Elizabeth McLagan, Author at

Academic Historian

Elizabeth McLagan is a free-lance writer and retired instructor at Portland Community College. In addition to her book on African Americans in Oregon, A Peculiar Paradise: A History of Blacks in Oregon, 1788-1940 (Portland: The Georgian Press, 1980), she has written Notes Toward a Biography: The Papers of John Hiram Jackson (Portland: Portland Community College, 1998), and contributed an historical overview of women and minorities for the Oregon Regional Disparity Study (1996). She has also contributed to Jun Xing and Erlinda Gonazles-Berry, eds., Seeing Color: Indigenous Peoples and Racialized Ethnic Minorities in Oregon (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2007). An updated second edition of A Peculiar Paradise is just out from Oregon State University Press, 2022.

The Black Laws of Oregon, 1844-1857

Beginning with the Exclusion Law of 1844 enacted by the provisional government of the region, Oregon passed a series of measures designed to ban African American settlement in the territory. Historian Elizabeth McLagan describes those laws in the article below. Oregon passed exclusion laws against … Read MoreThe Black Laws of Oregon, 1844-1857

Lou Southworth (ca. 1830-1917)

Lou Southworth Image Ownership: Public Domain Lou Southworth, who became noted as a rare former Oregon slave, was born in Tennessee around 1830. His father’s name was Hunter, but he was born into slavery and took the surname of his master, James Southworth. His early … Read MoreLou Southworth (ca. 1830-1917)

John Hiram Jackson (1912-1997)

John Hiram Jackson was born November 16, 1912 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Both his parents were Virginians, and his maternal grandfather, the Reverend Daniel Cave, was a founder of Lynchberg Seminary, an independent black Baptist college. Reverend Cave was the first of a line of Baptist … Read MoreJohn Hiram Jackson (1912-1997)