From the Stakeholders Advisory Council to PBOT:
Around the turn of the twentieth century, Old Town in Northwest Portland was where most of Portland’s African Americans lived, but with the opening of the Broadway Bridge in 1913 that began to change. Families moved east and bought homes in the Albina district – the only area that was open to them owing to redlining by the Portland Realty Board. By 1920, 62% of Portland’s African Americans residents, and 80% of African American families with children, lived near Williams Avenue, and Black social life began to revolve around businesses on Russell Street and Williams Avenue. During World War II, recruiting in other areas of the country for workers to fuel the rise of the shipbuilding industry in Portland brought an influx of many more African Americans – five times as many as lived in Portland before the war. During this time, Williams Avenue became known as “the Black Broadway,” owing to the many clubs where nationally known African American jazz musicians performed. In the 1950s, Williams Avenue was a thriving main street of African American businesses. But like many African American districts around the country, the Albina district was subjected in the 1960s and 70s to discriminatory urban renewal efforts. Several projects – especially Memorial Coliseum, the Minnesota Freeway, and a major expansion project for Emanuel Hospital that fell through – combined to raze hundreds of homes and businesses owned by African Americans. By the 1980s, systematic disinvestment was taking its toll. In the 1990s, the City of Portland undertook an inclusive planning process that resulted in the 1993 Albina Community Plan. Action items identified by the community were successful in drawing investment into the district, with the unintended consequence that many long-time residents were then displaced by rising property values. Between 1990 and 2010, the demographic composition of the neighborhoods around Williams Avenue shifted from majority Black to majority white.
RESOURCES FOR DEEPER UNDERSTANDING:
A description of how African American settlement moved from Old Town to center on Williams Avenue by 1920: http://www.ohs.org/education/oregonhistory/narratives/subtopic.cfm?subtopic_ID=202
From the Portland Skanner, the Williams that was: http://theskanner.com/news/history/11409-portland-gentrification-the-north-williams-avenue-that-was-1956-2011-08-09
History Minute: Jazz on Williams Avenue: http://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/content/history_minutes/#Black%20History%20Month:%20Jazz%20on%20Williams%20Avenue
History of Jazz in Portland, including on Williams Avenue: http://pdxjazz.com/pdx-jazz/jazz-in-portland
Several PDF documents including History of the Albina Plan Area and Bleeding Albina: http://kingneighborhood.org/history/
Eliot Oral History Walking Tour: http://eliotoralhistories.com/
Boise Voices Oral History Project: http://www.boisevoices.com/
How Vanport came to be: http://www.ohs.org/the-oregon-history-project/narratives/a-history-of-portland/the-federal-connection/war-housing-vanport.cfm
Scholarly paper on the Williams Safety Project process by Amy Lubitow and Thad Miller of PSU: http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/full/10.1089/env.2013.0018
Interesting take on the Williams Safety Project by a committee of the City Club: http://pdxcityclub.org/2013/Report/Portland-Bicycle-Transit/2013/Report/Case-Study-North-Williams-Avenue
Legacy Emanuel Hospital History Panels http://www.legacyhealth.org/~/media/Files/PDF/Our%20Legacy/Public%20Relations/AcknowledgingThePastEmbracingTheFuture.ashx
The history of Albina, including Eliot, Boise, King, Humboldt, and Piedmont neighborhoods, Roy E. Roos, (book, 2008)