EIGHT MILES NORTH OF CORVALLIS, OREGON, a wedge of open prairie known as Soap Creek Valley tucks up against the eastern foot of the Coast Range. A sweep of grassland rimmed in forested hills, the valley is both vast and sheltered at once. Here, in 1845, Letitia Carson concluded a more than 2,000-mile journey from Missouri. Though she’d survived the expedition’s many dangers — including the birth of a daughter along the way — her arrival in the fabled Willamette Valley would have offered little comfort: Letitia was a Black woman entering a region that had, among its first acts of governance, barred Black people from residing within its borders or claiming land.
Born into slavery in Kentucky, Letitia came to Oregon with a white man named David Carson, their infant daughter Martha, and a cow she’d purchased en route. Though the nature of their relationship remains unclear, Letitia and David secured a land claim in the amount allotted to married couples: 640 acres. On this land, Letitia grew potatoes, raised hogs, and tended to a growing herd of cattle. She became one of Oregon’s first farmers.
After five years of homesteading and the birth of another child, in 1850 the Carsons’ claim was halved to the single man’s allotment — 320 acres — because county officials did not recognize Letitia as David’s wife. The Carsons cultivated their reduced acreage until 1852, when David died suddenly. Though he’d promised to make Letitia his sole heir, he left no will. A white neighbor named Greenberry Smith took control of David’s estate and swiftly dispossessed Letitia and her two children of everything they owned, denying them rights to their homestead and auctioning all their possessions — including Letitia’s herd of 29 cattle, the family’s Bible, butter churns and bedsheets.
Abruptly homeless, Letitia paid $104.87 to buy back a few of her belongings. With two cows and a calf, bedding and dishes, she and her children moved to Douglas County, a 160-mile trek south. By now, Oregon had passed the second of its three Black-exclusion laws. The first, enacted in 1844, decreed that any Black person who attempted to settle in Oregon would be publicly lashed 39 times every six months. The second was passed in 1849, and the third was written into the Oregon Constitution in 1857, where it remained until 1926.
Even in this decidedly anti-Black climate, Letitia refused to accept the injustice she’d been dealt. Instead, she sued Greenberry Smith — twice: Once for wages owed, and again for the theft of her cattle. Despite an all-white, all-male jury and judge, Letitia won both cases. Her victory, historians suggest, is testament to her tenacity, to the local respect she’d earned (enough to inspire a white man to testify on her behalf) and to the legal strategy she and her lawyer employed. At the time, debates over slavery dominated local and national politics. Most of Oregon’s settlers hailed from the Old Northwest and opposed slavery on economic, not moral, grounds. Believing that Black people, enslaved or free, would disadvantage white workers and non-slave-owning farmers, they wanted neither in Oregon. By identifying herself as David’s employee rather than his wife, Letitia aligned her case with
