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
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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 !
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