A City That Knows How to Move: Portland, Oregon

Portland understands movements. This is a city that has long believed ordinary people can change history — and that the arc of democracy bends only when people decide to bend it.

More than a century ago, women across Oregon and the Pacific Northwest organized tirelessly for the right to vote — holding meetings in churches and homes, publishing newspapers, traveling dusty roads, and refusing to accept that democracy belonged only to some Americans. Oregon women won full voting rights in 1912, years before the 19th Amendment was ratified nationally. And at the center of that fight was Portland itself, home to Abigail Scott Duniway, who published The New Northwest and helped make this city a capital of western suffrage activism.

That history connects powerfully to the journey the Golden Flyer II is retracing today — and to the unfinished business of the Equal Rights Amendment that brings us here.

On a bright Portland morning, we gathered at City Hall, where Mayor Keith Wilson joined Mayors for ERA and made spirited remarks to a room full of Oregon’s leading women’s rights advocates. The Mayor’s support for the ERA, he was quick to note, places him in a long line of Portland leaders who have championed women’s equality.

“Some might say that Portland’s credentials on women’s rights begin with its election of Dorothy McCullough Lee, born in 1901. The first woman to serve as Mayor of Portland in 1946, she was the second woman to serve as mayor of a major American city.”

“My personal mentor and inspiration came from Vera Katz, Mayor of Portland from 1993 to 2005.”

NOW National Board member Rosa Colquit presented Mayor Wilson with the ERA Champions Award — a fitting recognition in a room energized by Oregon NOW and the state’s broader community of women’s rights advocates, all gathered to add their voices to the push for the 28th Amendment.

Mayor Wilson’s tribute to Vera Katz drew appreciative nods from everyone in the room. Katz served as Mayor from 1993 to 2005 and made her mark not only in City Hall but as the first woman Speaker of Oregon’s House of Representatives. Her bronze statue stands today along the Eastbank Esplanade — the very waterfront park she championed — a permanent reminder that women’s leadership leaves its mark on a city’s landscape as well as its laws.

As we gathered at City Hall, we also paused to recognize that the story of voting rights and equality is broader and more complex than many history books once acknowledged. Black women in Oregon and across the Pacific Northwest organized, registered voters, built political networks, and fought for civil rights long before many Americans understood their contributions. Their work helped expand democracy for everyone. Their names belong in this story too.

The stories told by Mayor Wilson — of Dorothy McCullough Lee, of Vera Katz, of Alice Burke and Nell Richardson, and of the advocates gathered in that room — reminded us once again that progress never arrives on its own. It arrives because people decide to act. They decide to travel the hard road. They decide to speak up. They decide not to quit.

Thank you, Portland, for welcoming the Tour, for honoring this history, and for helping carry this story forward into the next generation.