Portland Black Family’s Albums Returned After More Than a Decade

When Kenneth Foreman rides his Harley to California for his family’s first major reunion, he’ll be bringing with him hundreds of photos long thought lost.

“I’m still in shock about the whole ordeal,” Foreman told The Skanner. 

Kenneth Forman and his son at Genealogical Forum of Oregon. (Photo/Laurel Smith)
For more than a decade, he believed most photos of his parents were scattered by time -- or rather, by disposal after his sister’s storage space was cleaned out. 

Sadly, that sister died in March. Foreman wasn’t able to tell her about the recovery, which came courtesy a dedicated stranger and the Genealogical Forum of Oregon. But he says he can’t wait to “drop the bomb” on his daughters when he sees them later this month in Fullerton. 

Protecting Someone Else’s History

Amanda DeMann was used to moving around a lot. Now settled in Milwaukie, she was cleaning out her unit at Portland Storage when she spotted an old banana box in the trash bay -- overflowing with snapshots in both black and white and color of a Black family’s celebrations and everyday moments. One might even have been taken at Vanport, she thought.

“I guess the story in my head when I found that box was perhaps someone had passed and their storage unit went to some kind of auction, and when they cleaned everything out, they thought, ‘This isn’t valuable,’” DeMann told The Skanner. “But they set it beside the bin. It’s like even they had a moral dilemma: ‘I don’t have a use for it, but I don’t want to throw it away.’”

“I went to school for photography, so I think when I saw those, it hit a little harder, having such a different relationship to photos.”

She looked for notes, names, and other clues that might reveal who the family was. At one point she was in contact with a woman who she believed appeared in a photo of a retirement party, and who said she’d come retrieve the photos, but meetings never happened and the woman’s lackluster responses made DeMann feel she hadn’t found the right person to give them to.

“Everytime I moved, it was something I felt was important to move with me,” DeMann said.

“This is a family’s entire life, really.”

Ten years had passed.

“It bothered me that they were only in my garage, because I didn’t feel like I was honoring them that well, but it was really important to me,” DeMann said. 

Kenneth Forman and his son look through found family photos at Genealogical Forum of Oregon. (Photo/Laurel Smith)
At a friend’s suggestion, she contacted the Genealogical Forum of Oregon. Volunteer Nanci Remington, who usually works with old documents and manuscripts, was happy to be entrusted with the photos. 

“I’m amazed that Amanda carried them around for 10 years, but I understand that,” Remington told The Skanner. “How could you throw them away? There are 11 photo albums.”

Remington looked for notes scrawled on the back of photos -- anything that might identify a picture’s subjects. She only found the name 'Mozelle.' Somewhere in the pages of an album, Remington found a funeral notice for Mozelle Foreman (nee Johnson), who passed away in 2002. From that Remington found the name of Mozelle's husband Allen, who followed her in death in 2005. Remington then located obituaries stating both funerals were held at Bethel AME Church in Portland, and named five surviving children: Allen Jr., Donald, Kenneth, Timothy and Carolyn Salter.

Kenneth, approaching his 64th birthday, said only he and his younger brother remain. That might explain why Remington struggled to track down living relatives.

“I’m not good at finding living people,” Remington told The Skanner. “I found some contact information online and none of it panned out.”

Remington turned to The Skanner, where Executive Editor Bobbie Foster featured a selection of photos and publicly sought the family featured in the album’s pages (Family Sought for Historical Photo Albums).

That was Monday. A longtime family friend showed the Facebook post to Foreman, who was in contact with the GFO by Tuesday. 

“Kenneth was thrilled, he said he knew that his sister had put things into a storage unit and lost them,” Remington said. “He knew that end of the story.

"He figured they were gone.”

DeMann said she got “goosebumps” on hearing that the albums had been returned to their rightful owner. 

“I think sometimes I really like to thrift and dig, sometimes I find things and my job isn't for that to be my thing -- I found it for someone else,” DeMann said. “Sometimes things talk to me.”

GFO volunteer Laurel Smith said that it’s not unheard of for the GFO to receive old photos of unknown origin. 

“It does happen from time to time,” Smith told The Skanner. “There’s a woman who lives in Washington, and she combs thrift shops for photographs where someone has written a name on the back. She will buy those images, take them home, run a family history, try to identify living family, and when she can’t she sends them to us.”

Smith added, “It’s amazing because so much African American history has been lost, and here through kindness and diligence, these materials are being restored to a family that thought they were lost forever.”

An Archive Returned

The day after he collected so much of his family’s history from the GFO, Foreman told The Skanner more about his parents’ story. 

“My mom was working in a speakeasy, and my dad was a pool shark, a pool hustler, and he was going into the speakeasy each night, and in turn he ended up divorcing his wife, and my mother divorced her husband,” Foreman said.

The family eventually moved to Portland. His father was an avid golfer, and his mother -- with whom he was especially close -- became the family documentarian. 

“She took pictures of everything, especially pictures of herself,” Foreman said. “She liked to pose a lot.”

Foreman called DeMann “an amazing, amazing woman.”

“I’m going to video call her once when I get down to the reunion, and tell everybody this is the lady that found the photos,” Foreman said. “I just get so emotional with all this.”