On a quiet residential corner in Southeast Portland 26 years ago Thursday, the city was confronted with a reality that it didn't expect or want.

Skinheads and their racist view of society were alive and thriving in the Rose City and they were willing to kill for "their racist version of the American Dream."

That's how The Oregonian's Bryan Denson – who now covers federal courts – put it when he did a 10th anniversary story about the significance and impact of the baseball-bat murder of Ethiopian immigrant Mulugeta Seraw by three avowed Skinheads at the intersection of Southeast Pine Street and 31st Avenue.

In explaining the significance of the incident, Denson wrote the following as part of the introduction to his story, which appeared in The Oregonian on Nov. 13, 1998.

"The killing sent three of Portland's sons to prison. It launched a war among Skinheads. It prompted a series of hate crimes and a groundbreaking state law to monitor them. It galvanized the horrified citizens of Portland against racism. And it led to a landmark trial that pitted a famous civil rights lawyer against the West's most notorious neo-Nazi.

"The specter of white American racists waging war against African immigrants -- after centuries of terrorizing black Americans -- drew international attention. The case uprooted perceptions that the Northwest was a growing bastion of racial tolerance. And it planted shame in Oregon's back yard."

The incident has been recalled several times over the years in The Oregonian and other publications. Here are links to some of the stories and a podcast that have appeared in The Oregonian, in Willamette Week or OregonLive in the years since the incident:

The Oregonian: Lessons from Mulugeta Seraw's beating death changed Portland

OregonLive: Hate crimes persist in Portland, targeting gays, 20 years after African murdered

The Oregonian: Notorious Portland skinhead Kenneth Mieske dies serving life prison term in beating death of Mulugeta Seraw

Willamette Week: The Mulugeta Seraw Murder: 25 Years Later

-- John Killen