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About Portland observer. (Portland, Or.) 1970-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 7, 2002)
August 07,2002 Page A4 (0b armer O pinion P o rtla n d (Observer Opinion articles do not necessarily reflect or represent the views o f (Eljc|Jnrtlani> (D bscrucr P IT O K I N -C H I k P ,P C o rr E d it o Joy R am os U B I. I S H E R C harles H. W ashington The Portland Observer welcomes freelance submissions. Manuscripts and photographs should be clearly labeled and will be returned if accompanied by a self addressed envelope. All created design display ads become the sole property of the newspaper and cannot be used in other publications or personal usage without the written consent of the general manager, unless the client has purchased the composition of such ad. © 1996 THE PORTLAND OBSERVER ALI. RIGHTS RESERVED, REPRODUCTION IN W HOLE OR IN PART W ITHOUT PERM ISSIO N IS PROHIBITED. r ___________ USPS 959-680__________ C E d it o r Established 1970 k e a M ichael Leighton 4 7 4 7 NE Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd., D I ST I I I I I T I OK H i K K C ll W i i t i i , P t o i h o iiic h p h í i D avid P lechl M ark W ashington Portland, OR 9721 1 r i v e D iic c P aul N eufeldt P ostmaster : Send address changes to P o rtla n d O b s erv er PO Box 3 1 3 7 , P o rtla n d , OR 9 7 2 0 8 P e r io d ic a l P o s ta g e p a id in P o r t la n d , OR « S u b s c r ip t io n s a re $ 6 0 . 0 0 p e r y e a r 503-288-0033 • FAX5 0 3 -2 8 8 0 0 1 5 • EMAIL: news@portlandobserver.com subscriDtion&Dortlandobserver.com ads@poriWobjewer.com Battle for Educational Equality Persists arships or $ 18 per q u ar ter. T oday that w ouldn ’ t even pay for one course! Y ugen: M y good ness! L aw : I had to pay room and board, trans p ortation, and attend school. There w as very little m oney to start Stephens. Ark. in 1924. school with. W hile on Law w orked in the E llen Law cam pus, I had a jo b un capacity o f principal d er the g o v ern m en t-sp o n so red and vice princip a l o f P ortland program National Youth Authority p u b lic schools th ro u g h o u t h er where I made 35 cents an hour! career. She retired in 1980 and A n d ... there w as a limited am ount still lives in northeast Portland. o f hours you could work. She graduatedfrom the University Y ugen: T hat is hard to im agine o f Oregon in 1941. She is also a by today’s standards. In addition survivor o f the Vanport Flood. to the scholarships and earned O u r c o r r e sp o n d e n t, Yu g en wages, were your parents able to Fardan Rashad, sat dow n with assist you financially? Law to share her opinions about L aw : My parents lived in La education and the challenges o f G rande, Ore. M y father co u ld n 't work and college: I Y ugen: Please share the chal help out much because he w as a section laborer for the railroad and lenges o f y o u r co lleg e years. my m other w as a hom em aker. She L aw : At that time (1936), tuition did take in a little money washing was $32 a quarter! The college and ironing clothes for one o r tw o would award $54 per year for schol The P ortland O b server is p roud to p u b lish the fo llo w in g in terview with retired educator Ellen Law, a pioneer in P ortland's black community. H er parents m oved thefam ily to O regon fr o m customers. During my third year o f college, I stayed on cam pus and w orked for a white couple. I lived with them in their hom e and took care o f their child. I took tim e out from college to care o f my ill mother. I also did domestic w ork, because during those years it was hard for blacks to get a jo b as a clerk in an office, o r secure an elevator (opera tor) job. I took m aidjobs in the West Hills (Portland (during the summer. Y ugen: Talk about your first teaching job. L aw : I decided to go to the li brary to find out w here the black colleges and high schools were. I wrote letters to various schools, applying for a job. 1 spent a lot of m oney applying, partly because my father always told me he wanted me to go. Then I heard from Venice College in Greensboro, N.C. They took me solely on my record and the reputation o f the U o f O. The school was an all women college, sup ported by the A frican M ethodist Episcopal Church. Y ugen: A re there any parallels The Portland Observer—Oregon’s Oldest Multicultural Publication-is a member of the National Newspaper Association—Founded in 1885, and The National Advertising Repre sentative Amalgamated Publishers, Inc, New York. NY, and The West Coast Black Publishers Association • Serving Portland and Vancouver. Pioneering teacher shares views on education crisis y o u ’d like to draw regarding the state o f education then and now ? L aw : T herearealotofsubtitles; a lot of these things have gone underground. W hen I was going to school it was very obvious, and now you run into roadblocks but you still have to work around them. Y ugen: T alk about your dad ’s influence on you. L aw : O ne thing 1 see lacking in today’s cl imate is there isn’t enough parental support