Wednesday might be hump-day in some places, but here on the Peninsula it’s paper day and, for four months of the year for a lucky few of us, it’s Community Historian Day.  As a long-time retiree, I discount the hump-day part.  In fact, the days go by way too fast to celebrate the passage of time.  But I do love to take a quick, online peek at the Chinook Observer on Wednesday mornings – especially on the days that I can’t get my mail until later in the day.  (For those who don’t know, newspaper delivery on the Peninsula involves the U.S. Post Office.)

Sometimes, the headline news segues right into the Community Historian class.  Today (which is the final 2016 community historian gathering) couldn’t offer a better example.  “JIM SAULES, NOT JIM CROW” says the front page.  And then, “Effort underway to change racist names in Wahkiakum County.”

We’ve talked about Jim Saules in our Community Historian class.  He is a not-so-well known historic figure in Pacific County.  Saules was the black cook aboard the U.S.S. Peacock, one of Commander Charles Wilkes’ U. S. Exploring Expedition vessels. On July 17, 1841, under the command of Lt.  William Hudson, the brig “sailed straight for a shoal west of Cape Disappointment and grounded” according to Lucille McDonald in her book, Coast Country published in 1966.

USS Peacock – 1813 Drawing

Subsequently, the crew were taken to Fort Vancouver to await Wilkes – except for Saules who was next heard of three years later in Oregon City where he became embroiled with an Indian named Cockstock.  Saules was found guilty, popular opinion mounted against him, and Indian agent (and later founder of Pacific City) Elijah White, advised him to leave the Willamette Valley.  Saules headed for Astoria where he found employment as a cook and later moved back across the river to the area where the Peacock had stranded.

McDonald’s spin on “Saule”[sic] paints him as a brigand, a squatter, and in general, a shady character.  The Observer, on the other hand, identifies him as “a multi-lingual fiddler, bar-pilot, a ship’s captain and an entrepreneur” and goes on to say:  “He was one of just two people to have been publicly flogged in Astoria, and was probably the catalyst for Oregon’s infamous black-exclusion policy.  But all he got for his trouble were three Columbia River landmarks with miserably racist names; Jim Crow Creek, Jim Crow Hill and Jim Crow Point.”

Whether or not Saules had direct connections to any of those landmarks is up for conjecture.  I am probably in a minority, but I vote for leaving the names the same.  Changing them, at least in my mind, once again white-washes our history.  People need to know that Jim Crow was not an actual person, but came from a popular 19th-century minstrel song that stereotyped African Americans.  ‘Jim Crow’ came to personify the system of government-sanctioned racial oppression and segregation in the United States.  And, for whatever reasons, our forefathers saw fit to commemorate the expression by using it as a place name.

“Jim Crow” – Minstrel Show Tune, 1930

I seriously question whether changing the ‘Jim Crow’ name would be a good thing.  Don’t we need to take ownership of our history, racist attitudes and all?  When I was in school there were no mentions of African-Americans in my history book.  It took the Civil Rights Movement several decades later to begin to raise our consciousness.  I fail to see how eliminating the evidence of our shameful attitudes does anything more than continue the cover-up.

But maybe my thinking is askew.  My friend Andrew Emlen who takes kayaking excursionists on the river says the name ‘Jim Crow Point’ is “an embarrassment.”  I agree.  But if it prompts some righteous discussion with people who don’t know the history, then I think that’s a good thing.  I hope I can talk about it a bit with the Community Historians this morning.  I’d like their take on it.