Street roots., April 25, 2014, Page 9, Image 9

Street roots
9
April 25, 2014
George Mayes Remembers
A personal memoir o f another Portland
BY ANN-DERRICK GAILLOT
S T A F F W R IT E R
B om and raised in Northeast Portland,
Street Roots qendor George Mayes has been an
eyewitness to the many changes Portland has
undergone in the past few decades. One of
seven children of a longshoreman father from
Texas and a railroad worker mother from
Louisiana, George has bom witness to the
changing black presence in Portland through
the conflicts o f integration to the struggle with
gentrification and displacement. Recently I
met with Mayes at a Starbucks on Northeast
Fremont where he shared his memories o f
growing up in Northeast and Watching as the
city, and the neighborhood, has grown. His
story is just one o f the thousands that make up
the history o f black Portland.
I
n 1955, in Portland, I was bom and
raised. I’ve been here off and on, but I
had grown up here. I t is my home. I’ve
W H ITELA N D IA , fro m page 8
through Albina. We tend to look at the last’
three years of Williams as being what s
relevant to the black population, but it goes
much further back than that. If you re not in
that culture you’re just not going see it.
You’re not going to have those discussions,
and it’s going to feel like history to you
rather than your life.
A.G.: Can you tell me about your
partnership with the Oregon Assembly for Black
Affairs, and how the film has benefitted from
that? You mentioned that you’ve partnered with
other organizations as well.
M.Z.: Through a series of coincidences
with creative projects we came into contact
with Dr. Calvin Henry who is the head of the
Oregon Assembly for Black Affairs. We were
having a discussion with him one day about a
project that we had ended and that we were
looking for something new.
T.M.: Basically, we feel that a lot of the \
projects we’ve worked on in the past haven t
given us the opportunity to give fair
seen a lot of changes. I grew up over, here
on the northeast side, but I went to
kindergarten, grade school, oil the north
side. We grew up on Cook Street. Irving
Park is right there. That was our master
playground. And it was very interesting,
because we were right there at that
boundary that switches over quick. Cross
the street, you’re in North Portland, cross
back yoii’re in Northeast Portland. The
people were even different, you know? From
this side of Union Street it’s a thing where
it was kind of like an upgraded type of social
type people. Then on the north side they
were kind of like downgrading them and
undergrading them.
We was like a big family./That’s like our
whole block of Cook Street. It was like we
were doing the whole team thing.
Everybody was cool, everybody was there,
everybody was open. If you got in trouble,
you could get a whooping five or six times
before you got home. It was just that open.
And it was cool. And you had to be straight
or they’ll say, “Hey, boy, you know you’re
not supposed to be doing th a t” It was good,
I mean, it was real good.
We always had a church-home coming up.
First A.M.E. Zion, we were Methodist. As
my parents say, You never leave home
without one because that’s gonna
strengthen you even more. And that’s the
thing where our church model became,
“education’s important.”-As today that’s
what we have in our church. Education’s
important.
And so we ended up getting bussed out
(for school) in 1964. We ended up in the
Southwest Hills of Portland. West Sylvan
was the school. Our parents gave us the
opportunity to make the choice. They said
you have the opportunity to get a better
education. It’s a thing where we were
getting the low-funded books. We were
getting the hand-me-downs. West Sylvan was
getting the books, and this is what my
parents were explaining to us. You could be
a little farther ahead, but it’s not gonna be
easy. It’s gonna be a lot of recourses. A nd/
boy, it was a lot of recourses. Hardest time
in my life; It was bad ehough crossing
Martin Luther King Jr. (Blvd.) to get on the
north side. At that time the blacks were
against the blacks that were going. And get
up there — oh boy — the whites were against
it too. So now we’re stuck in the middle.
I got into a fight every day for a whole
year, up on the hill and when I came back
down. Because I was from Northeast. If I
had been from North it might have been
different. But I was getting tired of it. I t was
the opportunity in my time to do what I had
to do. I worked hard on not trying to fight
but I had to. And I kept telling them, I am
tired of doing this. I don’t think I should
have to do this, to come back home, you
know? I’m hiding sticks in the bushes
Yeah, Cook Street has changed. It’s got
trees all over the place. They got trees up
and down the block. We didn’t really have
that many trees on the block, now it’s kind
of filled up pretty good. Because a lot of
people are into that environmental type
thing, trees, bushes and other things.
Yeah, fit’s mostly white now.] There were
a lot of black families that were on this side
and they were kind of middle class. There’s
still some that’s still here. But then a lot of
the white people have moved back in. And
the old generation—the lads have came in,
kind of fix up the houses, sold them. They
just wanted that quick fix. A lot of the old
folks, the companies and the kids just sold
them out. Got rid of them because they
didn’t want the headache. They was tired of
them. My dad sold the house from up under
us. Just all of a sudden, bop. I was about 36,
37, somewhere around there. He sold it
cheap. People paid cash for it. To him it was
just some money. We were trying to fight for
it, but it’s too late.
