Benjamin Stark, 1861 (Old Oregon)
BY BRIAN LIBBY
In the overwhelming majority of cases, we are right to celebrate the city's founders: naming streets and parks after them as both a gesture of gratitude and a way of continually remembering our history. Portland is a younger city than most, which makes those early settlers who turned a clearing where the Willamette River bends into a future metropolis of millions.
This is why we have Lovejoy Street and Pettygrove Street, after the two men who flipped a coin to determine which man's hometown (Portland, Maine or Boston, Massachusetts) this new settlement would be named after. It's why we have Chapman Square and Lownsdale Square downtown, named for two of the city's earliest landowners: William Chapman and Daniel Lownsdale.
However, not every founding father of Portland has received such an honor. For example, Stephen Coffin was one of those early landowners too, and he helped build the first plank road to Washington County (today's Canyon Road), which was one of the most important factors in Portland, not Oregon City, emerging as the largest center of urbanity. Yet nothing to my knowledge is named after him. I suspect it's because of his last name. Who wants to live on Coffin Street, or hang out at Coffin Park? (Actually, this might be a more fitting name for Lownsdale Square, in front of the Justice Center.) But the point is we have no real obligation to be comprehensive in giving every original Portland landowner naming rights.
All of which to say: Stark Street has got to go.
It's not to say that Benjamin Stark, the man for whom Stark Street is named, should be forgotten. We must always remember that Oregon's divisions are long-standing and that Portland's progressive reputation comes amidst Oregon's early history being among the most conservative of northern States. But none of which gives any compelling case why Stark should still be honored in this way.
Stark was a pro-slavery politician who was sympathetic to the Confederacy. That's more than enough reason not to have a street named after him in Portland. But he also was only an Oregonian for 12 of his 78 years.
Born in New Orleans in 1820 and raised in Connecticut, Stark came to Portland in 1845 by ship from New York on behalf of his employer, A.G. and A.W. Benson, to accompany a large sale of goods consigned to one of the city’s first landholders, Francis Pettygrove. While there, Stark quickly identified a real estate opportunity and purchased a portion of Asa Lovejoy’s property for $390. Stark didn’t stay long, but he returned here to live five years later, on the eve of Portland’s incorporation as a city.
Stark arrived to a rude awakening: that the three men who controlled the rest of Portland’s land (Daniel Lownsdale, William Chapman, and Stephen Coffin) had been selling lots in his absence. They agreed that Stark would take ownership of a triangular-shaped 48-acre parcel along the Willamette bounded by now by Harvey Milk and Burnside Streets. Stark complained that the other three got the more valuable land. But he continued to make money and gain influence, and within two years of arriving was named to Oregon’s territorial legislature as a member of the Whig Party. There his conservative political leanings first became apparent. Stark opposed taxation for public schools, for instance, but donated heavily to Trinity Episcopal Church and co-founded a Masonic lodge chapter.
On the eve of the Civil War in 1860, Stark, now a Democrat following the Whig Party’s collapse, was elected to the Oregon legislature. There he was a firm supporter of slavery and argued for its continuation in the rest of the United States should the Confederate states’ secession become permanent (he also supported their right to do so). When war broke out, he called it Northern aggression.
A year later, Stark was appointed to the U.S. Senate by Governor John Whiteaker, a fellow Southern sympathizer, when Oregon Senator Edward Baker was killed fighting for the Union side at the Battle of Ball’s Bluff in Virginia, one of the Civil War’s earliest conflicts. It showed just how divided Oregon was, with rural conservatives (including my great-great-great-great grandfather, state senator Solomon Fitzhugh) holding sway in the southern portion of the state and more progressive voices usually prevailing in Portland (not unlike present-day).
The pro-Union (which is to say pro-American) Oregon Statesman newspaper in Salem called Stark a “secessionist of the rankest dye and the craziest professions…as far as words spoken can constitute treason; he is a traitor as infamous as any that disgraces northern soil.” His appointment was delayed by several weeks as Stark’s opponents tried to prevent him from being seated, but finally he began serving in June of 1862. But he only was in Washington for three months, because by September, Baker’s term was up and the more Union-sympathizing Oregon legislature replaced him with Benjamin Harding. It was just enough time for Stark to vote against the historic Homestead Act, which after being signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln encouraged Western migration by granting acreages to settlers.
After being unseated from the Senate by the Oregon legislature in 1862, Stark was done with his adopted city and state. Instead of returning to Portland, he went back to his hometown of New London, Connecticut, where he served in the state legislature and continued to collect rent from his Portland landholdings.
Benjamin Stark in 1885 (Oregon Encyclopedia)
Knowing what we know about Stark, it's a bit surprising or at least not a good look that we didn't rename this street a long time ago.
Of course in 2018, the downtown portion of Stark Street—about 13 blocks, or 0.7 miles—was renamed Harvey Milk Street, for the late San Francisco gay rights leader. This was entirely appropriate given the fact that a portion of Stark's original landholding falls within the Burnside Triangle, a major concentration of gay and lesbian-friendly clubs, bars and other establishments. But Stark Street continues on the east side of Portland, continuing all the way to suburban Troutdale. This means we renamed less than one mile of Stark Street and left the other 15 miles intact with the name of this pro-slavery Confederate sympathizer.
