Oregon Connections: Race, Citizenship, and Labor
OHS presents “Oregon Connections: A Conversation Series on the Right to be Free,” an all-virtual program series featuring conversations among experts and with audience members. Although many of the decisions that affect people’s access to rights such as freedom of speech, citizenship, and due process are made at the federal level, it is often on the local level that those freedoms are both exercised and oppressed — amid debates, actions, and inspirations on a global scale.
During the months leading up to the semiquincentennial of the Declaration of Independence, the Oregon Connections series invites audiences to listen, learn, ask questions, and consider some of the ways Oregonians have struggled for justice and freedom.
Federal policy linked whiteness to citizenship at the nation’s founding. Policy revisions have both broken and reinforced that link while redefining the parameters of both constructs. At the same time, industries enslaved, subjugated, or recruited non-white laborers from across the globe, often exploiting their lack of civic protections and prompting a range of political responses. Some civic and labor organizations advanced cross-racial labor solidarity while others doubled down on white rights.
Until 1952, first-generation Asian-immigrant Oregonians faced local restrictive policies that were founded on the federal government’s citizenship restrictions and responded in a variety of ways — including compliance, evasion, and political and legal challenges. The landmark 1923 U.S. Supreme Court case of United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind, which began in Oregon, is emblematic of these competing political forces. Join the “Oregon Connections: Race, Citizenship, and Labor” discussion with historians Jennifer Fang and Johanna Ogden to learn more.