Over the years, Bobby Fouther has watched the historic center of African-American life in Portland bloom, shrink and expand again. The 69-year-old artist was born into a creative family from the neighborhood of Albina, which he remembers filled with jazz music and beauty. “Black artists were thriving here in the 1950s,” he recalled. “My parents had turned our grandfather’s garage into a miniature theater, where my stepfather and his friends would perform late into the night.”
Then came a 1962 study by the Portland Development Commission, which declared the area — home to nearly 80 percent of the city’s Black population — lost to “advanced blight.” Over the next decade, many Albina residents found themselves forcefully relocated as the city carved through their neighborhood with an expanded highway system and hospital project. Even today, Black residents are fighting to preserve the area’s historic homes from circling real estate developers.
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