I was a law clerk at the Multnomah County Courthouse in Portland, Ore. I’d run to work and the showers were in the ancient basement where all the court records were archived. Occasionally, I would route through the records because I found old law stuff interesting. One day I came across a court order for a man to be hanged in the public square. It was from the 1920s. He was black and had married a white woman. Our history is horrific.