WSU student earns award for paper on race relations in Oregon

Mount Vista — Washington State University Vancouver student Samantha Rintoul received the 2015 Library Student Research Excellence Award and a cash prize of $300 for her paper “Railroaded: Race Relations in Twentieth-Century Oregon.” To look at race relations, she studied two murder cases, one in 1932 during the Great Depression and one in 1943 during World War II. “Most people, myself included, would have thought that the more modern era would have seen a fairer trial for a black defendant, but it was actually better for the man during the Depression,” she said in a release. Rintoul spent two months researching her paper and race relations nationally and in Oregon, using WSU Vancouver library and online resources, as well as the Oregon Historical Library archives in Portland.