Status Updates From Vanport

The chapter on the flood is very exciting, probably because, unlike the preceding chapters, the content isn't lifted straight from housing authority minutes.

Wartime activities brought a large number of black people to the Portland area. A 1946 estimate (by whom?) put the number around 15,000, an increase of more than 800%.

That was a chapter filled with poorly explained administrative minutia (literally, much of it was taken from minutes from housing authority meetings) and boring gossip, i.e. administrative in-fighting.

The teachers in Vanport worked 12 months a year, 6 days a week, 44 hours a week, and got 2 weeks vacation.

Every wartime housing project in the United States had a newspaper except Vanport, which didn't start experimenting with journalism until 1947, and even then its attempts were feeble.

After the war, some of the housing units were dismantled or relocated, and by March 1947 the number of dwelling units (apartments mostly) was reduced by almost a third. From 9,942 down to 6,396.

Vanport had a public library, but only adults and high school students were allowed to use it. There was a limit of three books per person, and if your books were more than ten days overdue, the POLICE would come retrieve them.

"The importation of blacks, a group that played an important role in the Vanport story, caused some ripples in the placid calm of Oregon's almost non-existent race problems."

I'm just...gonna stop you there.

In the foreword, written by an actual professor of history: "Through his meticulous scholarship, historical imagination and lucid prose, Manly Maben has given Vanporters their due."

Excuse me? "Historical imagination"? That's a big red flag.