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John Hamrick was so proud that night in 1915, he was about to bust his buttons.

鈥淭he Birth of a Nation鈥� was premiering in Portland at his theater. He was so overcome with emotion that he announced to the audience that he was joining the Ku Klux Klan.

Every building in Portland tells a story. Some of the stories are ugly. This particular story surfaced when I challenged myself to find something interesting to say about the seemingly uninteresting parking lot at the corner of Southwest Washington Street and 11th Avenue.

I should have remembered this is Portland. There is always something interesting. Sometimes you just have to look below the surface.

Today there are parking lots across from the One PacificCoast Bank branch. In 1915, however, the corner across the street to the south was the (I kid you not) Blue Mouse Theatre.

Hamrick actually opened a chain of Blue Mouse Theatres with locations in Portland, Corvallis, Seattle and Tacoma, Wash. They provided both movies and live vaudeville performances.

The Portland location was formerly the home of the Globe Theatre. Its racist history aside, the Blue Mouse is known for premiering the first 鈥渢alkie鈥� in Portland 鈥� 鈥淒on Juan,鈥� starring John Barrymore 鈥� in 1926.

However, it is easy to get swept up in such details and gloss over that racist story. It鈥檚 too easy. It speaks to the pervasive racism of that era 鈥� and beyond.

Even in recent years, many people remember Waddle鈥檚 Restaurant. With its giant sign, it was a landmark next to the Interstate Bridge from 1946 to 2004. What only older people might remember is that it once had another sign.

鈥淲hite trade only 鈥� please,鈥� it read.

We like to think Oregon is a progressive state, but it has a long and vile racist past.

The Oregon Constitution was submitted to Congress in 1857 in Oregon鈥檚 bid for statehood. Although the new state forbid slavery, it also forbid residency by free blacks.

The Oregon Territory also had a history of excluding blacks through exclusion laws.聽The first law was passed in 1844, ordering all blacks out of the territory. In 1849, a bill excluded black settlements.聽Needless to say, blacks were also denied the right to vote.

Blacks remained unwelcome in Oregon well into the 1950s and 1960s.聽It took the civil rights movement to begin to change racist attitudes and do away with one of the uglier expressions of Oregon bigotry 鈥� the Coon Chicken Inn.

The building still exists on Northeast Sandy Boulevard, although now it is Clyde鈥檚 Prime Rib. From 1931 to 1949, it was part of a chain of Coon Chicken Inns in Seattle and Salt Lake City.

It was disgusting by today鈥檚 standards, wallowing in the most degrading racial stereotypes imaginable. Visitors entered the restaurant through the giant grotesquely smiling lips of a caricatured black porter. This theme was carried through to the restaurant鈥檚 napkins, even to souvenir buttons given to children for cleaning their plates.

Perhaps the most disgusting thing about was that, until the civil rights movement, no one gave it a second thought. It was not considered vile and dehumanizing. It was considered commonplace.

There were equally offensive caricatures of blacks used everywhere to sell everything from soap to 鈥淧ickaninny Freeze鈥� watermelons. Racism was so ingrained in society that no one ever said a word about it.

Or did they?

The Seattle branch of the NAACP protested the opening of the local restaurant and threatened owner Maxon Lester Graham with a lawsuit for libel and defamation of race. He responded by painting the caricature dark blue, fooling no one.

This incident takes us back to the Blue Mouse Theatre and a forgotten Portland hero named Beatrice Morrow Cannady.

We look at 鈥淭he Birth of a Nation鈥� today with its hateful racial stereotypes and exultation of the Ku Klux Klan with scorn, but the prevailing myth is that the movie premiered in 1915 when such images and attitudes were routine and accepted.

There were, in fact, massive protests at the time. Cannady staged what become Portland鈥檚 first interracial protest rally at the Blue Mouse Theatre.

She first moved to Portland to marry Edward D. Cannady and work with him at the Portland Advocate, the four-page weekly newspaper he founded in 1903 with his fellow employees at the Portland Hotel.

Beatrice Morrow Cannady became the first secretary of the Oregon chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (the oldest chapter, by the way, west of the Mississippi).

She later became one of the first black women to graduate from law school after attending night classes at the Northwest College of Law.

鈥淭he Birth of a Nation鈥� was banned in Portland in the 1950s, though it took time and a movement. Cannady started the movement and eventually, inevitably, it succeeded.

There are ugly stories from our ugly past. They cannot be ignored. However, there are also always heroes 鈥� people who fought against the ugliness and gave us the slightly better world we so often take for granted.

Ironically, it鈥檚 because we take it for granted and forget our history that we still need heroes like Beatrice Morrow Cannady.

鈥淏uilding Curiosity鈥� investigates intriguing, historical and obscure tidbits of the built environment. Tom Henderson is a reporter for the Daily Journal of Commerce. Contact him at 503-802-7226 or [email protected].