The Outrage at St. John: Fostering Local Consciousness of an Understudied Pacific Northwest Race Riot

This project took historical research by the author on the 1910 St. Johns Riot, an understudied Pacific Northwest race riot, and attempted to translate it into greater practical consciousness within the community of St. Johns through presentations to students at Roosevelt High School. In 1910, two-hundred White residents in the small town of St. Johns, now an incorporated Portland neighborhood, attacked the small community of Indian immigrant laborers who worked industrial jobs in the town and violently expelled them. One day later, the Indian men returned to St. Johns and opened a unique legal case against their attackers. Most importantly, the riot incited the beginning of an international Indian anticolonial organization called the Ghadar Party, who agitated in India for the end of British Rule. Ghadar leadership included men who had been attacked in St. Johns. The St. Johns Riot, although its aftermath had global effects, has only recently had a revival of interest through the work of Portland scholar Johanna Ogden. My project sought to bring the Ghadar party to the attention of St. Johns community members, and I chose to do so through Roosevelt High School as it serves a wide swath of St. Johns teenagers. I am an alumnus of Roosevelt High School, so my connections there allowed me to reach out to teachers and schedule a series of presentations with Mr. George Bishop’s Social Studies classes. These presentations took place over May 5th and 6th of 2025, assisted by Ms. Lily Grant. Through these presentations, students encountered the topic of the St. Johns Riot for the first time, and subsequently engaged with multiple topics of local and international history. I suggest that building local consciousness of emerging academic research is a highly important endeavor, and an ethos of practical engagement with academic topics may be developed through dialogue between those conducting research and more public venues. Ultimately, these forms of engagement make academic topics more relevant and accessible to those who do not have access nor seek access to academic venues. [The presentation slides and a document with a link to the video are included as supplementary files.]