Elizabeth Furse

Elizabeth Furse (October 13, 1936 – April 18, 2021) was a Kenya Colony-born American small business owner and former faculty member of Portland State University. She was a member of the United States House of Representatives from 1993 to 1999, representing Oregon's 1st congressional district. She was a Democrat, and was the first naturalized U.S. citizen born in Africa to win election to the United States Congress. Early years Furse was born in Nairobi, Kenya Colony, to a Canadian mother, Barbara Elizabeth, from Regina, Saskatchewan, and a British father, Peter Reynolds Furse. Her paternal grandparents were painter Charles Wellington Furse and nursing and military administrator Dame Katharine Furse . She grew up in South Africa. Inspired by her mother, she became an anti-apartheid activist in 1951, joining the first Black Sash demonstrations in Cape Town, South Africa. She moved to England in 1956, before eventually moving to the United States, settling in Los Angeles, California. While in Los Angeles, she became involved in a women's self-help project in Watts, and with Cesar Chavez's United Farm Workers movement, working to unionize grape farm workers. Moving to Seattle, Washington, in 1968, she became involved in American Indian/Native American rights causes including fishing and treaty rights. She became a United States citizen in 1972. Two years later, she graduated from Evergreen State College with a B.A. In 1978, she settled in the Portland, Oregon, area, where she attended Northwestern School of Law. After two years of law school, she dropped out and led the efforts of several Oregon-based American Indian/Native American tribes to win federal recognition, successfully lobbying the U.S. Congress to restore federal recognition of the Coquille, Klamath, Lower Umpqua Tribe, Coos Tribe, and Grand Ronde tribes. In 1986, she co-founded the Portland-based Oregon Peace Institute, establishing a mission to develop and disseminate conflict resolution curriculum in Oregon schools.