Thikertown Research Paper

How does it feel to have the city you call home look at you like a pest? The minority populations of Denton and Portland know the feeling all too well. Both environments, while being incredibly hostile to them, had accumulated small African American communities- for Denton it was Quakertown and for Portland it was Vanport- which were displaced by larger forces.

By the 1920s, a small African American community had accumulated in Denton and named it Quakertown. However, the growing College of Industrial Arts didn’t see Quakertown as a small community filled with hardworking citizens and decent businesses. They saw it as an embarrassment. The unpaved streets and even more dangerous playing children were threatening the reputation of the College of Industrial Arts. A vote ended to create a park where Quakertown was ended up displacing

the residents there with a large group of those voting in favor of the park being women. In theory, a vote would be a fair way to decide the fate of Quakertown and would allow those affected to have a say, but poll taxes and literacy tests were a legal form of discrimination that prevented the majority of African Americans from having a voice in the matter. The excuse used in favor of Quaker resident displacement was that Denton needed the park for the good of the city. While some former Quaker residents left the state, the majority of the community moved to Solomon Hill, a failed investment by A.L. Miles who sought to exploit their situation.
In Oregon, a racist state that had historically attempted to bar African Americans from the state, a small community called Vanport had blossomed with a majority working on ships for World War II.

Vanport was home to many working class people both black and white. Similarly to Quakertown, Vanport was condemned by the state. However it was not a vote that ultimately displaced the residents, but a flood that resulted in many deaths, missing persons, and the ultimate destruction of the city. The African American population, unlike Quakertown, did not have the option to create an entirely new community in Portland, but instead integrated themselves in another predominately black community: Albina. Class and race on the surface doesn’t seem to be a factor in Vanport citizen displacement, but looking deeper one must question why the state of Oregon would allow anyone to live in such a flood prone location and insist that the dikes would protect the housing there. If it were a community of wealthy white people that decided to settle there, the state would either insist on a safer location or allocate more resources to the area to ensure

safety.
There are many similarities between the Vanport and Quakertown situations. Both were discriminated against and had a large, if not entire, African American population. Both communities were looked down upon and there was a desire to remove a perceived blemish. Both Solomon Hill and Albina are targeted for gentrification, pushing out an increasing amount of its African American and lower income residents in favor of trendy, young, white people.