tonya mosley has the story. >> reporter: 27-year-old photographer is in downtown portland looking for something hard to find. >> here we go. >> reporter: black faces. >> i was wondering if i could take your picture. please. >> reporter: the memphis, tennessee, native had no idea when she moved here three years ago that portland was ranked as the whitest major city in america with 76% of the population white, according to the seaso census bureau, own 7%e black. capturing the rare black faces part of a projects she calls the black portlanders. >> reporter: portland is white by design. it not only excluded blacks from moving here but wrote it's exclusion in its constitution. >> before the civil war oregonians adopted three different times exclusion laws that made it simply illegal for a black person to move to oreg oregon. >> reporter: the laws were repealed by the legacy lives on. >> the problem for african-americans in oregon is that simply you don't have that culture context that you might find in other places in larger cities, for example. >> reporter: there are few obvious signs of

. >> taking a photographer's journey here is al jazeera's tonya mosley. >> the 27-year-old photographer downtown portland looking for something hard to find. >> oh, here we go. >> black faces. >> i was wondering if i could take your picture, if you might be interested, please. >> the memphis, tennessee, native had no idea when she moved here thee years ago that portland was ranked as the whitest major city in america. only 6% are black. recently she began capturing the images of those rare black faces as part of a photo essay she calls "the black portlanders." >> what do you get out of this project? >> i think connection. >> portland is white by design. it not only excluded blacks from moving here, but wrote the exclusion in its constitution. >> before the civil war, oregonianers adopted three different times exclusion laws that made it illegal for a black person to come to oregon. >> theithe laws were repealed, t the legacy lives on. >> you just don't have the cultural context that you might find in larger cities. >> there are few obvious signs of plaque culture in portland, even where