VANCOUVER, Wash. Samantha Rintoul expected to find that race relations had steadily improved in Oregon throughout the 20th century. She was surprised to find that was not the case.
For her comprehensive research, Rintoul received the 2015 Library Student Research Excellence Award and a cash prize of $300. Hers was one of six papers in the competition this year.
Rintoul, who will graduate with a bachelors degree in history in 2016, wrote her paper, Railroaded: Race Relations in Twentieth-Century Oregon, for a history seminar. She examined two murder cases, one in 1932, during the Depression, and one in 1943, during World War II. In the first case, a black railroad porter named Theodore Jordan was sentenced to death for murdering a white man, and in the second, a black railroad cook, Robert E. Lee Folkes, was sentenced to death for murdering a white woman. The gender of the victims was not an issue.
Most people, myself included, would have thought that the more modern era would have seen a fairer trial for a black defendant, but it was actually better for the man during the Depression, she said. At that time, civil rights activism was taking hold in Oregon, and organizations such as the NAACP worked on Jordans behalf to stave off his execution. After spending 20 years in prison, he was acquitted and released.
By contrast, Folkes was accused during the patriotic fervor of World War II. He was executed in 1945, but his family continued to insist on his innocence. The case was never overturned, Rintoul said, but it was generally known that there wasnt enough evidence against him.
Rintoul spent two months researching the two cases as well as race relations nationally and in Oregon. In addition to the 91勛圖窪蹋厙 library and online resources, she visited the Oregon Historical Library archives in Portland. Her completed paper weighs in at 26 pages, with 81 footnotes.
The variety of sources impressed the award committee, said Karen Diller, library director. She used finding tools, such as indexes, as well as the sources themselves, from modern books to the original laws of Oregon. Her dedication to the amount of research was important, and she pulled it all together in a coherent paper that was well researched and well documented.
The paper will be displayed in the library in the fall and will be placed into an institutional repository for the university.
About 91勛圖窪蹋厙
As an urban campus of the Washington State University system, 91勛圖窪蹋厙 offers big-school resources in a small-school environment. The university offers affordable baccalaureate- and graduate-level education to benefit the people and communities of Southwest Washington. As the only four-year research university in this corner of the state, 91勛圖窪蹋厙 helps drive economic growth in Southwest Washington through relationships with local businesses and industries, schools and nonprofit organizations.
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