The story of "exclusion laws" is well-known in Oregon. The state skirted the slave-vs-free question at its birth by just banning all black people from living within its borders.
But what about people who lived here BEFORE it was a state? There are examples, including the shipwrecked black sailor James D. Saules, who arrived before many white settlers.
His story is told in the book Dangerous Subjects: James D. Saules and the Rise of Black Exclusion in Oregon. Historian Kenneth Coleman, the book's author, joins us.
