The laws, born of anti-slavery and anti-black beliefs, were often justified as a reaction to fears of black people instigating Native American uprisings.

[7] The restrictions and laws prohibiting people of African descent from residing in the state caused socio economic issues that still exist today.

[8] In the early 20th century, the African American population became heavily represented in the timber industry, transforming it into one of Oregon's most diverse trades.

[9][10] The establishment of Vanport coincided with an unprecedented influx of African-Americans into Oregon, attracted to work in newly federally-desegregated wartime defense industries.

Due to exclusionary racial laws, the state had a population of fewer than 1,800 Black people in 1940; by 1946 more than 15,000 lived in the Portland area, mostly in Vanport and other segregated housing districts.

White migrants from the South were the most vocal in opposing the degree of integration that HAP dictated for schools, buses and work sites.

Reacting to the criticism—and pressure from Eleanor Roosevelt—by April 1944, HAP began placing incoming "Blacks" into the "white" areas of the settlement.

Entire buildings were free in the "Black" areas of town, they argued, and after opponents of the integration plan appeared at a HAP meeting the authority decided to resume its previous policies.

A killing of an Ethiopian man in the 1980s by white supremacists garnered attention towards the issue of racism toward Black and African Americans in Portland.