Closing Reception for “Racing to Change: Oregon’s Civil Rights Years” presented by Oregon Black Pioneers and sponsored by the Eastern Oregon Sunrise Project

Art Center East (ACE) announces the opening of “Racing to Change: Oregon’s Civil Rights Years,” an exhibit created by Oregon Black Pioneers (OBP) and sponsored by the Eastern Oregon Sunrise Project. Community members of all ages are invited to attend a free opening reception on Friday, October 4, from 6-8 p.m. “Oregon’s Black History: 450 Years in 45 Minutes”, a presentation by Mariah Rocker, Public Programs and Exhibits Manager at Oregon Black Pioneers, will begin at 7 p.m. The exhibit will be on display in ACE’s Main Gallery from Friday, October 4, through Saturday, October 26.

“Racing to Change” explores the Civil Rights Movement in Oregon during the 1960s and 1970s, a time of cultural and social upheaval, conflict, and transformation. The exhibit delves into how racist attitudes, exclusionary policies, and the destruction of Black-owned neighborhoods shaped Oregon’s landscape, and how the Black community worked to overcome these obstacles. According to OBP, the exhibit “highlights the resilience, activism, and ongoing struggles of Oregon’s Black citizens in the face of systemic racism.”

The Eastern Oregon Sunrise Project, developed by a group of Eastern Oregon residents representing several different communities, aims to bring the vision of the “Sunrise Project” to Eastern Oregon. The Sunrise Project is part of the larger Oregon Remembrance Project (ORP). According to the ORP website, the Sunrise Project “hopes to develop a new identity in former sundown towns as that of a ‘sunrise community’, the opposite of a sundown town. Sundown towns were communities that purposefully excluded African Americans and other racial minorities from living in, or simply passing through, their community through a culture of fear, violence, and intimidation.”

Founded in 2018 by Taylor Stewart, the ORP memorializes Alonzo Tucker, Oregon’s most widely-known African American victim of lynching. ORP assists communities with truth and reconciliation projects about rectifying historical injustice and connects historical racism to its present-day legacies in order to inspire contemporary racial justice.

Stewart founded the ORP after a “life-changing trip” to the American South where he first encountered the history of lynching at the Equal Justice Initiative’s Legacy Museum and National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Ala.

Stewart will be present at the “Racing to Change” opening reception on October 4. He will visit several locations in La Grande and others in the Grande Ronde Valley for “meet and greet” discussions during the weekend.

The public is invited to attend a free closing reception for the exhibit on Friday, October 25, from 6-8 p.m.