Page 10
B la c k
H M
u
.¡storv
onth
for “ Up North!”
By M ax R odriclez . A sceli R asblry .
\ m > C arol T avi . or
The cry “Up North!” and
the city o f C hicago becam e
synonymous as America's second
city absorbed the masses during the
great black migration of 1910 and
1940. This great migration was a
w atershed event in Am erican
history, transforming the lives of
millions of black people and the
cities to which they flocked. It had
the obvious outcome of turning a
primarily southern, rural people into
one identified, for better or worse,
with the inner cities of the American
North and West.
u
CObevruvr
February 9, 2000
for Urban League
Bi J a m s A dams
“As late as 1945, Portland
was known as the ‘Worst City in
Race Relations North of the Mason
Dixon Line,” wrote Edwin W.
Berry, executive secretary of the
Urban League of Portland, Oregon.
Four years later, the city had a
different look and feel.
So what helped create the
new atmosphere in Portland? Nature
and time. In 1948, a flood destroyed
the nearby city o f Vanport. Twenty-
two thousand people had to be
relocated within minutes, and there
was simply no time for the Red
Cross to implement segregation.
Emergency interracial contact
helped forge change. When CIO
labor leaders made desegregated
facilities a condition for Portland’s
becoming their 1948 convention
city, restaurants and hotels changed
for the good of their businesses.
Then there was the issue o f
vigilance. City policy was regularly
decided on the “crude premise that
you’ll holler when you’re hurt.”
With 300,000 individual pieces of
educational m aterial on race
relations, a PR cam paign to
broadcast media, a speakers bureau,
and library tables well stocked with
handouts, the Urban League had
decided to holler - loud and often.
white father he never knew. But he
gave no in d icatio n in his
autobiography o f the pain this
almost certainly caused him. After
Emancipation, Washington began
to dream of getting an education
and resolved to go to the Hampton
Normal Agricultural Institute in
Virginia. When he arrived, he was
allowed to work as the school’s
janitor in return for his board and
part of his tuition. After graduating
from Hampton, Washington was
selected to head a new school for
blacks at Tuskegee, Alabama, where
he taught the virtues of “patience,
thrift, good manners and high
m o rals’ as the keys to
empowerment.
4
On March 1901, Booker T. Washington wrote Up from Slavery, his own story o f his sojourn from slave in
Virginia, to master builder o f Alabama's Tuskegee Institute became an instant best-seller. The book received
kudos from the white press up North. Over and over again, Up from Slavery was compared with The
Autobiography o f Benjamin Franklin. The "Horatio Alger myth in black ” became its tag.
The history of the African
in A m erica has often been
personalized or embodied within
one individual, one spokesperson
who represented the sentiments of
the moment. In the South of the
1890s, Booker T. Washington stood
as the often controversial
personification of the aspirations of
the black masses. The Civil War
had ended, casting an uneducated
black m ass adrift or, equally
tenuous, creating a class o f
sharecroppers still dependent on the
whimsoftheirformerowners. Black
Reconstruction, for all its outward
trimming, had failed to deliver its
promised economic and political
empowerment. While an embittered
and despairing black population
sought solace and redemption, a
white citizenry system atically
institutionalized racism.
From this Armageddon
rose this Moses, Booker Taliaferro
Washington, who was bom in 1856
in Virginia, of a slave mother and a
INVITED TO
A Black History Education andJTribufe to"
Dr. Martin Luther King,*Jr.
1929-1968
Dr. John W. Garlington, Jr.
1937-1986
"The Bridge Builder" in our community
and
other Black Leaders
Ï
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4:00 jum.
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Program includes:
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Spirituals, Gospel Music, Drama and Readings 'IT
d
at
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w
"Maja natha Church $
4222"tölfcl2th Avenue J'®’
..
rilâflti, OR?9721
WjSriÌKlìdSentdìiJlastor
Dr. T.
ntor-fl'as
Edwin Berry served as the executive secretary o f the Urban League in
Portland. He was instrumental in changing the race relations in the
city after the flooding o f Vanport in 1948.
For mori
John Parker at
intact
'o r 284-7563
«