Page 4
October 19, 2016
Battle Lines Grow
C ontinued froM f ront
Hales leave office but Commis-
sioner Nick Fish should leave
with him. They initially target-
ed Commissioner Fritz for recall
over her vote until it was discov-
ered that under Oregon law she
is immune from recall until six
months after her new term begins
in January.
Even Shaun King, a promi-
nent national Black Lives Mat-
ter figure and columnist for the
New York Daily News, took to
Twitter to warn Hales of the re-
percussions the passing of the
contract.
“PLEASE TAKE NOTICE.
Dear @MayorPDX - we will
likely boycott your city if you
make this contract official,” read
King’s tweet. In a separate arti-
cle, he describes a planned Dec.
5 boycott of Portland and other
cities, businesses and institu-
tions “which are either willfully
indifferent to police brutality and
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racial injustice or are deliberate-
ly destructive partners with it.”
Commissioner Steve Novick,
the only vote against the new
contract, was understanding of
the community uproar. He told
the Oregonian the reaction was
a response to the mistrust people
feel about police. “It’s very un-
fortunate,” Novick said.
Don’t Shoot PDX and Black
Lives Matter will remain strin-
gent in their demands of the city
but will continue to advocate
without violence, according to
McKelvey.
“Our movement will contin-
ue to protest against injustice,
hold art projects to empower the
community, forums to educate
the people and a beacon of hope
to all those who seek justice in
Portland.”
As activists work towards
getting both the Mayor and
Commissioner Fish out of of-
fice early, the promise of Mayor
elect Ted Wheeler’s term, which
begins in January, officers some
hope.
“I have much more respect for
Mayor-elect Wheeler than for
Charlie Hales,” McKelvey says,
“I think it is important that he
notices that the type of violence
Hales has inflicted upon peaceful
protestors as well as excluding us
from policy conversations will
not be seen without pushback.”
Wheeler has remained rela-
tively silent during the protests
but McKelvey says he has made
some attempts to reach out and
show support.
“I have confidence that Mr.
Wheeler’s office will contin-
ue to work with myself and our
movement,” says McKelvey. “If
he does not, we will hold him
accountable just like any other
politician.”
“We made a mistake on Hales,
but I trust we have learned from
it and elected a much better may-
or. Above all, I think Ted Wheel-
er has a conscious - something
that has been absent from Char-
lie Hales reaction to the new civ-
il rights movement.”
Historic Artist in Black Smithsonian
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C ontinued froM P age 2
uted five pieces to the program,
but her “Medicine and Trans-
portation Mural” was part of a
collection of paintings she made
during the 1940s.
Born in 1911 in Yakima,
Wash., Streat eventually relocat-
ed to Portland with her family
where she began pursuing her
art career in addition to creative
and interpretive dancing. She
attended the Pacific Northwest
College of Art where she was
later awarded post humorously
a doctorate degree that Jackson
received on her behalf in 2010.
Jackson attributes part of her
aunt’s success to PNCA and
Reed College, who held exhibits
for Streat early on in her career.
Reed College even holds one of
Streat’s works, “The Black Vir-
gin,” in their permanent collec-
tion.
Streat’s works have also been
featured at Portland Art Muse-
um, northeast Alberta Street’s
Art Hop and the Oregon Histor-
ical Society. The Harmon Foun-
dation in New York gave her an
honorable mention at age 18 for
her painting “The Priest” and she
her works even attracted the at-
tention of renowned artist Diego
Rivera, who trusted her to assist
him in painting his famous Pan
American Unity mural.
“The work of Thelma John-
son Streat is in my opinion one
of the most interesting mani-
festations in this country at the
present,” Rivera wrote in a letter
to a Los Angeles art dealer. “It
is extremely evolved and sophis-
ticated enough to reconquer the
grace and purity of African and
American art.”
Not all of Streat’s work was
met with such positivity, as a
piece she painted after World
War II garnered hatred from the
Ku Klux Klan.
As a visual protest to the in-
crease in lynchings of black men
and soldiers following the war,
Streat painted a piece depicting a
black sailor being hanged called
“Death of a Black Sailor,” which
led the Ku Klux Klan to send her
a threatening cease and desist
type letter. Streat and the Los
Angeles museum the work was
featured in held their ground and
the painting remained up.
With all of her creative and
cultured stories to share, Streat
offered some entertaining light
to her family whenever she
would come back to visit.
“As children, we were just so
thrilled. When she would come
home it was just exciting for
us, listening to her stories and
watching her paint,” Jackson re-
calls. “She would do her creative
dancing too and we would try
and copy her moves.”
Streat passed away at age 47
in 1959 and her family wished
to carry on her cultural contribu-
tions as well as their fond mem-
ories of her, eventually leading
them to start the Thelma John-
son Streat Project in 1991 as a
means to energize attention to
her works.
Jackson says the family is
focused on getting as many of
Streat’s pieces viewed by the
world as possible and that in ad-
dition to seeking venues to show
her art locally, they’re in the pro-
cess of putting together a travel-
ling exhibit to hit the country’s
various museums.
“She just had this bigger than
life, life,” says Jackson. “She
was really an exciting figure for
our family and we were just so
proud of her growing up and still
are.”