Other than that it’s drastically coming
back. In the early days when the blacks and
everything was here, they just didn’t have
enough money to maintain and keep the
buildings up and have things like this -
Starbucks. It was all ran down. And now it
Was like the white people came , in and
they’re getting allocated money, see? But *
I’m looking at it to where if them blacks had
got allocated money it would be nice too.
But to each his own. I can’t knock them for
th a t
They got more restaurants and bars than
they ever had in there in my entire life
being here. They got bars all over the place.
They got eating establishments all over the
place now. You gonna find somewhere
almost on every com er that you’re gonna be
able to get something to eat. And there’s
more people coming. And they’re building
for these peoplë. They are building jobs,
because they were always trying to gang up ?
they are building places for these people.
on individuals. I thought every day I was
getting hurt because it was to a point w here ' TEèÿTcnôw/pe^ïe'arecommg,and people
want to come this way. I’m seeing that
I had to fight my way home.
people are out more. It’s reminding me
By niy sixth grade year, things were
almost of the old days, but it’s just more
crowded. And people are congregating at all
these places, and they’re just uniting at all
these places and going from there. And I
can just see the crowd. This is a great thing
out here, it’s growing abundantly. People
come here and they go, “This is beautiful,
this is lovely, this is gorgeous.”
Let me tell you what my dad told me
when I was little. And he kept repeating i t
t was probably about the late '80s, ’90s,
“This is God’s country. You are in God’s
when development and changes had
started happening. In. the development field country. You’ll find nothing no greater than
here.” He said, “Son, this is what I’m telling
there were changes, but the people weren’t
you. This is the easiest place you can live. If
changing. Yeah, the buildings. But the
you can’t live^here, wow, you are done.” And
people? They were still the same. Today, a
find out, it’s true.
lot of people are from out of state, too.
better, but I was still dealing with the issues
of the prejudice thing. You know families,
friends, m eet hew friends. And I wasn’t even
minded by what color. It ain’t the color, it’s
the people. There’s good ones, bad ones,
ones just indifferent So as my mom said,
You go out there and find the good people.
It’ll settle down for you.
I
representation to, or really serve folks of
color. And in some of our other work we’ve
come across stories in the black community
- stories of discrimination* stories of
resistance-that surprise us. So we just
started talking with Dr. Henry about what it
might look like to create a project that would
address these issues that we have not had
the opportunity to address in our previous
work.
We’ve let him op as an adviser for the film
because he brings a very unique perspective,
his experience here in Portland being in his
mid-20s. And recently we did a presentation
for HUD, Human and Urban Development,
and we’re speaking with HUD to pick a few
members from their organization to become
advisers for this film on issues of housing,
which is huge in Portland and in Oregon
when you’re discussing black communities.
M.Z.: So Tracy and I then took the idea of
combining the current state of gentrification,
and all the other problems that exist with the
history of black Oregon and through Dr.
Henry came up with the idea of doing the
film “Whitelandia” and then asked Dr. Henry
if he and the board for the Oregon Assembly
for Black Affairs would become the advisory
board for “Whitelandia,” which they agreed
to. So officially OABA is our advisory board
and we go down to Salem to sit in on board
meetings when we’re invited and to update
them on the progress of th e film. And a s it
moves forward, (OABA members) will sit
through edits of the film, give us feedback,
etc. We’ve done work with the Portland
Observer and one of their reporters,
Dortovan Smith, who is a younger man.
A.G.: What kind of community response
have you gotten since word o f the film has gone
around?
T.M.: We had an overwhelming response!/
from people who want this film to be made,
both black and white and other people of
color as well. Of course there are those
people who question: “Hey, you guys are
white filmmakers, so can you really tell a fair
and honest story when you guys are white?”
And then we’ve had some white folks say
things like, “I don’t really think that Oregon
is so racist today, I just don’t feel those
effects as m uch/ But there’s always people
who are going to question, and that’s good.
Dialogue around this issue is really important
so we really appreciate and welcome
conversation and dialogue around the
process. But I can say overwhelmingly,
people feel this is a project that needs to be
made. We have been really happy and excited
and honored to receive the support that we
have from people in terms of their
understanding why this is such an important
project. I ’m really happy because I think in
general people are ready and willing to talk
about race right now more than they have
been. I think there’s sort of this lull, and I
think people are realizing that there is a sort
of mythology, there is this bubble, that it’s an
illusion and it’s time to take things up to the
next level and really start exposing the deep
roots of racism and the way that it functions
in everyday life without people realizing that
they’re complicit in i t And I think people
want to have these conversations now, I
think we’re ready for i t
To learn more about “Whitelandia” and to
fu n d this project visit the Whitelandia
Kickstarterpage, kickstarter.com/projects/
whitelandia/whitelandia-black-oregon-white-
homeland. To learn more about Tracy
MacDonald, M att Zodrow and their work,
visit uncolafilms.com.