The Bayfront along Bay Boulevard in Newport. Photo: Gary Halvorson, Oregon State Archives, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
A traveling exhibit on the Black pioneers who settled in Oregon while the law told them to stay out opens Thursday evening, Nov. 12, at the Pacific Maritime Heritage Center on Newport’s Bay Boulevard.
The Lincoln County Historical Society is hosting the Oregon Black Pioneers traveling exhibit through Feb. 28. The historical society says the show was paid for with a grant from the Lincoln County Cultural Coalition, and that its staff compiled a local companion history of Black pioneers along the coast, from Coos Bay to Astoria, to go with it.
Doors open at 5 p.m. for viewing and refreshments. At 5:45 p.m. the center will screen “Oregon’s Black Pioneers,” a documentary provided by Oregon Public Broadcasting. Entry is free during the opening, with donations suggested, according to the Lincoln Chronicle, which first carried the listing through Oregon Coast Today.
Laws written to keep people out
The exhibit covers roughly 1840 to 1870, when Oregon’s provisional and territorial governments passed laws denying Black residents rights given to white settlers. Some of those laws went further and barred Black people from living here at all. The exclusion clause written into the 1859 state constitution was not repealed until 1926, and Oregon’s Black population did not pass 1% until 1960, the Oregon Encyclopedia notes.
A small number of Black Americans came anyway, or stayed. The exhibit tells some of their stories, and the risks they took to build farms, businesses and families in a place that had written them out.
A story with a Lincoln County address
One of those stories ends about 15 miles south of the exhibit hall. Louis Southworth was born into slavery in Tennessee in 1829 and was brought west in 1853 by the man who claimed to own him, James Southworth. He earned money playing the fiddle and, by 1858, had raised $1,000 to buy his freedom, according to the Oregon Encyclopedia entry by Peggy Baldwin.
In 1879 he took up a homestead in the Alsea Valley east of Waldport. He cleared the land a few acres at a time, built a sawmill, ferried people up the Alsea River and donated land for the area’s first school. He played for dances in Waldport and refused to give up his fiddle when the local Baptist church objected. He died in 1917.
Waldport has spent the last several years putting his name back on the map. In 2021 the city named the park planned for the old Waldport Middle/High School site Louis Southworth Park, the Lincoln Chronicle reported at the time, and the Oregon Coast Visitors Association paid for a bronze statue by sculptor Pete Helzer. The creek that runs through his old homestead was renamed Southworth Creek after a 1999 push to drop the slur it had carried for decades.
If you go
The Pacific Maritime Heritage Center is at 333 S.E. Bay Blvd. in Newport. After opening night, the exhibit can be seen during regular hours, Wednesday through Sunday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. The historical society lists general admission at $10 for adults and $5 for ages 13 to 17. Children under 12 get in free, and so do Lincoln County residents.
The historical society has more events on the calendar this month, including a Nov. 19 talk at the center on Francis Drake’s 1579 voyage. Information is at oregoncoasthistory.org or 541-265-7509.
Dewey Albrecht covers the Port of Newport, commercial and sport fishing and the Yaquina Bay bar.
