The Vanport Mosaic is a memory-activism platform. We amplify, honor, and preserve the silenced histories that surround us in order to understand our present, and create a future where we all belong.

The Vanport Mosaic’s work honors the experience of Portland’s underrepresented communities by surfacing, celebrating, and preserving their cultural and historical memories.
One of our core values is: telling stories WITH and not ABOUT communities,

AWARDS

The Vanport Mosaic was awarded the Oregon Heritage Excellence Award, the Spirit of Portland Award by City Commissioner Nick Fish, and the Columbia Slough Watershed Council’s Achievement Award. 

In 2022  the National Trust for Historic Preservation recognized Vanport Mosaic as one of 80 organizations nationwide using historical places as catalysts for a more just and equitable society, showcasing the multi-layered intersections of underrepresented communities of people.

About Vanport

The Vanport Mosaic began as a participatory oral history project focused on the forgotten community that was formed in Vanport, a temporary housing project built in 1942 between VAncouver, WH, and PORTland, OR, to house the thousands of people pouring into Portland to work in the shipyards.

In a state founded on the unceded traditional lands of the many indigenous Tribes and  with a constitution that initially made it illegal for Black people to live or own property  within its borders, Vanport provided housing to a multicultural and multiracial community.  At a time when exclusion and racial segregation were the norm, Vanport was a place of belonging. 

On Memorial Day in 1948, a flood wiped out the entire city within hours, killing at least 15 and displacing 18,700 residents. The 1948 Flood is often referred to as Oregon's Katrina.  The response to the disaster was marked by a lack of preparedness, inadequate infrastructure, and a failure to prioritize the needs of vulnerable citizens.  This tragedy forced Portland to open its doors to thousands of local refugees. Many stayed, forever changing the social, economic, and political fabric of our region. 

Vanport was never rebuilt. Today a few signposts and a slab of concrete from its movie theater are the only physical reminders of the largest WWII federal housing project. The site of the second-largest city in Oregon is nothing more than a golf course, a raceway, wetlands, and a dog park.

Our Memory Activism about Vanport

The Vanport Mosaic has been instrumental in bringing the history of Vanport to the forefront of public consciousness and helping to ensure that its legacy is preserved for future generations. We continue to bring together historians, archivists, students, talents from different disciplines to explore the mosaic of different lived experiences while weaving together the threads of shared struggles, resistance and resilience, and highlighting the underlying story of interdependence and solidarity.   

Since 2014 our collective of historians, media markers, educators, activists, and artists have worked closely with former residents and flood survivors, in their 80s and 90s, to amplify, honor, and preserve their experiences. Through an ongoing participatory oral history project, led by co-founder and “story midwife” Laura Lo Forti, we have created Lost City, Living Memories: Vanport Through The Voices of Its Residents - the largest archive of first-person memories about community life, the flood, and its aftermath. We reconnected survivors with each other through annual reunions; held story circles; digitized the few photos, letters, and scrapbooks saved from the flood. We incorporated their voices in traveling exhibits, and collaborated with them on tours of the historic sites, presentations, and educational material. Their stories inspired theatrical performances, fine art interpretations, and musical tributes.

This is the legacy of this history, as defined by the community themselves through these years of collective inquiry, memory harvesting, and meaning-making.

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  Our collective memory activism manifested, among many other projects, in:
  * the annual City Proclamation for a Vanport Day of Remembrance, and the State proclamation led by Vanport survivor senator Jackie Winter;
  * the planting of a Rosie The Riveter Rose to commemorate the community losses; 
  * the naming of the Vanport Building in downtown Portland
  * and our permanent tribute to the Spirit of Vanport in the lobby of the building. This large scale mural with panels sharing history and quotes from our oral history collection is a tribute to the legacy of this vibrant community, and at the same time an accessible entry point to Oregon’s history of exclusion and discrimination.