Of course I write this as Portland, like cities and town all over America, has seen its streets filled with protestors, demanding justice for George Floyd's murder by a Minneapolis police officer and accountability from an increasingly militarized and police force. Floyd's murder was just the latest in a long line of atrocities, but thanks to video evidence of the gruesome attack, it has, like the Rodney King police brutality case and subsequent officer-acquittal in early 1990s, become a moment that inspires millions all over the world to say, "Enough." This is nothing less than the second great Civil Rights movement, beginning earlier this decade as a response to victims like Michael Floyd and killers like George Zimmerman, but now exploding across the United States with more force than we've seen since the 1960s and the last years of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X.
And while this is overwhelmingly a conversation about justice for Black citizens, for this community is by far the most common target of police violence, it so happens that rates of police killings in America are abnormally high for Latinx and, to a lesser extent, even Caucasian citizens. When we rightfully say "Black Lives Matter," we are calling for a better and more just America for all.
That's why change has been coming in recent days that goes beyond police brutality itself. Take the University of Oregon in Eugene, which announced this week it will consider renaming Deady Hall, which was named after Matthew Deady, who ran as a pro-slavery delegate to the Oregon Constitutional Convention in 1857. In Belgium, they are removing a statue of King Leopold II, who ruled the country for a half-century but led Belgium's brutalization of the Congo that killed an estimated 10-15 million Africans. Even NASCAR and the United States Marines are getting into the act, by banning the Confederate flag.
In arguing for the renaming of the rest of Stark Street east of the Willamette, naturally I wonder how many might oppose the move and why. Perhaps some of a more conservative political bent would make accusations that in doing away with the Stark Street name, Portland would be wiping away its history in the name of political correctness. That of course would be absurd, because a street name is not the keeper of history but rather a symbolic act: an expression of whom in our past we value the most. I also suspect that some who might use the don't-erase-history argument against a name change from Stark might also be some of the same people all too willing to tear down a historic building if there was money to be made.
Besides, even ithough Stark was a key figure in Oregon history, it's not as if one could argue he was either a native Oregonian or someone who stayed here once arrived. The guy lost his US Senate seat, which as an appointee he hadn't even truly won in the first place, and then was done with Portland and Oregon — except, of course, the Portland building rents he continued to collect back in Connecticut. If he'd never hightailed it back to the East Coast, and spent decades after the Civil War doing good things for the community, maybe the case for renaming Stark Street wouldn't be so...well, stark. But to me the departure would seal the deal if it weren't already airtight.
What should Stark Street in east Portland be renamed? Well, if the downtown blocks are already renamed Harvey Milk Street, that's the overwhelmingly obvious choice. And given that Milk's legacy was about fighting bigotry, honoring his legacy feels like a great choice. Of course Harvey Milk didn't have any Oregon connection per se, but neither do some of the other great Americans whom we've named streets after, like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. or even George Washington for that matter. Obviously some historical figures transcend individual places because they affect us all from afar.
As one reader pointed out to me [these next two paragraphs are an addendum to the original post], if we did rename Stark Street something other than Harvey Milk Street, curious as that would be, one other possibility would be a return of sorts: to Baseline Road. This name already exists in Hillsboro, and it relates to the Willamette Stone marker in the West Hills where Burnside Street splits with Skyline Boulevard. The actual stone itself is no longer there; a stainless steel marker is there now. But more importantly, they mark the origin point of Oregon and Washington's land survey system.
Historic BLM survey map and Willamette Meridian marker (Wikimedia Commons)
The intersection was established in June of 1851 by General Surveyor John Preston for the Territory of Oregon. All townships and sections of land in the States of Oregon and Washington are measured from this point. 1851 is, not coincidentally, the year Portland was incorporated as a city. This was the beginning of officially dividing up the land. The origin point at the Willamette Stone marker created two perpendicular survey lines, or meridians. The Willamette meridian runs north–south, and the Willamette baseline runs east–west. And that Willamette baseline lines up with what we now call Harvey Milk Street downtown and Stark Street on the East Side. There are even several old stone markers still there at mile points along the way.
I personally would vote for Harvey Milk Street over Baseline, because honoring Harvey Milk and the LBGT rights he represents is a better response to the racism of Benjamin Stark. Baseline Street or Baseline Road, despite the historic significance, just doesn't have the same ring to it, at least for me. But I do find the meridian-survey history fascinating.
Back to Benjamin Stark, for a moment, and why rekindling the idea of renaming is coming now: As a Caucasian, these days I want to be sure and listen more than I talk. But I also don't want to refrain from speaking out. Silence can equal tacit acquiescence to the status quo, and much about the status quo is unacceptable. So I tried to add to the conversation something I don't hear much talk about. Over the past year I've spent a lot of time delved into Portland's history as I work on a book manuscript, and while Benjamin Stark's name was familiar to me, his story and views were not, at least until recently. He's someone who should be remembered. But his legacy is too compromised to honor so symbolically. We need more than symbolism to change in this country, but our symbols say a lot.
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