A critical population is missing from the narrative around the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, according to Taylor Stewart: Black Oregonians. Oregon’s status as the only state to pass laws excluding Black people from settling should be known throughout the country, as should Black Oregonians’ resistance, said Stewart, founder and executive director of the Oregon Remembrance Project.
The Oregon Remembrance Project is working to elevate the stories of three Southern Oregon cities with histories as sundown towns (places where Black people could be punished by police or extrajudicial violence for being seen at nighttime). The project’s Sunshine Trips offer free, two-night, guided trips for Black Oregonians from the Portland metro area to visit Coos Bay, Grants Pass or Ashland.
“I hope that one day, when we get to the 300th anniversary of the United States, that Oregon can be a main character in the story for how we understand the advancement of racial justice in the United States,” Stewart said. “I hope that Coos Bay, Grants Pass and Ashland will be mentioned in the same paragraph as Selma and Montgomery, Alabama.”
On Sunshine Trips, travelers connect with local Black organizers to learn about local history and Black community building. They also enjoy the area’s natural beauty and local tourist activities.
The Oregon Remembrance Project provides travelers with free lodging, travel on a charter bus and a catered meal with local organizers.
The Sunshine Trips are part of ORP’s signature program, the Sunrise Project, which seeks to help former sundown towns develop new identities by reckoning with their troubling past.
According to ORP, the goal of these trips is to help these former sundown towns develop new identities “where everyone can feel safe, respected, and like they can call that space their home.”
Stewart said he was inspired to create Sunshine Trips by his experience growing up in Oregon and not always feeling safe to explore Oregon’s natural places: a common sentiment for many Black Oregonians. He says he only really began to embrace travel and natural sites through his work with ORP.
“I have lived in Oregon for my entire life, but for the vast majority of that, I only really had a strong sense of being a Portlander and not necessarily a strong sense of being an Oregonian,” Stewart said. “It wasn’t until these last few years of where I’ve been traveling the state doing the Oregon Remembrance Project that I developed my sense of being an Oregonian because I expanded my sense of home ownership and space within this state. I want to be able to share that experience with other Black Portlanders so they can feel like they get to call this place their home outside of the bounds of the Portland metropolitan area.”
“I hope that one day, when we get to the 300th anniversary of the United States, that Oregon can be a main character in the story for how we understand the advancement of racial justice in the United States.”
TAYLOR STEWART
ORP piloted its new program in May with an inaugural Sunshine Trip to Ashland. The itinerary included a visit to the studio of artist Micah BlackLight for an exclusive look at his permanent art installation honoring the victims of anti-Black police and extrajudicial violence. Travelers also attended a dinner and Say Their Names Vigil hosted by Southern Oregon ORP members and Black Alliance and Social Empowerment Southern Oregon, as well as a showing of “A Raisin in the Sun” at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and a bus tour highlighting local resistance history.
Attendees on the inaugural trip brought a variety of previous experience in the region. Traveler Tory Blackwell, who grew up in the Midwest and now lives in Oregon City, had never stayed in southern Oregon.
“These are spaces that I don’t normally stop in, that I’ve been past a few times but never would’ve felt comfortable stopping for no reason,” Blackwell said. “Without having a real connection to this space, I wouldn’t just randomly pull over on the side of some road in Oregon.”
Pamela Slaughter, on the other hand, grew up frequenting Ashland because her father was an actor who spent 21 years performing at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. While the Sunshine Trip marked her first time being back in Ashland since her father’s retirement, she also spent time in Coos Bay through her work as the founder of People of Color Outdoors.
“When I saw this, I thought of Coos Bay,” Slaughter said. “They have a BIPOC community there that I really like. I really enjoyed being there. I loved the vibe.”
Coos Bay holds special significance for Oregon Remembrance Project because it’s the location of the organization’s first major project: a memorial to Alonzo Tucker, a Black man who was lynched in the town in 1902. In 2021, ORP partnered with the Equal Justice Initiative and the Coos History Museum to erect the permanent memorial honoring Tucker’s memory.
The first day of the Ashland Trip centered on a different memorial project. Attendees learned about the history of the Say Their Names Memorial, which local artists erected in 2020 at Ashland’s Railroad Park. The memorial recognized the anniversary of the passing of Oregon’s Black exclusion laws and honored the memories of Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd and Breonna Taylor — Black victims of police and extrajudicial killings. The monument has been vandalized, destroyed and taken down multiple times.
In response, the Say Their Names Coalition launched in 2021, which included individual community members and Black-led organizations such as BASE, SOARB, SOBLACC, and SOEquity who pushed for a permanent public art installation.
The City of Ashland eventually selected Micah BlackLight’s design, “Ancestor’s Future: Crystallizing Our Call” for the installation, set to unveil March 2027. Still in its early stages, the sculpture will depict a winged Black man and stand about 12 feet tall.
Ashland Sunshine Trip attendees participated in an exclusive visit and Q&A with BlackLight in his studio in Phoenix, Oregon, where they got to see an early mold of the sculpture.
