ORP was founded in 2018 by Taylor Stewart to memorialize Alonzo Tucker, Oregon’s most widely documented African American victim of lynching. Stewart started ORP after taking a life-changing trip to the American South where he first encountered the history of lynching at the Equal Justice Initiative’s Legacy Museum and National Memorial for Peace and Justice.
Stewart was inspired by this encounter with history to get involved in the Equal Justice Initiative’s Community Remembrance Project, which aims to work in the communities where the lynchings of African Americans took place to find healing and reconciliation through a sober reflection on history. Originally titled the “Oregon Community Remembrance Project,” ORP credits its origin to the work of the Equal Justice Initiative.
In what simply began as an obscure personal side project, ORP has since grown to become a wider movement to reconcile Oregon’s history of racial injustice.