Nov. 13, 1988: Ethiopian Immigrant Mulugeta Seraw Murdered by Neo-Nazis

In 1980, 20-year-old Ethiopian immigrant Mulugeta Seraw moved to Portland, Oregon, to attend college. Seraw was a son, father, brother, and nephew, and he became a beloved member of the Ethiopian community in Portland.

Source: Southern Poverty Law Center

On the evening of November 13, 1988, near Pine Street and 31st Avenue, Seraw was being dropped off at his apartment by friends after attending a party. Their car stalled, attracting the attention of three white supremacists and their girlfriends who were in a car nearby. The racists quickly attacked Seraw and his Ethiopian friends, using a baseball bat to brutally beat Seraw. Seraw’s friends were able to escape in their car, as were the white supremacists. Mulugeta Seraw died of his injuries the following day.

Seraw’s killers were Kenneth Mieske (known as “Ken Death”), Kyle Brewster, and Steve Strasser, members of a local neo-Nazi skinhead group called East Side White Pride. At that time, East Side White Pride was being groomed and trained by the national neo-Nazi organization White Aryan Resistance (WAR), whose leader Tom Metzger, a former Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, said in a recorded message that those who murdered Seraw were doing their “civic duty.”

Seraw’s murder was a galvonizing moment in Portland, highlighting Oregon’s long history of racism and exclusion and sowing fear of continued white supremacist violence amongst marginalized communities. Anti-racist youth activists formed groups like Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice (SHARP) and Anti-Racist Action (ARA) — both of which quickly became national organizations — to combat the growing white supremacist violence. The anti-fascist group Coalition for Human Dignity formed in Portland and Seattle to combat both anti-racism and anti-semitism.

Source: Teen Vogue

While Seraw’s killers were convicted of manslaughter and imprisoned, Seraw’s father and son filed a civil suit against WAR, Tom Metzger, and his son, John Metzger. The Seraw’s were represented by the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League. The Seraw family won the civil suit, essentially bankrupting Metzger and making WAR more difficult to maintain.

In a concluding scene in the Oregon Public Broadcasting documentary The Story of Mulugeta Seraw: Portland’s Battle Against Neo-Nazi Skinheads (see below), following the trial, Metzger is seen defiantly stating,

The white racist movement, the white separatist movement, will not be stopped in the puny town of Portland. We’re too deep. We’re embedded now. Don’t you understand? We’re in your colleges, we’re in your armies, we’re in your police forces. Stopping Tom Metzger’s not going to change what’s happening in this country now. I just did my little bit along the way. Like your great salmon, I got up there and laid the eggs and now if I die, no problem.

Defense attorney Elden Rosenthal is then seen stating,

[This] is why our civic institutions need to be strong. It’s why the rule of law needs to be sustained. And it’s why the task of combating racism and sexism is every generation’s obligation and duty.

The murder of Mulugeta Seraw still resonates, on the streets of Portland and across the country, and serves as a haunting reminder that white supremacist violence and xenophobia are not just a part of our history, but something to be combated in the present.