations to deal with the historic betrayal of equal opportunity by the United States government.