1 Jan 1844 Jahr - Oregon black exclusion laws

Beschreibung:

The Oregon black exclusion laws were attempts to prevent black people from settling within the borders of the settlement and eventual U.S. state of Oregon. The first such law took effect in 1844 when the Provisional Government of Oregon voted to exclude black settlers from Oregon's borders. The law authorized a punishment for any black settler remaining in the territory to be whipped with "not less than twenty nor more than thirty-nine stripes" for every six months they remained. Additional laws aimed at African Americans entering Oregon were ratified in 1849 and 1857. The last of these laws was repealed in 1926. The laws, born of anti-slavery and anti-black beliefs, were often justified as a reaction to fears of blacks instigating Native American uprisings.

In 1857, Oregon voters had supported statehood for Oregon and subsequently called for a constitutional convention. The emergent constitution contained 185 sections, 172 of which were copied from various other state constitutions, with the additions primarily racial exclusion or finance related. The document enshrined an Exclusion Law into Section 35 of the Bill of Rights within the Oregon State Constitution. The article read as follows:

No free negro or mulatto not residing in this state at the time of the adoption of this constitution, shall come, reside or be within this state or hold any real estate, or make any contracts, or maintain any suit therein; and the legislative assembly shall provide by penal laws for the removal by public officers of all such negroes and mulattoes, and for their effectual exclusion from the state, and for the punishment of persons who shall bring them into the state, or employ or harbor them.

Oregon's racially discriminatory state constitutional amendment, Section 35, was legally invalidated after the Civil War by the ratification of the 14th Amendment to the federal Constitution in 1868. However, Section 35 remained formally on the books for another 58 years. In 1925, the Oregon legislature proposed the formal repeal of Section 35, adopted as House Joint Resolution 8 (1925). The measure was referred to Oregon voters as a 1926 ballot initiative which was approved with 62.5% in favor.

Zugefügt zum Band der Zeit:

Datum: