Free private performance for Vanport survivors, former residents and their families sponsored by the Vanport Mosaic.
Welcome to Vanport, a city located between Portland, OR, and Vancouver, WA that thrived during World War II. On the heels of the Great Depression, people were eager to find work and make money. When Henry Kaiser put out a call for workers in his shipyard, people came from far and wide. But what was it really like?
Shalanda Sims created Vanport the Musical out of a quest to find out more about how, when, and why Black people emigrated to the Portland area. She heard stories about Vanport, the lost community in the north part of the city destroyed by flood in 1948, and felt a deep sense of responsibility to the elders of Vanport (who were children back then) to take what was in her hand through theater and tell this story that had been erased and hidden.
