Right now, there are three Black mayors in Oregon. By January 2027, there may be none.
With midterm elections coming up in November, many are focused on the bigger picture: specifically, U.S. Senate races and the opportunities they represent to shift the federal government’s balance of power. In that context, the state of Black leadership in city governments in Oregon — a state where 2.5% of the population is Black — might seem like a niche interest. But the stories of Black mayors here offer a glimpse into how Oregon continues to reckon with its history as the only state to pass Black exclusion laws.
While only a few people have held these seats, like Black people as a whole, these mayors and their experiences are not a monolith. Their respective communities shape their accomplishments, challenges and even sense of solidarity. What they all have in common is a desire to encourage future Black leaders and push the state to a point where people are no longer surprised that they even exist.
“How many people in our metropolitan area know that we have African American mayors?” asked Oregon City Mayor Denyse McGriff, who was elected in 2022 and is also the first Black woman to serve as mayor in the state’s history. She will reach her term limit at the end of the year. The other two Black mayors currently holding office in Oregon are both up for reelection in November: Gresham Mayor Travis Stovall and Albany Mayor Alex Johnson II, both of whom were elected in 2020.
Oregon has 241 cities, yet there have only been nine Black mayors in state history. They have represented Manzanita, Shaniko, Depoe Bay, King City, Rivergrove, Gresham, Garibaldi, Albany and Oregon City. The first Black mayors of each of these cities, in order of their election, are Jim Bond, Booker T. Pannell, Jim White, Ken Gibson, Walt Williams, Travis Stovall, Tim Hall, Alex Johnson II and Denyse McGriff.
Street Roots spoke with Gibson, Hall, Stovall, Johnson and McGriff about their experiences governing as their cities’ first Black mayor and what advice they would give to those who hope to follow in their footsteps.
Pathways in
In addition to being the first Black mayors in their cities, all five current and former mayors interviewed share an additional experience: they were elected during times of major transition in their communities.
For Ken Gibson, mayor of King City from 2016-2021, the defining issue of his tenure was expansion. He and his wife moved to King City in 2006. Gibson was appointed to City Council in 2008 before retiring in 2010. Over the next decade, the population of King City almost doubled. Gibson said what brought him back into politics was his vision for developing formerly unincorporated areas.
“I had a vision of what needed to be done and what could be done,” he said. “And we’re seeing the fruits of that labor now.”
Meanwhile, for the mayors elected in 2020 and 2021, their elections came at times of community turmoil.
Former Garibaldi Mayor Tim Hall, who served from 2021-2023, ran with a focus on fixing what he saw as financial mismanagement. Denyse McGriff was appointed mayor of Oregon City in 2022 on the heels of a recall. Alex Johnson II jokes that he was tricked into running for city council in 2018 after attending meetings and being frustrated by what he described as “free for alls.”
“I really couldn’t understand how people could operate that way, having a meeting that was not a meeting,” Johnson said.
From there, Johnson began attending not just regular council meetings, but the planning commission, budget committee, citizen advisory boards and council work sessions. This intentional engagement led him to run for city council and later for mayor, where he is now serving in his third consecutive term.
Unlike Hall, McGriff and Johnson, Travis Stovall didn’t transition from city council to the mayor’s seat. However, he did have a powerful endorsement from within the city government — then-retiring Mayor Shane Bemis.
As the fourth-largest city in Oregon and one of its most diverse, Gresham was heavily influenced by the 2020 racial justice protests. Stovall has been adamant in his support for police officers and unwillingness to entertain conversations about defunding police. However, he does agree with proponents of defunding the police that poverty reduction is the primary way to reduce crime.
During his campaign, he said many constituents assumed he was aligned with defunding the police while others were frustrated by his unwillingness to engage with that policy suggestion.
“We’ve got to do poverty reduction,” he said. “We also have to do youth engagement, along with law enforcement. So it was a struggle sometimes to convince people that what I was saying is the pathway to deliver on what we want in this city.”
Material gains
Despite the confusion from constituents, Stovall has pushed forward on his poverty reduction plan and claims it as the proudest accomplishment of his tenure so far. He specifically prides himself on reductions in youth violence and the city’s poverty rate. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the poverty rate in Gresham is down to 13% from hovering between 17%-19% over the previous decade.
“We are saving lives every single day,” Stovall said. ”We have now put an incredible dent in the pathway for youth, especially youth of color, youth and men of color, ending up either dead or incarcerated.”
Stovall credits the gains to the city’s work to bring in new businesses and its partnerships with the Portland Opportunities and Industrialization Center and Rosemary Anderson High School, as well as Microchip, which creates career pathways through its semiconductor program.
When it comes to proudest accomplishments, each of the mayors interviewed for this story put a heavy emphasis on development and community partnerships.
Hall helped complete a multimillion-dollar highway project and restored the city’s relationship with the Oregon Department of Transportation. Johnson beamed when talking about completing the waterfront redevelopment in downtown Albany. McGriff touted working with the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation to build the Cayuse Five Memorial, which honors the five Cayuse men wrongly hanged in Oregon City in 1850 for the death of a missionary.
In King City, Gibson prides himself on visible progress. He pointed to a community park near his home as one example.
“Before we had it redone, it was a marsh out there,” Gibson said. “You could not use it during the winter. Now you have softball out there. You have soccer being played. You have the tennis courts year-round.”
