Critical Race Theory Should be Taught in Oregon’s Schools - Part One: Identifying the Roots and Presence of Oregon Racism

Part one in a two part series identifies the roots and presence of racism in Oregon.

Bush’s House in Salem.

I attended Bush Elementary School (named after Anahel Bush (1850-1913)), Leslie Junior High (named after David Leslie (1797 – 1869)), South Salem High School, and Willamette University, all located in Salem, Oregon.  My elementary, secondary, university, and post-graduate Oregon education included a host of wonderful teachers, well-developed classes, and terrific extra-curricular activities, including forensics (competitive debate and individual speaking events) and athletics.  My Oregon education did not include Oregon’s racist history, the heroic actions of Oregon’s anti-racist whites, and the resistance to white racism by Oregon’s people of color.

I recall, while a student at Bush elementary, singing “Oregon, my Oregon,” which the Oregon Legislature adopted as the state song in 1927.  The lyrics, by Astoria’s John Andrew Buchanan, are now recognized as “nakedly racist.”   We were instructed to sing the song as a march (Marcia) and moderately loud (Mezzo forte). The first stanza, which remains with me some 44 years after learning it at Bush Elementary, is a celebration of white settlers conquering native American land:

Land of the Empire Builders,

Land of the Golden West;

Conquered and held by free men

Fairest and the best.

We were not taught to interrogate the racism embedded in these lyrics or that:

• Anahel Bush, according to the Oregon Historical Society, was “visibly racist and defended slavery.”  Bush founded the Oregon Statesman, a newspaper I delivered as a paperboy in the 1960s. He used it as a vehicle to promote racism and attack anti-racist whites.  Bush sought pro-slavery arguments from Matthew Deady in a March 1857 exchange of letters, seeking to publish them in the Statesman. 

• Deady, a founder of the University of Oregon and was, until this year, the name that graced the university’s oldest building that hosted many classes I taught. He was the pro-slavery author of the Oregon constitution, a document that forbade Blacks from entering the Oregon territory.  Bush commanded significant influence in the state, including serving as a University of Oregon regent and a trustee of Willamette University, as Barbara S. Mahoney documented in her book, The Salem Clique.

• David Leslie, a Methodist minister, believed it was the duty of his faith tradition to “send the gospel and the Bible to as many heathen as we can Now.”  The “heathen” in question?  The Kapalua native Americans who were indigenous to the Willamette Valley and Salem.  My family home was located on Leslie Street in Salem, which is named after him.  

While I learned about these men, I did so in a very homogenous environment.  Very few students of color were my classmates when I attended Bush Elementary, Leslie Junior High, Willamette University, and the University of Oregon because of the racism built into Oregon constitution of 1857 and the deeply racist attitudes planted in the Oregon soil and consciousness by Anslee Bush and David Leslie. 

Beyond the absence of diversity, there was also an omission of the role of anti-racist whites in my education.  I never learned that a small number of anti-racist whites, including the minister of Salem’s First Congregational Church, Odeh Dickenson, battled Bush and his wretched racism.  Indeed, the Congregational Association of Oregon declared its strong opposition to slavery and racism in 1855, years before the Civil War.  Still, even Dickenson, as good as he was, held deeply racist attitudes about the native American.

Another omission was content covering that people of color in Oregon have resisted the actions of racist whites.  For example, A.H. Francis and his brother I.B. Francis, two Black men, actively opposed the exclusion provisions of Deady’s constitution.  A.H. Francis also confronted the racism Bush displayed in the Statesmen and earned frame for his friendship with and letters to Frederick Douglass Bush.  Unsurprisingly, Bush did not like Francis’s acclaim, so in a July 12, 1861 edition of the Statesmen, he used the “N” word epithet to dehumanize Francis and defend his racist newspaper.  Relatedly, I missed out on learning that the native American in the Willamette Valley attempted to repel the white settlers and the missionaries. The Kalapuya Indian culture was resilient, but many Kalapuya were defeated by disease and the power of the US military. 

I have just used critical race theory (CRT) to include the role that race played in Oregon history and in its present, a role that was and often is not included in Oregon’s educational curriculum.  Unfortunately, CRT has been distorted, taken out of context, demonized, and outlawed by those who, like the Oregon curriculum I experienced, want to avoid dealing with historical racism.  By bringing racism into our vision of history and the present, critics contend, CRT frames whites as essentially evil and that white children exposed to CRT would be traumatized by guilt. 

The intent of CRT, adapted to the Oregon context, is to broaden the vision of students and citizens to see race as a key factor and force in determining Oregon’s demographics and political geography.  The proper use of CRT can explain why there were no Black or Native American students in my classes at Anslee Bush Elementary School.  CRT helps explains why, according to the Atlantic, Portland’s racist history makes it “the whitest city in America.”  CRT does not seek to make white students villains or hold that white babies are born racists.  Rather, it equips white students to understand the origins of racism in Oregon and then to combat the disease.  

CRT is structured to create a more just world by featuring the actions of antiracist whites, which I will discuss in Critical Race Theory Should be Taught in Oregon’s Schools - Part II: Identifying and Enacting Oregon Anti-racism.

David Frank is a professor emeritus at the University of Oregon. He served as dean of the Clark Honors College from 2008 - 2013.  Among his publications are six books and over 50 scholarly articles concerned with American and international  public discourse, argumentation, rhetorical criticism, with a focus on social movements for justice.

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Editor’s Note: Do you have a different perspective on CRT? Please leave a thoughtful and deliberative comment below and consider writing a response piece!

"Summer morning at Bush House.jpg" by docoverachiever is licensed under CC BY 2.0