Oregon State University Press

For fifty years, Oregon State University Press has been publishing exceptional books about the Pacific Northwest—its people and landscapes, its flora and fauna, its history and cultural heritage. The Press has played a vital role in the region’s literary life, providing readers with a better understanding of what it means to be an Oregonian. Today, Oregon State University Press publishes distinguished books in several academic areas from environmental history and natural resource management to indigenous studies.

Showing 161-180 of 414 items.

Oaks Park Pentimento

Portland's Lost and Found Carousel Art

Oregon State University Press
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Race and Science

Scientific Challenges to Racism in Modern America

Oregon State University Press
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Another Way the River Has

Taut True Tales from the Northwest

Oregon State University Press

Cody’s prose rings with a sense of place. He is a native speaker who probes the streams and woods and salmon that run to the heart of what it means to live and love, to work and play, in Oregon.

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A Force for Change

Beatrice Morrow Cannady and the Struggle for Civil Rights in Oregon, 1912-1936

Oregon State University Press

A Force for Change is the first full-length study of the life and work of one of Oregon’s most dynamic civil rights activists, African American journalist Beatrice Morrow Cannady. Between 1912 and 1936, Cannady tirelessly promoted interracial goodwill and fought segregation and discrimination.

She gave hundreds of lectures to high school and college students and shared her message with radio listeners across the Pacific Northwest. She was assistant editor, and later publisher, of The Advocate, Oregon’s largest African American newspaper. Cannady was the first black woman to graduate from law school in Oregon, and the first to run for state representative. She held interracial teas in her home in Northeast Portland and protested repeated showings of the racist film The Birth of a Nation. And when the Ku Klux Klan swept into Oregon, she urged the governor to act quickly to protect black Oregonians’ right to live and work without fear. Despite these accomplishments—and many more during her twenty-five-year career—Beatrice Cannady fell into obscurity when she left Oregon in about 1938.

A Force for Change illuminates Cannady’s important role in advocating for better race relations in Oregon in the early decades of the twentieth century. It describes her encounters with the period’s leading black artists, editors, politicians, and intellectuals, including W.E.B. Du Bois, Langston Hughes, A. Philip Randolph, Oscar De Priest, Roland Hayes, and James Weldon Johnson. It dispels the myth that African Americans played little part in Oregon’s history and enriches our understanding of the black experience in Oregon.

A Force for Change is an invaluable resource for students and scholars of women’s history, gender studies, African American history, journalism history, and Pacific Northwest history. It belongs on the shelf of any reader interested in a richer understanding of the civil rights movement in Oregon and across the country.

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The Lumberman's Frontier

Three Centuries of Land Use, Society, and Change in America's Forests

Oregon State University Press
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A River Without Banks

Place and Belonging in the Inland Northwest

Oregon State University Press
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To the Woods

Sinking Roots, Living Lightly, and Finding True Home

Oregon State University Press

The true story of a couple who, in their late fifties, traded modern conveniences for life in a tent and trailer without electricity or indoor plumbing.

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Mexicanos in Oregon

Their Stories, Their Lives

Oregon State University Press
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Reflections of a Pragmatic Economist

My Intellectual Journey

Oregon State University Press
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No Small Potatoes

How a Family Potato Salad Recipe is Fast Becoming a Billion Dollar Business

Oregon State University Press
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Discovering Main Street

Travel Adventures in Small Towns of the Northwest

Oregon State University Press

A unique guidebook to exploring small towns, “the last frontier of American tourism."

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Mink River

Oregon State University Press
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Where the Crooked River Rises

A High Desert Home

Oregon State University Press
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Remembering the Power of Words

The Life of an Oregon Activist, Legislator, and Community Leader

Oregon State University Press
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Among Penguins

A Bird Man in Antarctica

Oregon State University Press
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Potluck

Community on the Edge of Wilderness

Oregon State University Press
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