This spring, the board of Prosper Portland voted to finalize a settlement for more than 20 people whose homes and businesses were destroyed in the name of urban renewal from the 1950s through the ’70s.
The group of Black Portlanders fought for years to get to this point, and eventually filed a federal lawsuit arguing that the city of Portland, Emanuel Legacy Medical Center and Prosper Portland conspired to destroy a previously thriving Black neighborhood.
The original financial settlement proposed to the Portland city council was $2 million. After testimony from a dozen community members, all 12 Portland city councilors voted on June 5 to increase the amount to $8.5 million. As part of the settlement, the lawsuit will be dismissed, and the descendants will get financial and land retribution, in addition to other terms.
We heard from plaintiffs Donna Marshall and Byrd, who led the research effort that culminated in this settlement, and from their lawyer, Ed Johnson.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Geoff Norcross: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Geoff Norcross, in for Dave Miller. When hundreds of families were displaced from parts of North and Northeast Portland in the name of urban renewal from the ‘50s to the ‘70s a great wrong was done to the heart of Black Portland. There’s no serious disagreement about that. What to do about it? That’s where the arguments come in. There have been attempts to right that wrong many times over the years. The city offered money for families wanting to come back to their old neighborhoods. There have been proclamations and days of remembrance. There was an apology breakfast at Legacy Emanuel Hospital.
None of it was good enough for some of the descendants of the displaced families. Three years ago, 26 of them filed a lawsuit arguing the city of Portland and Legacy Emanuel conspired to destroy a Black neighborhood known as Albina. Earlier this month, the city announced it would settle with the plaintiffs for $8.5 million.
Two of the plaintiffs, Donna Marshall and Byrd, join me now. It’s good to have you on the show. Thanks for being here.
Donna Marshall: Thank you for having us.
Byrd: Thank you.
Norcross: We also have their lawyer Ed Johnson from the Oregon Law Center. Ed, welcome to you as well.
Ed Johnson: Thank you.
Norcross: Donna, let’s start with you. Can you describe the Albina neighborhood, what it looked like, what it was like to be there growing up?
Marshall: Yes, I can. First of all, I want to say that the house that I was raised in was on 247 North Fargo Street. I was born at Emanuel Hospital. Doctor Unthank was the one who delivered myself, as well as the rest of my siblings. My mother purchased a house on 247 North Fargo Street before I was born. My father was a Pullman porter. He took an extra shift to go to New York so he could have the money to purchase a house on Fargo Street. He was able to get the money. We purchased the house cash.
We lived there. We had a wonderful family, wonderful, thriving Black neighborhood. Thriving. It was a community that we all fed on each other. Just alone on my block there were seven businesses. I remember as a little girl walking the streets, going to Hostess, getting free donuts for the children – they offered that to everyone. We had apple trees, we had walnut trees, we had grapevines, we had peach trees. It was just a wonderful environment to where some parents didn’t even have to go to the store for fruit because the fruit was right there. Of course, there was bugs in there because the trees wasn’t treated. But it was just a beautiful, beautiful community.
I remember riding my bike, freely, being safe, and not having to worry about stranger danger. I remember my mother having me be home before the Vancouver Avenue First Baptist Church organ came on. They did that on a regular basis every day at 5 o’clock. The organ would come on, and that was the clue for the children to come home and go to their families.
Norcross: You know, it’s interesting. The city, when they were justifying all this “urban renewal,” one of the reasons they gave was because the neighborhood was blighted. And what you are telling me doesn’t sound anything like that.
Marshall: It was a thriving Black neighborhood, a thriving community. Just alone, like I said on my block, was seven businesses.
Now, as a little girl, I remember … with my sister, my sister is 10 years older than I am and my brother is seven years older than I am. We had friends across the street and I still remember them: Deborah, Mary Catherine, the Locketts, the Woods, many, many families. And I remember seeing their homes being destroyed as a little girl, just being destroyed, and I’m asking my mom “what’s going on with this, what’s going on with this?” And she said it was too difficult to explain the ugliness that’s going on.
Norcross: I understand your family was the last family to leave the neighborhood. What do you remember from that time?
