Fourth in a series of talks about unpacking sundown town pasts and repacking into a sunrise community
By Emma Coke, Ashland.news
“Don’t let your inability to do everything stop you from doing one thing. And reckoning with racial injustice in the United States is a big task.”
That was what Taylor Stewart, Oregon Remembrance Project founder, said in the Ashland Sunrise Project’s latest talk, “Uncovering Difficult Truths,” a conversation between Stewart, author Sarah L. Sanderson and host Tara Houston on Monday night in in Carpenter Hall on the Oregon Shakespeare Festival campus.
The talk was loosely centered around Sanderson’s recently published book “The Place We Make: Breaking the Legacy of Legalized Hate.” Part history, part self discovery, the book flip-flops between 1851 and present day, telling the story of Jacob Vanderpool’s 1851 exiling from the state under Oregon’s Black exclusion law, and Sanderson’s process of discovering, and then reckoning with, her ancestor’s involvement in Vanderpool’s exiling.
Monday night’s event was split 50-50, with half of the talk run by Houston and the latter half used for questions and comments from the attendees.
The 90-minute talk began with a conversation about Sandereson’s book and her work to move forward from her family’s history.
Sanderson said that in writing the book, she started to think about the legacy she inherited from her ancestors and her own personal legacy — “Where am I holding this legacy of white supremacy?” Sanderson said.
Houston and Sanderson discussed faith as a way to help unpack that legacy and move forward. Sanderson, who is Christian, incorporated her faith through much of the personal sections of her book.
“For me, knowing that I’m loved and forgiven by God is what gave me the courage to look at this history,” Sanderson said.
She said that we live in a society that doesn’t like to forgive, mentioning cancel culture as an example — however, through her belief that God forgives, she was able to forgive herself and her family’s history.
“I’m going to choose to believe that I’m loved and that stuff doesn’t have to define me and I can find a way to make something new,” Sanderson said.
The talk also covered Stewart’s experiences as a Black man living in Oregon and his work with the Oregon Remembrance Project and sunrise communities.
Stewart told the story of a recent interaction he had where he was asked by someone if he felt comfortable traveling through Oregon given its history of racial injustice. His initial answer was “yes,” but upon further reflection he realized it was really a “yes, but” feeling — “But, I feel like I have to be perfect in that space,” he said.
“That feeling of being ‘comfortable, but’ is kind of like being comfortable with your in-laws,” Stewart said. “Where you’re comfortable, but you still have to be your perfect self.”
He said that creating that feeling where you’re fully comfortable with your in-laws is akin to the achievement of reconciliation in sunrise communities, in creating spaces where everyone is welcome, where people don’t have to be their 100% perfect self and mistakes are not inherently detrimental.
“Part of that sunrise community is a practice of grace and empathy,” Stewart said.
He explained that the process of communities moving away from the history of a sundown town, a town with a history of excluding people of color through discriminatory laws, violence or intimidation (“get out of town by sundown”), is long.
Part of becoming a sunrise community is having to unpack the community’s past, according to Stewart. In explaining that, he talked about his experience working at Lines for Life, Oregon’s suicide hotline call center.
While he wasn’t one of the people who answered the phones, he was still trained on that. He was taught that when you’re on the phone with someone, you’re helping them “unpack their luggage” — their feelings, their emotions. Before hanging up, you have to help them repack that luggage, you can’t just leave it out.
“I take that same approach with community organizing, where we’re going to unpack your community’s history,” Stewart said. “What I can’t leave you with is the stuff all strewn about because that’s where a lot of the feelings of shame, guilt and resistance come from. I have to help people repack that history into something new.”
With sundown towns, he said that they’re unpacking the history of racial exclusion.
“We’re not leaving it just lying out, we’re repackaging that history into this vision of a sunrise community,” Stewart said.
Stewart explained it as being an ongoing process — change doesn’t happen overnight.
“I think about recovering sunrise communities, where part of that status is that ongoing ‘doing,’” Stewart said.
The talk concluded with a Q&A with the audience. Copies of “The Place We Make: Breaking the Legacy of Legalized Hate” were for sale at the end.
“It’s not really about going back to something that we thought before, it’s about envisioning something new,” Stewart said. “And that can be exciting.”
Tara Houston, who is mentioned in this story, is a member of the Ashland.news board. Ashland.news editorial decisions are made by editorial staff.
Email Ashland.news reporter intern Emma Coke at [email protected].
