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About Portland observer. (Portland, Or.) 1970-current | View Entire Issue (Dec. 11, 1996)
. .. " I ni P ortland O bservi r • Di ci mbi r ■ W4U » •- *" *.* 11, 1996 P age A 5 ¡idueatien Harlem, the village light rail built In case you were on another planet and therefore missed his melodic advice, the great Duke Ellington, musician, composer and orchestra leader, long ago advised us in his best rhythmic style to “Take The A Train” [to Harlem). And a different Light Rail, in deed, was this colorful and Unitarian public transport in the 1920s and 1930s when, above ground and be low ground, the fare was one nickel. The elevated sections of the system dwell mostly in nostalgia and old movies, but the Subway is of very great interest to many because the invention of the “Third Rail” by black engineer Granville T. Woods made possible the elimination of overhead Trolley. “Greatest electrician in the world!”, American Catholic Tribune, 1888. There were other remarkable as pects to the clean, economical steel ribboned arteries that served New York and its environs. In his urban masterpiece, “Subway,” the Harlem Renaissance painter, Palmer Hayden, portrayed a group of black and white passengers crammed together dur ing rush hour who felt no sense of apprehension. Artists had a new genre-rolling theatres ready for a canvas. In his 1934 wood engraving, “Sub way”, Fritz Eichenberg conveyed a similar impression of riders travel ing on a Broadway-Seventh train late at night. The passengers are divided evenly between black and white and between men and women, nearly everyone fast asleep. The absence of fear was essential to the popul ist idea of a peoples underground’. Holly wood occasionally uses this older theme— a kinder urban America. In this very condensed version of a la bor of love that will appear in a national publ ication and on CD-ROM in late winter and spring, I will at- [7 tempt to convey some idea of the serendipity circumstances that gave birth to the vibrant "urban village” we know as Harlem. Patently a con tradiction inter ms. perhaps even an oxymoron, but, then, this is America. The "Interurban Rapid Transit Co.” received a 35 million dollar contract to begin construction on a subway system for New York on March 16, ¡894 and immediately was faced with formidable obstacles Cliton Hood, a transportation histo rian, has described New York City as “The Urban Archipelago," sprawl ing across several big islands and divided by three major waterways — the upper bay, the Hudson River and the East River. It took ten years for the Rapid Transit Co. to surmount the difficul ties presented by a ‘crazy quilt’ ge ography, unpredictable terrain at low - er depths and a series o f catastrophic accidents. Finally on October 28. tipsy Mayor McClellan taking the controls ofthe inaugural train loaded with dignitaries. Things went rather smoothly for the next several years, though the light rail pioneers unknowingly were fast approaching a financial moment oftruth. Just as is happening in Port land, Oregon today, a number of highly speculative real estate invest ments were made at promising loca tions around the transit stops. The company faced economic disaster, having built a huge area of middle- class apartments they could not rent, but a black man came to their rescue and Harlem was born. A very sharp black real estate op erator by the name of Pickens saw this situation as the opportunity of a lifetime. He persuaded the Rapid T ransit board of directors to give him an exclusive contract as rental agent, then promptly mounted a high-pow ered, sophisticated marketing pro- tz 4/ // / 7 rl Call To Advertize With ®li c ^.lnrflatth ODhseruer At 503-288-0033 [ D I V E R S I T Y ] Photography workshop offered An al l-day photography workshop ight by instructor Jane Keating has en rescheduled to take place Sat- Jay, December 15, from 9:30 am . 4:00 pin. In the morning, students II learn the process of Polaroid lage Transfer; in the afternoon, nulsion Transfer will be explored. >th processes allow students to cre- : full-color, painterly photographs tine art papers from slides. Partic- ints are asked to bring their favor- 35mm slides. No photography or darkroom ex perience is necessary. The cost of this workshop is $60 for members and $70 for non-mem bers. The Maude Kerns Art Center, lo cated at 1910 E. 15th Avenue, is Eugene's only non-profit communi ty center for the visual arts. Hours are from9:00 a m. to 5:00p.m. Monday, Friday, and Saturday and from 9:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday. For more information, call (541) 345-1571. gram that Madison Avenue huck sters would have admired. The resourceful Pickens dis patched a platoon of smooth, well- dressed subagents of color to every environ within 150 miles where ex perience or demographics indicated the presence of African Americans who would be very amenable to the kind of upward mobility offered by the Rapid Transit real estate They came by the thousands in an initial wave and soon the boundaries ofthe fecund uptown cultural cradle ex panded to accept less affluent Afri can Americans. Harlem had been born, kicking and screaming and creating and sig nifying from the ’get-go’-destined to reach a cultural pinnacle in the 1920s and 1930s known worldwide as the "Harlem Renaissance”. Liter ature, poetry, painting sculpture, music and dance were the forte of this I’enfant terrible that grew to in tellectual maturity in a few short de cades: Langston Hughes, Claude M cKay, Alain Locke, Duke Ellington. Jacob Lawrence, Eliza beth Catlett, Rornare Bearden, and many, many others. And just as the power and vitality o f African art and sculpture had so heavily influenced the French Im pressionists, the tune smiths of Broad way embraced the pulse of Harlem: George and Ira Gershwin, Rogers and Hart, Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, Oscar Hammerstein, et al. (C) 1996, Mckinley Run continued next week Cassie Packard (left) and Teddy Pittman (right), try out the brand new recycled plastic playground donated to Sitton Elementary School by the American Plastcs Council (APC). APC and the City o f Portland Bureau o f Environmental Services, challenged residents to recycle more plastic bottle at curbside. As a result o f the increased recycling, two playgrounds were awarded, one to Sitton and the other to Whitman Elementary. As soon as the final 5.6 percent goal is achieved, a third school also will receive playground equipment. Citizens are reminded to “check the neck" and recycle all plastic bottles with threaded necks and screw-type caps in their curbside bins. 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