By Ron Brown
 
February 5, 2010
 
MEDFORD, Ore. - Linda Genaw loves exploring local history and tracing her family roots.
 
Stories of a connection to Southern slaves led her to confirm what she long suspected, that some of her ancestors were African American. John Mathews, who named Eagle Point, and who's family is buried in the small cemetery there, was her great grandfather and descended from a black slave freed in Virginia in the 1830s.
 
"Blacks were not allowed in Oregon. If you came and you were a slave and you came with somebody, you had two years to set that person free, but they had to leave the state. If they didn't leave the state there was a whipping law. You whipped them until they submitted to leave," Historian and Author Linda Genaw said.
 
Genaw's family thrived in the quiet rural area away from Jacksonville and became respected members of the community, raising horses and helping build the military road to Fort Klamath.
 
A grave marker for John Matthews and some of his children sits in the middle of a family plot. There are a few others buried here, but for the most part this is Matthews family territory. It's in the middle of a subdivision in Eagle Point, but it wasn't always a place of honor, according Genaw.
 
"Some of them, in fact, were disinterested and moved into Central Point because of the 'black cemetery' thing. You talk to some of the old timers in Eagle Point and they say, 'Matthews Cemetery? You mean the black cemetery'," Genaw said.
 
She says the turn of the century seemed to mark a change in attitudes however. Here grandmother and uncle were forced to leave their homes.
 
"She was burned out of her house. And then they ended up moving up to Butte Falls where they just kept moving up, farther up in the hills, and lived out her life. My uncle was also burned out of his house on the Butte Falls Highway," Genaw said.
 
"From a legal standpoint, they had a lot of pressures and things working against them. There was restrictions on who they could marry... Tey weren't allowed to testify against a white man until 1862, I believe," SOU Archaeologist Chelsea Rose said.
 
Genaw says her family had to sign affidavits certifying their race to be allowed to marry.
 
"It was against the law in many, many states for blacks and white to be married. And so they had to swear that they weren't so they could get married in the state of Oregon. But they didn't do that with Indians," Genaw said.
 
Newspaper comments back then likely would not pass political correctness muster today either. An item about a black soldier from the Rogue Valley going off to World War I noted that he reads well and talks "intelligently".
 
Negative attitudes towards blacks swelled during the Klan years of the 20s, but lingered for many years. During World War II some businesses struggled with whether to serve black troops stationed at Camp White. A popular black quartet performing in Medford shortly after the war found it hard to get a hotel room. A 1979 Mail Tribune article about a black Medford police officer prompted negative letters to the editor. In 1980, a black author living in Ashland was the victim of vandalism at her home which authorities say was racially motivated. In 1978, some parents in Ruch were up in arms when the Medford school district hired a black school bus driver. School officials stood by their employee. A bright moment came in 1913 when famous black educator Booker T. Washington came to Ashland and spoke to curious, and apparently, friendly crowds.
 
In the Klamath Basin, where there were more minorities, blacks seemed to find more acceptance, many of whom found employment with the railroad.
 
"I think there was so few people here early that it didn't matter. And I'm hoping that it gets to that point again," Genaw said.
 
The Oregon Exclusion Law remained in the state constitution until it was finally repealed by voters in the November election of 1926.