Been Here a Long Time

Before there was a Clark County…

Although it hasn't always been easy, black culture has been part of the Clark County landscape since the 1830s. In truth, the black story here stretches back even further. When York traveled through the region with the Corps of Discovery in 1805, he became the first documented black person to visit what would later become Clark County.

It's easy to think that black culture is a recent part of the counties story. The numbers seem to support that impression. Vancouver has more than 190,000 residents. Only 6,200 identify as African American. These figures raise an important question: How did a community with roots stretching back more than two centuries remain so small? The answer lies in a long history of laws, policies, economic barriers, and social attitudes that shaped who could live, work, and build a future here.

To understand how black culture took root in Clark County, it's helpful to know a little bit about the community it was born into.

For much of the early nineteenth century, the region's economy revolved around the Hudson's Bay Company. Originally established in 1670 as a British fur trading company, Hudson's Bay expanded west across Canada before merging with its chief competitor, the North West Company, in 1821. That merger gave the company control of several trading posts throughout the Pacific Northwest, including Fort Vancouver.

Under Governor George Simpson and Chief Factor John McLoughlin, Fort Vancouver became the economic and administrative center of the region for nearly four decades, drawing together Indigenous communities, European settlers, Hawaiian laborers, French Canadians, and free and enslaved Black workers.

The trading post at Fort Vancouver was never just a place of commerce. It was a working community of laborers, sailors, cooks, farmers, craftspeople, wives, children, and traders who formed the roots of Clark County. Within that community, the earliest documented Black residents began to appear.

A Village at the Crossroads

Exact numbers aren’t known, but black workers such as George Washington Créol and James Douglas were recruited by the company and found opportunities for advancement.

Créol was a cook, seaman, laborer, and river pilot. Douglas rose from the fur trade to become chief factor for the company – an extremely powerful role – before later becoming the Governor of Vancouver Island.

The military played an important role in shaping the region's early black population. Vancouver Barracks served as a major administrative and logistical hub for soldiers and their families, enslaved people, civilian workers, and—later—the segregated Black regiments. Their stories were very different, but together they became part of Clark County's earliest black history.

Not everyone arrived in the Northwest by choice.

One such individual was Monimia Travers.

She was brought west by Captain Llewellyn Jones in 1849 while still enslaved. In 1851, at the age of 51, she received her freedom and spent the remainder of her life in the region.

The number of black people remained small, but their presence was no longer incidental. They were helping build the community that would eventually become Clark County.

As Clark County grew, many of the people who helped build it slowly disappeared from the historical record. History between the fur trade era and the twentieth century survives only in scattered census records, newspaper clippings, church ledgers, military documents, and family histories. Most people simply lived their lives—raising children, earning a living, and helping shape a community that rarely recorded their contributions.

Putting Down Roots

History has a way of forgetting people who live simply.

Farmers, laborers, fishermen, homemakers, craftsmen, and domestic workers rarely leave behind monuments or biographies. Yet these lives are no less significant. Communities are built one family at a time.

As Black families slowly established themselves in Clark County, they worked, raised families, and worshipped alongside their neighbors in the churches that already existed. The community was growing, but it had not yet reached the size needed to support institutions of its own.

World War II changed everything. Thousands of workers arrived to support the Kaiser shipyards, and the rapid growth of Clark County's Black population made it possible to establish churches, civic organizations, and businesses that served the community directly.

 Finding Our Voice

In 1940, only 18 Black residents were recorded in all of Clark County. By 1945, wartime surveys estimated that 8,825 African Americans were living in the Vancouver area. Many had come from the South and Midwest, drawn by the promise of steady work and wages denied to them elsewhere.

They arrived as part of a much larger wartime migration. Vancouver itself grew from fewer than 19,000 residents in 1940 to approximately 39,500 five years later. New housing developments appeared across the county, complete with schools, shopping areas, parks, and community centers. Places such as McLoughlin Heights, Bagley Downs, Fourth Plain Village, and Harney Heights became home to thousands of workers and their families.

Employment, however, didn’t mean equality.

Black workers encountered discrimination in the shipyards, unions, housing projects, and the private housing market. Some were denied promotions or union protections. Others discovered that landlords would not rent to them and that restrictive covenants barred them from purchasing homes in large parts of the city. Even within federally constructed housing, Black families were often confined to particular sections or developments.

The barriers meant to contain Black residents made mutual aid and organized resistance essential. Families built networks of mutual support, gathered in homes and community buildings, established churches and civic organizations, and began challenging the barriers surrounding them.

In April 1945, local residents formed Vancouver’s NAACP Branch #1139 to fight discrimination in housing, employment, and education. Mark A. Smith became its first president.

The shipyards brought Black families to Vancouver. The lives they built – and the institutions they created – gave the community a public voice.

Looking Forward

The end of the war didn’t bring an end to the struggle.

When shipyard jobs disappeared and wartime housing was dismantled, many Black families were forced to leave Vancouver. Those who remained continued building through churches, businesses, civic organizations, family networks, and the local NAACP.

The Vancouver they helped create has changed significantly. Battles once fought in shipyards and housing projects have moved into council chambers, courtrooms, classrooms, and boardrooms.

The progress is real.

It’s also incomplete.

Laws change, but that can’t undo previous harm. The damage is measured in lost homes, lost wealth, scattered records, and stories that were never preserved.

History is more than dates, census records, and milestones. It is the accumulated lives of ordinary people: families who worked, worshipped, built businesses, served their communities, and quietly shaped the place we now call home. Day-to-day life may seem unremarkable in the moment, but across generations, those ordinary lives become the threads that hold a community together.

The future will not improve simply because time passes. Improvement happens when people do the work: preserving the record, supporting community institutions, building businesses, entering public life, and making certain the next generation knows what came before.

Black history in Clark County is not a recent addition to the region’s story. It is part of the foundation. The names may have disappeared from public records, but the people were here.

Their work remains.

We have been here a long time.

The work now is to ensure that the record—and the future—reflect that.