Some community members opposed the project’s environmental damage, and took residents on tours of areas that would be impacted. Gibson participated in these tours in 2021 and when asked about navigating environmental concerns, told Tigard Life, “I am committed to do it the right way … but it is a daunting task.”
Uphill battles
While each of the mayors and former mayors described mostly positive support for their campaigns and in general in their respective communities, their tenures have not come without significant pushback.
As much as Gibson is proud of leading the expansion in King City, he added that he suffered attacks from “the worst of social media.” He said he tried not to focus on it.
“I realized early on that it’s almost impossible to battle social media, especially when truths aren’t being told,” Gibson said. “When people are making comments about the negative side of things that aren’t even true and then people read it, and they want to believe it, it’s almost impossible to fight that battle.”
Things escalated when a constituent spray painted “No Fisher Road” (sic) on his garage — a reference to a controversial proposal to extend Fischer Road into a quiet neighborhood beyond the city’s urban growth boundary. The King City Police Department investigated the incident but never identified a suspect. Despite being angry about the vandalism, Gibson doesn’t believe it was racially motivated.
That stands in contrast to the recall and resignation of Tim Hall in 2023. Hall resigned after what he described as a bullying campaign that included being branded as “not one of us” by recall organizers and stalked by a man with mental health issues. He believes political rivals targeted him because of his efforts to fix the City of Garibaldi’s finances and because he called out local officials for paying themselves what he deemed unreasonable salaries.
“When a Black man says you’re being robbed, they want to know whether you’re the one robbing them,” Hall said.
The episode left a bad taste in the mouths of some of Hall’s fellow Black Oregon mayors, especially because there was little statewide news coverage of the dispute. Outside of coverage in the Tillamook Headlight Herald and one article in The Oregonian/Oregonlive and a few letters to the editor, coverage of the recall is scant. Hall’s resignation letter, published in the Tillamook Highlight Herald, is included in the Oregon Department of Justice’s archive of bias and hate crimes coverage in the news.
“I really hate what happened to him,” Johnson said. “He was trying to do some great things in the city. He was getting things done and they turned on him.”
Building solidarity
McGriff was alarmed when she heard allegations that the first Black mayor was bullied out of office in Garibaldi, with its population of 830 and five total Black residents, according to the Census. She addressed Hall’s resignation during a speech at the 2023 Oregon Black Pioneers gala, cautioning the crowd that “Now there are three of us.”
Maintaining connection between the mayors is important for McGriff. She said being the first Black woman elected mayor in Oregon adds another layer.
“The thing that’s even more isolating is that I’m the only woman,” she said. “I’ve tried to bring awareness to the Oregon Mayors Association, because there are a lot of women mayors, but they’re from a lot of really small towns, which is interesting. Because, in small towns, I’d say there’s a lot more misogyny and prejudice.”
Johnson has participated in panels and other events with Hall, and tries to host McGriff and Stovall for coffee when they’re in Albany, but notes that the actual time the mayors can spend together is limited by the nature and busyness of their positions. For the most part, they’re able to connect at gatherings held by the League of Oregon Cities and the Oregon Mayors Association.
Still, Johnson feels like everyone is a call away.
“It’s nice to know that there’s other Black mayors I can call and say, ‘This just happened, what are your thoughts?’” Johnson said. “‘Can you give me some information on how you would handle it?’”
Gibson remembers a time when that wasn’t the case. As the only Black mayor until Walt Williams was elected in Rivergrove, building a coalition wasn’t an option for most of his tenure. Not being able to connect with other Black mayors, in particular when the number peaked at five during the end of his tenure, was one of his biggest disappointments.
“It was a missed opportunity,” Gibson said.
Encouraging future leaders
While connections among Black mayors in Oregon have tightened, the prospect ultimately looms that there could be zero Black mayors in the state in 2027. McGriff has been adamant that there should be more resources specifically for Black Oregonians considering a run for office. In the meantime, she and other Black mayors try to make themselves accessible to aspiring elected officials.
McGriff was a longtime community activist in Oregon City before she ever considered running for city council. The first thing she recommends is making sure you know your community.
“People come out of the woodwork and they just think they can just slide into doing this,” McGriff said. “You have to do your homework. You have to know what’s going on in the community and if you don’t know those things, then don’t run for office, because the learning curve is very steep.”
Johnson said he makes a point of being visible in the community. He makes monthly visits to area schools to educate students on local government and how to access city resources. He added that he’s always thinking about Albany’s future.
“I’m 61 years old,” Johnson said. “When those trees that we planted in 2022 on the waterfront are big enough to see the shade, I’ll be in the ground.”
He also regularly attends local farmers markets and introduces himself at every booth. When he’s downtown, he’ll buy and distribute tokens for the city’s carousel to local families.
“I go to every store when there’s a big event downtown,” Johnson said. “I go to every booth. If we have a wine walk, I will invite people to walk with me during the wine walk. Being a Black person, if they don’t see you being part of the community, they won’t embrace you as part of the community.”
All five current and former mayors interviewed for this story echoed the importance of focusing on the needs of others, learning about their communities and engaging with local government structures.
Ultimately, Stovall said more aspiring elected officials need to make the leap.
“Our lived experience is an important component to designing the systems that we now exist in,” Stovall said. “We can’t (just) be on a subcommittee. No, we need to be at the table where decisions are made, so join the table.”
This article appears in August 12, 2026.