Oregon Black history sites receive $200,000 in preservation grants

Two Oregon sites significant to Black history — the University of Oregon’s McKenzie Hall and the Letitia Carson Legacy Project at Oregon State University — received preservation grants from the national African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund.

McKenzie Hall, designed in 1968 by DeNorval Unthank Jr., will receive a $150,000 Conserving Black Modernism grant. The Letitia Carson Legacy Project, honoring an Oregon settler, was awarded $50,000 from the fund’s National Grant Program.

In all, 24 African American historic sites across the country will share $3 million in the new grant initiative, a program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

The sites were selected for representing Black joy, resilience, innovation and activism, said Brent Leggs, senior vice president of the National Trust based in Washington, D.C.

“Having visited Oregon last year, I saw how vital places like McKenzie Hall and the Letitia Carson Legacy Project are to the state’s and the nation’s Black heritage,” Leggs told The Oregonian/OregonLive. “These sites, designed by trailblazers and rooted in community, deserve to be preserved and celebrated.”

Leggs, who is also the Action Fund’s executive director, said the fund has awarded $13.5 million in grants through programs like Preserving Black Churches and the National Grant Program.

“Despite today’s challenging climate, we’re continuing to invest boldly in Black history because preserving these stories is not optional, it’s essential,” Leggs said.

McKenzie Hall, the second, larger home of the University of Oregon Law School, was designed in 1968 by Unthank, who in 1951 was the first Black graduate of the university’s architecture school.

Unthank designed the four-story building at 1101 Kincaid St. in Eugene in the modern, Brutalist style, an architectural name derived from the French phrase beton-brut or “raw concrete.”

McKenzie Hall, originally named Grayson Hall, is an irregular, rectilinear structure with yellow brickwork walls and concrete elements characteristic of the Brutalist style.

The $150,000 Conserving Black Modernism grant, a program designed to protect and promote the work of African American architects, will support future conservation of McKenzie Hall as a historic resource and provide for an interpretive display recognizing the late Unthank’s contribution to the campus’ design.

Unthank also designed Northeast Portland’s Harriet Tubman Middle School in 1983; low-income, elderly and mental health housing; office buildings; and private residences throughout the state, including his beach house in Yachats.

He received 20 individual American Institute of Architects (AIA) awards and was a University of Oregon architecture professor from 1965 to 1980.

He was also a civil rights activist as was his father, Dr. DeNorval Unthank Sr., a cofounder of the Urban League in Portland and one of the first Black doctors in Portland when the family arrived in the city in 1929.

DeNorval Unthank Jr., who lived in Eugene, died in 2000 at age 71.

The $50,000 grant awarded to the Letitia Carson Legacy Project at Oregon State University in Corvallis will help preserve the history of Carson, a formerly enslaved woman who came to Oregon in 1845.

The project also highlights the earliest generation of Black settlers and their connection to the region’s Indigenous people.

The grant will support the project’s interpretive planning efforts to design public programs and site visits.

Letitia Carson and her Irish husband, David Carson, settled on land in the Soap Creek Valley north of Corvallis that is now part of Oregon State University’s Soap Creek cattle ranch.

Although there are no visible remnants of the Carson homestead, the land is a “powerful reminder of the hard work and success achieved by many of Oregon’s early Black residents, despite the many obstacles they had to endure,” according to the legacy project.

Because of the Oregon Territory’s exclusion laws and the whites-only provision of the 1850 Oregon Donation Land Claim Act, Letitia Carson was forced off her land after her husband died.

She filed two lawsuits in 1854 against the administrator of her late husband’s estate and won both suits.

Her attorney, Andrew Thayer, successfully argued that if she was not David Carson’s legal heir, then she was due back wages for her seven years of work on the ranch, plus damages. She also made a claim for the unlawful sale of her cattle.

In 1948, Oregon State University acquired 6,200 acres of the former Camp Adair lands from the federal government, including most of the Carson homestead and what became the Dunn Forest.

The Letitia Carson Digital History Collection includes primary source documents and photographs, historic maps, newspaper articles, published works and other documentary evidence about Letitia Carson and her family.

The project is a partnership of the Black Oregon Land Trust, Oregon Black Pioneers, the Linn-Benton Counties NAACP Branch, Mudbone Grown farming and Oregon State University.

An Action Fund grant, called the Descendant and Family Stewardship Initiative, was introduced this year. The grant was awarded to preserve the Dr. James and Janie Washington Cultural Center in Seattle’s Central District, the historical center of the city’s Black community.

“Grants that support the physical preservation and management of these incredible places are crucial to keeping our nation’s history alive,” said Leggs in a news release. “We hope this investment will further empower these communities to be leaders in this important effort.”

— Janet Eastman covers design and trends. Reach her at 503-294-4072, jeastman@oregonian.com and follow her on X @janeteastman.