Overview

"This particular Oregon history is about African American loggers during the Great Migration of more than six million African Americans from the Jim Crow south to the north. It is a community history and the history of families, a ""history from below."" . It is stored, coded, and recalled in the memories of two generations as they descended from the original families. It is a fragile history passed orally from generation to generation and often is lost. It is not documented in books, the pages of mainstream newspapers, nor preserved in archival collections of photographs. Thus, this book was conceived as part of a memory project to recover and reconstruct the history of a rural community of African American loggers from memories of their aging descendants. These loggers and their families came to a railroad logging town, Maxville, Wallowa County, Oregon, between 1923 and the 1940s, The memory project was based upon ""the interpretive authority of ordinary people,"" thus giving power to the fragments and short memories of individuals to tell a community's story. The personal stories were contextualized through extensive research using historical newspapers, public records, census records, oral intrviews, and the recorded memories of others."

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9780578488639

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Reviews

An important work, long overdue. Readers will be rewarded with a deeper understanding of the interplay between Oregon's developing lumber industry and the complex dynamics of race relations in the rural American West of Wallowa County, Oregon. David Weaver, President Wallowa History Center These are touching, revealing and interesting stories of life under sometimes desperate circumstances that speak truth, challenge misconceptions and reveal the humanity of a people who deserve to be seen, heard and understood. ...delightful tales that speak a fuller truth of life in Oregon. S. Renee Mitchell, Writer. Artist. Creative Revolutionist

"""An important work, long overdue. Readers will be rewarded with a deeper understanding of the interplay between Oregon's developing lumber industry and the complex dynamics of race relations in the rural American West of Wallowa County, Oregon."" David Weaver, President Wallowa History Center ""These are touching, revealing and interesting stories of life under sometimes desperate circumstances that speak truth, challenge misconceptions and reveal the humanity of a people who deserve to be seen, heard and understood. ...delightful tales that speak a fuller truth of life in Oregon."" S. Renee Mitchell, Writer. Artist. Creative Revolutionist"

Author Information

"Pearl Alice Marsh was born in La Grande, Oregon and lived in the town of Wallowa, Oregon until the age of twelve. She is the daughter of Amos Marsh, Sr. and Mary (Patterson) Marsh and the granddaughter of Joseph ""Pa Pat"" Patterson, Sr. and Arie ""Ma Pat"" (Spears) Patterson, well-known African-American loggers and spouses in the area, and is a former president of the Maxville Heritage Interpretative Center. Her work documenting Oregon's Black logging history has been featured in Oregon Historical Quarterly and on Oregon Public Broadcasting's Think Out Loud. She is the first African American woman to earn a Ph.D. in political science from the University of California at Berkeley, and she served with the U. S. House of Representatives International Relations Committee as a Senior Policy Advisor with expertise in African political, economic, social, and development issues until her retirement in 2013."

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