"Kathryn Hall Bogle" (1906-2003)

An early African American journalist in Oregon,was also the first black woman to hold a state

government position Oregon.Kathryn was born in Oklahoma in 1906 and came with her family to Portland,Oregon soon afterwards.Her journalism professor sent article to The Cristian Science Monitor which published it and paid her fifteen dollars for her piece.About five years later she called the Oregonian editor because she was angry with an article published that presented racist stereotypes of African Americans people.In return the newspaper opened its pages to her,allowing her to print a page-long rebuttal where she described continuing widespread and discrimination in Portland and Mansfield,the Oregon communities where she was raised.These early successes were fleeting.Kathryn was never hired as a full-time reporter for any Oregon newspaper,Magazine,or radio station.She did later write for a number of  black newspaper including the Pittsburgh Courier,the Northwest Entreprise in Seattle and the Portland observer and Portland Scanner.Kathryn later recalled a 1939 interview with a Portland,Oregon newspaper where the editor acknowledged her abilities but refused to hire her to work at the paper.He did however offer her a job in his home.In 1941 Kathryn was hired to work for the U.S. Employment service in Portland.As such she became only the second black woman in Oregon hired in a professional capacityby the federal government.She most remembered for role as a social worker who in 1948 helped hundreds of displaced persons and families find shelter following the Memorial Day flood that destroyed Vanport, the largest government-sponsored housing project in the nation.Kathryn worked with organizations such as the Boys and Girls Aid Society and Good Samaritan Hospital,getting them for the first time to provide assistance to African Americans.She also worked with the Oregon League of Women Voters to pass the state's first civil rights act in 1956.Kathryn also organized a group called "The Friends of Golden West"which led the effort to restore the Golden West Hotel in downton Portland.At the begining of the 20th Century this hotel,which provided rooms for African Americans traveling for employment as ship or railroad workers,was the largest black-owned hotel west of the Mississippi River.Despite her inability to find regular  employment asa journalist in Oregon in the 1930s and 1940s,Kathryn was honored with the lifetime Achievement Award by the Portland Association of Black Journalist.