In this Book
- A Force for Change: Beatrice Morrow Cannady and the Struggle for Civil Rights in Oregon, 1912-1936
- Book
- 2010
- Published by: Oregon State University Press
Between 1912 and 1936, Cannady tirelessly promoted interracial goodwill and fought segregation and discrimination. She gave hundreds of lectures to high school and college students and shared her message with radio listeners across the Pacific Northwest. She was assistant editor, and later publisher, of The Advocate, Oregon’s largest African American newspaper. Cannady was the first black woman to graduate from law school in Oregon, and the first to run for state representative. She held interracial teas in her home in Northeast Portland and protested repeated showings of the racist film The Birth of a Nation. And when the Ku Klux Klan swept into Oregon, she urged the governor to act quickly to protect black Oregonians’ right to live and work without fear. Despite these accomplishments, Beatrice Cannady fell into obscurity when she left Oregon in the late 1930s.
A Force for Change illuminates Cannady’s key role in advocating for better race relations in Oregon in the early decades of the twentieth century. It describes her encounters with the period’s leading black artists, editors, politicians, and intellectuals, including W.E.B. Du Bois, Langston Hughes, A. Philip Randolph, Oscar De Priest, Roland Hayes, and James Weldon Johnson. It dispels the myth that African Americans played little part in Oregon’s history and it enriches our understanding of the black experience in Oregon and the civil rights movement across the country.
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- pp. 10-13
- Chapter One: From Texas to Oregon
- pp. 14-47
- Chapter Three: The Best Talent
- pp. 71-84
- Chapter Four: Building a Community
- pp. 85-101
- Chapter Five: We Must Cultivate One Another
- pp. 102-117
- Chapter Six: Spreading the Word
- pp. 118-129
- Chapter Seven: The Birth of a Nation
- pp. 130-146
- Chapter Eight: Oregon Was a Klan State
- pp. 147-156
- Chapter Nine: Standing Firm
- pp. 157-177
- Chapter Ten: In the Interest of the Race
- pp. 178-199
- Conclusion: Public Citizen
- pp. 200-203
- Acknowledgments
- pp. 204-205
- Notes: Introduction
- pp. 206-299
- Bibliography
- pp. 300-322