Well, Loha and good morning. Welcome to the Bridgetown Daily for Tuesday, June 16th.

My name is Jaron Oda and I lead the youth here at Bridgetown Church.

So yesterday evening my friend Gavin and I went to the Vanport City Prayer Vigil, which

was led by a few African-American faith leaders in our city here in Portland.

Implanting my feet on that floodplain grass and gazing out at that dim horizon there.

I and many other Portlanders had the opportunity to learn and lament the history and tragedy

and injustice of what happened right where we were gathered.

I can still remember and even feel in this moment the not in my stomach, the stressful

frown on my brow and even the flicker of my own memories of racial exclusion that

I've experienced here in Portland.

As I listened to one of the leaders explaining how the ground we were standing on was once

called the Negro Project.

As a result of racial segregation and the discriminatory practice of redlining, much of the black community

in Portland lived on the floodplain of Vanport, which in 1948 encountered a massive flood

and took out the city that was considered the nation's largest housing project.

And Oregon's second largest city that was done in less than a day, displacing somewhere

around 6,300 black residents.

But the real tragedy behind this tragedy is the city's corrupt reasoning for placing

the black community in Vanport in the first place.

As you see in the 1940s, the black community of Oregon was experiencing a rapid expansion

with hopes of employment and of housing.

And instead of Portland officials welcoming and strategically hosting the expansion, a

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