Marshall: My family was the last, yes. I remember my mother fighting, losing my mother on many nights because she was in the basement at Mt. Olivet Baptist Church with Reverend Jackson, Thelma Glover, Miss Hattie Mae Brownie and Miss Warren. This family fought daily with Emanuel Hospital, the city of Portland and PDC [Portland Development Commission]. They told us that we had to move. They tried to force us out. But the house that they demolished across the street, all the homes that they demolished – it was vacant for years, for years. I was about 3 years old when they started demolishing those buildings. As time went on, they tried to apologize by giving us a garden. They used those lots and everyone got a garden, and we was happy. We was conditioned to be happy.
It was time for us to move. Everybody was gone. We was the last ones there. My mother and father got an attorney. They tried to force us out. There was a home that we wanted to buy that was on 107th and Pacific, my mother and father put in the bid for it. They took it off of the market because we were Black. My mother and father then put in a discrimination suit. At the same time, we was fighting Emanuel Hospital, PDC and the city of Portland. We had the Red Sea in front of us and Pharaoh’s army behind us. There was no place for us to go. We had to get an attorney because they wanted to force us out, they wanted to put us out on the street. We wasn’t gonna go that route.
We had to apply for my mother, my father, and my sister and brother to move. The money that they didn’t want to give us, that’s the reason why we got the attorneys. We was able to get the money. However, we wasn’t able to move. It was the last home on the block. I remember every day I go to school, my mother would watch me go to school. That’s how clear the lots were, there was no buildings in sight. I didn’t have any friends to play with, all of my friends was gone. What I did was, during that time, there was a lot of stray dogs around, those are my friends. I just take dogs and keep them as my friends. I would go to More For Less and they would give me bones for those dogs. That building is still there, but it’s now the Life Center, which is a church.
So what happened? We won the discrimination suit. They had to put the house back on the market. They put the house back on the market. They sold it to us for $23,000 [as] opposed to $27,000. We was fighting the city of Portland. We would not move until that came through and then they finally gave us $15,000 to move. We moved. Everybody in that community, the new community, put up a petition to keep us out because we was Black. Everybody signed a petition except a doctor and an attorney. My father purposely moved in on Saturday afternoon with a Winchester 30-06 on one arm and a shotgun on the other.
We didn’t have any problems in that neighborhood. But the point is I didn’t have any friends, I lost all my friends. We lost our business. Everything just fell apart. And here we are.
Norcross: Thank you for sharing all that with me, Donna.
Byrd, I know that you hearing stories like this was the inspiration for you doing a lot of research into this neighborhood and that research ultimately led to this lawsuit. Can you talk about how all this started?
Byrd: So all of this started by just me liking to study. That’s just what I do, I study stuff, I collect documents. It’s something that I’ve done for years. There was a group of us who started researching the history of what happened with the Emanuel Hospital expansion. And as I was studying, I came across my grandmother’s name. And I was like “wait a second!” So there was a lot of things that sort of converged. I was studying, I came across my grandmother’s name which compelled me to study even more.
I learned about Miss Thelma Glover and I met her. And when I met Miss Thelma Glover, I went to her house, I was so happy to meet her. She’s no longer with us. I was so happy to meet Miss Thelma Glover, and I was sitting there and I was just talking, talking. And then I looked at her, and I believe she was 98, 99 at this time, I looked at her and I was like “Wait a minute, Miss Glover, what do you want me to do?” I will tell you this woman responded with me, and she’s 98, small woman, right? She responded with this force that has not left me. She looked at me and with the intensity that I have not experienced again to this day, she said, “Fight.”
Ever since Miss Glover said fight. I was annoyed. Like I could not sleep, it was on my mind all day. It just kept nagging me, nagging me. And I’m still studying. One night I had a dream, quite honestly, and my ancestors visited me. And I had to wake up. Once that experience was over, I woke up and I wrote a poem. And that poem goes like this:
“The ancestors are bothering me.
They molest my brain and inseminate my thoughts.
I’m left pregnant with ideas that I did not conjure
the victim of sort of a spiritual raping.
Who in their right mind would willingly submit to such pillage? Not I.
If I had my way, I’d be left alone.
“But the ancestors say it ain’t so. It can’t be.
So here I am forced against my own constraint and any hope of will.
But I just wanna sleep.
