The Racial History of a Church’s Land

In 1859, Oregon joined the Union as the only free state with an exclusion clause in its constitution that made it “illegal for Blacks to own real estate, make contracts, vote, or use the legal system.” In the 1920s, Lake Oswego was developed as a whites-only community – a “sundown town” in which non-whites were allowed to be present as servants or workers, but were excluded from living or even spending the night there. These disturbing facts, and quite a few others, were learned from the research that members of Lake Oswego United Church of Christ undertook to discover what is called our land story. This story resulted from asking ourselves, “What was the history of the land our church currently sits on? When did the land become property, to be bought and sold?”

The land in our vicinity is the ancestral home of the Tualatin band of the Kalapuya tribe. Starting with the Donation Land Claim Act of 1850, parcels of land throughout the west were given away to anyone who would stay and cultivate the land for five years. Indigenous land was now the property of white settlers. By 1856, the Kalapuya had been decimated by introduced diseases and displacement; the remaining 65 individuals were relocated to the Grand Ronde Reservation.

The specific plot on which our church stands came to us from a complex series of donations, land swaps, and purchases that we can trace back to 1873. When our current lot was purchased in 1958, the deed carried with it an ongoing exclusionary clause forbidding any “use…or occup[ation] by Chinese, Japanese, or Negroes, except that persons of said races may be employed as servants…” That exclusion expired on January 1, 1959, and the church was dedicated on June 14, 1959.

The exercise of discovering our land story was a sobering experience. We began the process as part of a cohort coordinated by Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon, called “Reckoning With Racism.” We continued the process with presentations to our congregation. We are taking more seriously our obligation to be stewards of the land rather than just owners. We are always seeking to discern what the next steps of our reckoning might be.

This story was submitted by the Earth Justice Team of Lake Oswego UCC. Questions can be directed to the church via email.