“A Proper Attitude of Resistance”: The Oregon Letters of A.H. Francis to Frederick Douglass, 1851–1860

A.H. Francis and his brother I.B. Francis immigrated from New York to Oregon in September 1851, a time when the state’s Black exclusion laws barred them from residence and most civil rights. The brothers petitioned the territorial legislature to exempt them from exclusion — it took no action — and they stayed in Oregon to operate a prosperous mercantile store until 1864. Between 1851 and 1861, A.H. wrote letters to his friend Frederick Douglass, who published them in his newspapers in New York. In this Primary Document article, Kenneth Hawkins reproduces nine of those letters and provides context for A.H. Francis’s first-hand documentation of what life was like as a free Black person living in the region.