Oregon Historical Society’s “All Of Us” Public Symposium Explores Immigration And Civil Rights With Local Experts (Photo) - 09/18/25
Portland, OR — American activist Minoru Yasui was fond of saying, “what is done to the least of us can be done to all of us.” This quote appears prominently in the Oregon Historical Society’s (OHS) current exhibition, The Yasui Family: An American Story, which explores how one Japanese American family’s story reflects the complexity of the American story. Minoru Yasui was intentionally arrested for breaking what he saw as an unconstitutional curfew imposed on Japanese Americans during World War II, and many members of the Yasui family share this commitment to equal justice through their own engagement with the local, state, and national forces that have determined — and withheld — Americans’ civil rights.
Drawing inspiration from this original exhibition, OHS is hosting a free public symposium on Saturday, September 27, “All of Us”: A Symposium on Immigration and Civil Rights. The program will share the history behind questions about who is entitled to the freedoms promised by the United States of America that are being debated across the nation in courthouses and in Congress.
This public symposium, held from 10am to 4pm at the First Congregational Church in downtown Portland, will focus on two policies: the 1798 Act Respecting Alien Enemies and HB 2314 of the 1987 Oregon State Legislature, commonly known as Oregon’s Sanctuary Law. While this is a free event, attendees are asked to register in advance at ohs.org.
Speakers include legal scholars, historians, and advocates with firsthand experience:
- Tina Ching is director of the Hugh & Hazel Darling Law Library and professor at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law. Ching secured a grant to digitize materials related to the passage and subsequent amendments to Oregon’s sanctuary law.
- Peggy Nagae, a third generation Japanese American (Sansei), grew up on a farm in Boring, Oregon. Nagae formulated the congressional legislation for reparations and passage of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 and served as lead attorney for Minoru Yasui in reopening his World War II Supreme Court case (along with Korematsu v. United States and Hirabayashi v. United States) and successfully overturning his conviction.
- Danny Santos served as a Tribal Affairs Consultant for Governor Tina Kotek, helping set a historic first Tribal Affairs Office to focus solely on tribal matters, respecting tribal sovereignty, and enhancing consultation with tribes.
- Fay Stetz-Waters began clerking at the Oregon Department of Justice while attending law school and currently serves as the Director of Civil Rights and Social Justice for Attorney General Dan Rayfield. She also co-chairs the Attorney General’s Federal Accountability and Oversight Cabinet.
- Daniel Tichenor is the Philip H. Knight Chair of Political Science at the University of Oregon and the Director of the Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics. The author of eight books, his forthcoming book is Unsettled: America’s Enduring Struggle over Immigration.
Attendees are invited to visit the Oregon Historical Society’s museum during the lunch break to tour The Yasui Family: An American Story.
About the Oregon Historical Society
For more than 125 years, the Oregon Historical Society has served as the state’s collective memory, preserving a vast collection of objects, photographs, maps, manuscript materials, books, films, and oral histories. Our research library, museum, digital platforms, educational programming, and historical journal make Oregon’s history open and accessible to all. We exist because history is powerful, and because a history as deep and complex as Oregon’s cannot be contained within a single story or point of view.