I just want to do what I want to do in my free time.
The ancestors say it ain’t so.
They are bothering me.
At night when I can only hope for rest, they tickle my feet, pull my ears and bristle the hairs beneath my armpits.
“I awake.
I hear you, grandmother.
I understand it was you walking over the Broadway Bridge to clean hotels you were not allowed to stay in.
I hear you, grandmother.
But how can you laugh at working 18 hours a day when there’s only 24 hours in one day.
I hear you, grandmother.
“I don’t know how you did it.
Some secrets are never shared.
I hear you.
But why did you have to go and get the others?
The Hepburns, the Taylors, the Williams, the Jacksons, the Warrens, the Marshalls and all the rest.
“I’m awake.
I’m up.
I’m up.
Thank you for leaving my feet alone, for no longer pulling my ears and allowing my armpit hairs to rest.
You got me.
It’s in my soul and feeds off my flesh.
I feel you and I surrender, but most of all I obey.
I couldn’t say it then, but I say it now. Thank you.
I couldn’t say it then, but I say it now. Thank you.”
This entire journey has been very spiritual and I’ve said it from the day I met Ed Johnson. I said, “Ed, I’m not worried about anything. Because when you think about it, what else could have sustained me for this long?” I was taking care of a dying mother, I was working full time. So this has been a deeply spiritual experience for me. And I’ve been led this entire journey. There’s no way I could have did this on my own.
Norcross: Ed, let’s talk about how all of these stories and all of this artistic force became a lawsuit. How were you able to metabolize everything that you heard from these residents and these descendants into a legal action?
Johnson: That’s a good question Geoff, I appreciate it. From a litigation standpoint, this was complicated, outside of the box, way outside of the box. There was really no road map for any of this. But Byrd had a vision. She had a belief that there was a path forward. And there were times, I’ll have to admit, I didn’t see that path. But I kept believing that Byrd knew there was a path forward.
And I think one important thing for people to know about the litigation is, our central theory is that what happened with Emanuel Hospital in Central Albina is different than what happened with other racist urban renewal projects. There were plenty of those in this country. The very definition of systemic racism was how Black neighborhoods were destroyed throughout this country. But what happened here was a little bit different. And one of the fundamental differences is something that’s only come to light recently. These events took place decades ago, but information is still trickling in. There’s things we may never know.
But one of the things that we learned recently in 2021, Byrd and EDPA2 [Emanuel Displaced Persons Association 2] connected with some PSU graduate students in their Future Lab project. And what they did was some interactive story mapping, using modern technology, aerial photos. And when you look at that report, there’s certain things about the chronology that pop out at you. One thing that I think a lot of Portlanders are unaware of is that years before any public Portlander knew anything about this urban renewal project, Emanuel Hospital was out there buying up properties in Central Albina, scattered all over the place. When you see it from the sky, you kind of see that they were just buying up these properties. They bought up about 100 of them before this project was ever approved. As soon as it was approved, PDC paid them dollar for dollar for the purchase price of those homes and the demolition cost. Not only that, these houses were left either empty or demolished, and the city and PDC pointed to those demolished homes and called that blight. That was part of the blight, even though it was created by the hospital.
And then of course, the conclusion we drew from this history is that the hospital would never have spent all that time and money to purchase these randomly located properties if they didn’t have the assurance that the city and Prosper Portland were gonna come in and finish the job. It would have done them no good to own this random assortment of properties. And of course that’s what happened. The city and PDC came in with the force of eminent domain, and they took the rest of the neighborhood and they demolished it. And of course, another difference between this project and others, the hospital expansion never happened.
So here we are, 2025, a lot of that land that was taken from my clients and other families sits vacant or is used for parking to this day.
Norcross: Donna, the original settlement was $2 million, along with property and other things. After testimony at city council, Councilor Loretta Smith proposed an increase to $8.5 million. What does that mean to you?
Marshall: That she saw the vision, she saw what was happening. Her grandfather was part of that.
Still, $8.2 [million] is not enough. Not enough for the pain that my family went through, the pain Byrd’s family went through, how they were stripped from their dignity, they was forced to move. They was forced to live in homes that was less value than what they moved out of. I’m glad that it is over. But all I can say it never should have happened. It never should have happened [and] $8.2 [million] is nowhere near enough.
