Piedmont. Portland's Emerald.

>Steve Law with the Portland Tribune has a recent article on touches upon many of the events over the last 60 years that have impacted Portland’s African-American community.

At the end of the article, I found the following detailed events very eye opening…

• 1948: Flooding overruns Vanport, a wartime city near present-day Delta Park in North Portland, destroying 5,295 housing units and displacing 17,000 people, 35 percent of them black
• 1960: Memorial Coliseum completed; 476 housing units destroyed, 46 percent of them occupied by blacks
• 1961–1966: Interstate 5 freeway through North Portland completed; displaces 125 homes occupied by blacks and numerous black-owned businesses
• 1964–1973: Albina Neighborhood Improvement Program; Portland Development Commission spends $2 million on home-repair loans in inner North and Northeast Portland, builds Unthank Park near North Shaver Street and Kerby Avenue, makes sidewalk and other improvements
• 1970–1973: Emanuel Hospital urban renewal; with city’s assistance, 188 nearby homes and black commercial node at N. Russell and Williams are cleared to make way for hospital expansion; Emanuel halts work in April 1973 with loss of federal funding, leaving some blocks undeveloped for decades
• 1970–1975: Neighborhood Development Program – using $14 million in federal Model Cities funds, PDC pays for home-repair loans and community services in inner north and northeast neighborhoods
• 1993: Oregon Convention Center Urban Renewal Area expanded to include part of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard; city excludes residential areas because of bad blood left from Emanuel land clearing
• 2000: PDC creates Interstate Corridor Urban Renewal Area, in tandem with extension of MAX line along Interstate Boulevard
• 2008: PDC begins study to expand urban renewal in North and Northeast Portland

You can read the full article HERE.