“It was super validating and fulfilling on a number of different levels,” BlackLight said. “I appreciated that they got to witness this piece at the point that it currently is because I’d say I’m maybe a third of the way through. There’s so much left to do, but for them to get to see it now — before it becomes the permanent monument that it will be, and to ask questions about my process and witness the amount of work that is going to go into it and has already gone into it — that was deeply gratifying.”
Later in the evening, the group attended a private dinner with local ORP and BASE members and the first of many planned Say Their Names Vigils. The vigil honored nationally known Black victims of police and extrajudicial killings like Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, but also names that might be familiar to Portlanders, like Kendra James, Quanice Hayes and Aidan Ellison, an Ashland High School graduate who was killed at the age of 19 in 2021 (see sidebar).
Antoinette Edwards, a longtime community advocate who served as the former director of the Office of Youth Violence Prevention in Portland and has received numerous awards for her advocacy work, found the vigil to be the most impactful part of the trip. In addition to being touched by knowing the victims and families of some of the names honored, she was also impressed by the sense of community felt by Black residents in southern Oregon.
“How they felt at home, respected and welcome, I needed to see that in the times we’re living in,” Edwards said.
The second day of the Ashland Sunshine Trip was dedicated to sightseeing in downtown Ashland and attending a showing of the famous Lorraine Hansberry play “A Raisin in the Sun” at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.
Afterward, Sunshine Trip attendees joined members of BASE for an exclusive conversation with one of the stars of the play, Lynette Freeman. Along with talking about the play and her acting career, Freeman also discussed the process she and other traveling actors go through to get acclimated to Ashland. She talked about support, such as housing and community connection, that the actors receive both from festival organizers and community groups like BASE.
Attendee Beth Blumklotz found this particularly moving.
“(Raisin in the Sun) felt intense,” Blumklotz said. “It felt heartbreaking. It felt heartwarming. Just hearing what they do, whether it’s six months or 10 months, how they adjust to being in a mostly white area of Ashland and how they support each other — it was just great.”
For the final day, attendees took a bus tour of Ashland guided by local members of the Oregon Remembrance Project. The group stopped at Railroad Park and Ashland High School, where attendees spent time with a mural created by the high school’s Truth to Power Club that depicts Ellison, as well as Black and brown historical and contemporary figures, including Michelle Alexander, author of “The New Jim Crow,” Walidah Imarisha, associate professor and director of the Center for Black Studies at Portland State University and Gina DuQuenne, Ashland’s first Black city councilor.
DuQuenne participated in the Say Their Names Vigil and encouraged attendees and future visitors to explore Ashland.
“As the first Black, lesbian councilor in Jackson County, it was an honor to welcome our sisters and brothers from the north of us to Ashland,” she said. “We should never live in silos. It is important that we reach out and get to know one another.”
The next Sunshine Trip is scheduled from Aug. 22-24 in Coos Bay. From Oct. 3-5, the Sunrise Project will lead a trip in Grants Pass. In the next two to three years, project leaders plan to install a historical marker in Grants Pass, similar to the one honoring Alonzo Tucker in Coos Bay. Stewart also hopes to expand the Sunrise Project throughout the state and create a blueprint for doing similar work throughout the country.
“It’s so cool to see the exciting things Black people around the state have been able to grow,” Stewart said. “One of the things I want to accomplish with the Sunrise Project is to help unify Black Portlanders and rural Black Oregonians so that we can make our presence felt through a collective sense of power.”
To learn more and sign up for future Sunshine Trips, visit oregonremembrance.org.
Update on the Aidan Ellison case
On June 24, the Oregon Court of Appeals overturned Robert Keegan’s manslaughter conviction for the killing of 19-year-old Aidan Ellison in 2020.
Keegan, now 53 and white, confronted Ellison for playing loud music at Ashland’s Stratford Inn. A fight ensued and Keegan shot Ellison to death.
Three years later, a jury convicted Keegan of manslaughter. He was serving a 10-year sentence at the time of the appeals court ruling that freed him.
According to the ruling, jurors were improperly instructed on a limitation to self-defense referred to as “combat by agreement.” Oregon law says a person can’t claim self-defense if they agree to a physical fight. The appeals court ruled that the instruction wasn’t relevant and shouldn’t have been provided to jurors.
Since then, Jackson County District Attorney Patrick Green’s office has again charged Keegan with manslaughter. Since a jury acquitted him of murder, he cannot face that charge again in this case. Jackson County senior deputy district attorney Samantha Olson told Oregon Public Broadcasting that prosecutors are expecting a second trial in the case.
BASE held a community town hall on June 25, that allowed local residents to hear from Green and his team, and ask questions about next steps in the case. The recording of this town hall is available on BASE’s Facebook page.
The ruling has drawn comparisons to another case where a white man killing a younger Black man. In late 2025, an appeals court overturned Ian Cranston’s manslaughter conviction for shooting and killing Barry Washington Jr., 22, outside a Bend nightclub in 2021. The appeals court decision was based on a single sentence missing from 35 pages of jury instructions.
Both Washington Jr. and Ellison were unarmed at the time of their killings.
This article appears in July 8, 2026.