Byrd: Geoff, I think there’s a deeper meaning in what the council members did under the leadership of Loretta Smith. What it signaled to me is we have a city council now who is listening to stories that in the past were not listened to. We have a city council now who can relate to a broader base of citizens in the city of Portland. And for me, that’s exciting. So I thank Commissioner Smith for her leadership and for all the council members who listened, and recognize there is no dollar amount because we lost so much. We lost political capital, we lost social capital. We invested in a community that we’re not benefiting from right now, but other folks are. As I sat there and I watched, and I listened to Commissioner Smith and other counselors, I was actually blown away because the attentiveness that they gave to this issue is unprecedented.
Norcross: I know that this process was long and it was painful for you, Byrd, and I understand you channeled everything that you felt while doing your scholarship and listening to the stories into a jacket. Can you tell me about that jacket that you made?
Byrd: Actually, Geoff, there’s several jackets. And those jackets came out of frustration, to tell you the truth. Because I was talking everywhere, I was lecturing, I was doing community events, I was doing all this stuff. And there were times following a speaking engagement where somebody would walk up to me and they just didn’t get it. And that bothered me, it bothered the hell out of me, but I couldn’t necessarily respond the way I wanted to. So all this pent up frustration had to be released.
So I just started telling the story of Central Albina, the Emanuel Hospital forced removal through jackets. I don’t know where that came from, but we would like to put these jackets on display, to have an exhibit somewhere. So if there’s any galleries out there who would be interested in doing that, please get in contact with me. So yeah, there’s several jackets that tell the story of what we went through, but then also just the impact that being forcefully removed from your neighborhood and your home has.
Norcross: Ed Johnson, 26 plaintiffs were part of this action. There are hundreds, hundreds of families who are touched in some way. Is there any relief for others?
Johnson: There are 27 plaintiffs with the organizational plaintiff in this case. The reality is this case was never designed to be a class action, to undo all of the wrongs that were done. I don’t think that could be done through litigation.
I did hear members of city council talk about next steps and a desire to look at everyone who was harmed. And obviously we would completely support that.
Norcross: What might that look like in a way that’s acceptable?
Johnson: I mean, there are models out there. Tulsa just passed a restitution ordinance for the massacre and other things that happen in Tulsa. I think the path forward is political and not legal.
Byrd: And that’s what we’re seeing in other parts of the country. LA is another perfect example. Chicago is another example. EDPA2 is thinking about putting together …
Norcross: I don’t know what that is.
Byrd: Oh, EDPA2? We wouldn’t be here without EDPA2! EDPA2 is the Emanuel Displaced Persons Association 2. So we’re the descendants and survivors of the original EDPA. So when Donna was talking about her mom being in the basement of the church, they were organizing with the original Emanuel Displaced Persons Association.
Norcross: Thank you for clearing that up.
Byrd: So we’re the descendants and survivors. So we think that it would be beneficial for EDPA2 to have a community event for the families who were left out, informational events so I can speak to folks about how this came along, some of the legal nuances that are involved, and to answer questions that people may have.
Norcross: Donna, I guess the last word is for you. What will this settlement mean for your future and for future generations?
Marshall: It’s gonna be the same game around the world. There’s different players.
Byrd was our Moses. I said how The Red Sea was in front of us and how Pharaohs army was behind us – you heard me mention that. And the Lord used Moses to deliver the Israelites. I really believe in my heart that the Lord sent Byrd to us to deliver this, which she did. If it wasn’t for her, we wouldn’t be here. If it wasn’t for her, we wouldn’t have the settlement. So I believe that we’re gonna have to just keep fighting for my family. My family understand what’s going on with the situation. They are still in pain, they’re not satisfied. They just wanna know “Mom, what are we gonna do for the future?” And I said I don’t know. I don’t know. We just have to, like Aunt Thelma said, we just keep fighting. We just have to keep fighting.
Norcross: This was an amazing conversation. I want to thank all of your for coming in.
All: Thank you.
Norcross: Byrd and Donna Marshall are plaintiffs in the $8.5 million settlement with the city of Portland over displacement in North and Northeast Portland among Black families. Ed Johnson is an attorney with the Oregon Law Center.
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