for the child, and the school. My fatherdidn’tg o an y further then the sixth or seventh grade. It was my dad’s theory that if you don’t do well “T m first going to blame you, and then I’ 11 blame the teacher if I find out it’s not you". He stressed behaving in school. He w ould say, “I know if you’re acting up, you can ’t get it”. W hen he looked at the report card he would scold me, then go talk to with the te a c h e r. Y ugen: 1 know you’re familiar with theCrisis Education Team and their roll with the school district over the achievem ent gap o f black and poor students. L aw : T h ere’salw ay sb een ag i- tation, and I mean that in a kind way, about the progress o f us blacks. Way back in the 70s, they had the Race and Education Study. It was brought about as a result o f dissen sion in the black com m unity re garding the school board. The re sult was the same as today - changes need to occur within the education system. Back then, I don’t think there were as many demonstrations as today, but there were a lot of questions and agitation about the progress o f the black children. W e didn’t have as many blacks in the teaching profession as we do today. T here was also a differential in the pay betw een black and white principals. They were paid on merit FREE CHECKING - and for some reason the black prin cipal was never up to merit com pared to the white principal. W e had to fight to get up there, now w e’ re fighting to stay because many blacks have been m oved out o f those positions. At one time, every high school had either a black prin ciple or vice principal. I bet there are only tw o black principals or vice principals w orking in the high schools today. In elem entary schools we had a lot o f black principals, male and female. I’m told that today, the num ber has dwindled. Now you can ’t tell me that every black principal is inferiortoa white principal. The law o f averages says there has to be m ore equal than unequal. T hey've attended the sam e colleges and been exposed to the sam e educa tion, and m ost are graduates o f colleges here. So what happened? T hese things bother me. as good as it gets! WITNESS FOR JUSTICE No m o n th ly S ic k a n d T ire d o f B e in g S ic k a n d T ire d m a in te n a n c e fe e ! B ernice P owell they need in the w ealthiest nation in the w orld, we m ust recognize that som ething is deeply w rong and then do som ething about it. The d ebate is going on right now in C ongress, with both D em o crats and R epublicans unable to com e to agreem ent on the best way todeal with this tsunam i wave w hich threatens to en g u lf m any families in our nation. Under M edi care legislation passed in 1965, senior citizens receive d o c to r’s services and hospital care. But p rescrip tio n d ru g s, the fastest grow ing health care ex penditure, are not co v ered and 38 percent o f seniors have n o drug co verage at all and m ust b ear the entire co st o f th eir ow n prescriptions. M any o f those w ithout co verage are the by I first becam e aw are o f the high c o stso fd ru g sin th e U.S. about 10 years ago w hen I w ent w ith a friend w ho lives in San Diego to fill a penicillin prescription across the border. She cam e out o f the p h ar macy with a w hole bottle o f m ed i cine fo r$ l 1, w hen ju st a few m iles aw ay she w ould have received only a few pills for the sam e am ount. T o d ay , my com m unity in O hio, like m any others near either the M exican o rC an ad ian borders, sponsors bus trips for seniors and the disabled to go and buy their m edicine for a fraction o f the cost they w ould pay here. W hen o ur elders c a n ’t afford the m edicine poorest and the oldest, clearly the m ost vulnerable. The Bush ad m inistration has put in place a program to provide som e o f these seniors the opportunity to jo in drug-purchasing plans, but m ost seniors have not found that they saved m uch actual m oney under these plans. A band-aid approach ju s t w o n ’t work. O nly if we let our senators, co n g ressp erso n s and p resident know o ur outrage w ill anything change. As the late civil rights activist Fannie Lou H am er once said, our elders are sick and tired o f b eing sick and tired. B e rn ic e P o w e ll J a c k so n is executive m inister o f the U nited C h u rch o f C h rist J u stice a n d W itness M inistries. No m in im u m b a la n c e ! Earns a d iv id e n d ! O pen your account and start saving money today ! Serving ail who live, work, worship or attend school in the Portland communities o f Arbor Lodge, Boise. Bridgeton. Buckman north o f Hawthorne, Cathedral Park, China Town, Concordia west o f 33* Avenue. Concordia University. Downtown Portland. East Columbia, Goose Hollow. Humboldt. Irvington. Kerns, King. Northwest Portland, Northwest Industrial Portland. Old Town, Overlook, Pearl District. Piedmont. Portland Community College-Cascade Campus. Portland State University, Ports mouth. Sabin, St. Johns, Sullivan's Gulch. University o f Portland. University Park, Vernon, and Woodlawn. 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