Collection is open for research.
Gift of 'lyn Horine-Burgess, May 2024 (RL2024-036).
David Earl Burgess was born in 1920 in Portland, Oregon. He served in the Merchant Marines during World War II, then worked as an independent businessman in Portland before joining the Portland Metropolitan Steering Committee in 1966 as part of the War on Poverty. As a committee member, he was a job developer for the Concentrated Employment Program, which sought to find job opportunities for under-employed and unemployed people in Portland. He then moved to Salem, Oregon, and joined the Oregon Economic Opportunity Office. Under Oregon governors Tom McCall, Robert Straub, and Victor Atiyeh, Burgess served on multiple state and county boards, including the State Alcohol and Drug Program Committee. He worked to help pass state legislation in 1975 and 1977 to increase taxes on beer and wine and to provide culturally appropriate alcohol and drug treatment for underrepresented populations in Oregon. In 1977, Burgess formed David Burgess and Associates, Inc., which provided property inspection and preservation services in western Oregon. He was also a charter member and president of the Salem Chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and a founding member of the Oregon Black Pioneers.
Burgess married Dona Carolyn "'lyn" Horine in 1979; the couple had five daughters. David E. Burgess died in January 2006.
Source: Obituary on OregonLive, posted January 12, 2006 (accessed January 24, 2025),
David E. Burgess papers, Coll 1061, Oregon Historical Society Research Library.
The collection consists of papers relating to the work of David E. Burgess, a black Oregonian who lived in Portland and Salem. These papers consist of planning and budgetary records for the Concentrated Employment Program in Portland, for which Burgess worked as a job developer; a set of two reports about alcohol and drug use among Black Portlanders that Burgess contributed to, titled "Metropolitan Portland Study of Alcohol and Drug Problems within the Black Community" and "An Historical Perspective on Alcohol and Drug Use and Abuse within the Black Community in Metropolitan Portland"; and four certificates awarded to Burgess by the State of Oregon Mental Health Division. The collection also includes a note written around 2024 by Burgess' wife, 'lyn Horine-Burgess, explaining the use of an anti-Black slur in the reports as a reclaimed term, and how that use was influenced by the comedy of Richard Pryor.
A copy of a 1933 report for a study of liquor control in Oregon that was received with this collection was cataloged separately as Coll 1062, Oregon Historical Society Research Library.
The Oregon Historical Society owns the materials in the Research Library and makes available reproductions for research, publication, and other uses. The Society does not necessarily hold copyright to all materials in the collections. In some cases, permission for use may require seeking additional authorization from copyright owners.