Cason's Fine Meats

Theotis Cason’s butcher shop on Northeast Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard is a place to buy meat, pick up barbecue and hear a piece of Black Portland’s history. Jared Leaf sits down with him at Cason’s Fine Meats to talk about what gets passed on.

The conversation connects the shop to family memory and Vanport, the city destroyed by the 1948 flood that displaced thousands of residents, including many Black families. That history sits beside the daily work of keeping a Black-owned business going.

Theotis gives Jared’s questions about inheritance a neighborhood and a human voice. A business can hold knowledge, relationships and a place for people to return. What survives displacement is carried by people, and by the places where they continue to gather and feed one another.

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