Darrell Millner is a longtime teacher and sometimes chair of the Black Studies Department at Portland State University. His research interest is in Black history and race relations in the American West with a special focus on Oregon Black history.
Jason Morgan Ward is professor of history at Mississippi State University, where he teaches modern United States history. A native of northeastern North Carolina, he received his bachelor's degree from Duke University and his Ph.D. in history from Yale University. Oxford University Press released his most recent book, Hanging Bridge: Racial Violence and America's Civil Rights Century, in May 2016.The book has received awards from the Mississippi Historical Society and the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters. During the 2013-2014 academic year, Ward completed a residential fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania's Penn Humanities Forum. His first book, Defending White Democracy: The Making of a Segregationist Movement and the Remaking of Racial Politics, was published in 2011 by UNC Press. Ward's commentary on race, violence, and civil rights has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and The American Historian. Before receiving his doctorate in history, he was an elementary school teacher in Sunflower County, Mississippi. He lives in Starkville, Mississippi, with his wife, historian Alison Collis Greene, and two sons, Amos and Theo.
Black activists and journalists regularly emphasized mob violence as a prime motivation for black migration to northern cities. This argument resonated with business-minded white southerners who feared a shortage of cheap black labor.
“The Reason,” The Crisis (NAACP newsletter) 19:5 (March 1920): 264
Special Thanks to the Following Contributors to this Exhibit
- City of Portland Archives
- North Portland Multimedia Center
- The Oregonian Archives
- Oregon Historical Society Davies Family Research Library
- Oregon State University Archives
- Portland State University Rutherford Collection
- Thomas Robinson