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About Portland observer. (Portland, Or.) 1970-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 15, 2017)
Celebrating ‘City of Roses’ BLACK HISTORY MONTH Volume XLVI • Number 7 www.portlandobserver.com Wednesday • February 15, 2017 Established in 1970 Committed to Cultural Diversity A Legacy Preserved Daughter of pioneering civil rights couple keeps history alive by Z achary S enn t he p ortland o bServer A snapshot of Portland’s black history is being preserved at Portland State Univer- sity, thanks to the efforts of the daughter of two of the city’s most prominent civil rights leaders. Charlotte B. Rutherford, a Portland native and herself a former civil rights attorney, has helped to facilitate the pres- ervation of her mother’s meticulous docu- mentation of some of the black communi- ty’s most prosperous days. The Verdell Burdine and Otto G. Ruth- erford Collection, which now resides on- site at the PSU Library Special Collections Division, continues to impact and inform the community in unprecedented ways. “She was a collector,” Charlotte Ruth- erford says of her mother, Verdell Burdine Rutherford. The family’s roots in Oregon can be traced to when her mother was an infant in 1913. But raised in Yakima and educated as a secretary, she didn’t move permanently to Portland until after her high school graduation. Despite being pro- ficient in shorthand and a talented typist, like many black females during the time, she was unable to obtain a job other than domestic work. Charlotte Rutherford explains that her mother’s training as a secretary and her meticulous nature helped guide her pres- ervation of the black history artifacts that are now in PSU’s collection, “I don’t know why she saved, she just saved!” The documents feature a wide array of content, from recipes to newspaper clip- pings to family photos to obituaries. In regards to the newspaper clippings, some of which date as far back as the late 1800s, Charlotte Rutherford says that her mother began saving articles that reflected the black community in a positive light, “Because she wanted us, her children, to have access to them.” photo by Z achary S enn /t he p ortland o bServer Charlotte Rutherford, a former civil rights attorney and the daughter of an historic Portland couple who worked tirelessly to outlaw discrimination and pass other civil rights protections during the Civil Rights Era, honors her late parents by helping pre- serve Portland’s Black History. Charlotte’s father, Otto Rutherford, served in the leadership of the Portland Branch of the NAACP throughout the 1940s and 1950s, and was serving as the organization’s president when the Oregon Public Accommodations Act was passed in 1953, the 21st state in the union to pass legislation outlawing discrimination in public places. One of the collection’s most iconic im- ages showcases both Otto and Verdell Bur- dine Rutherford present with Rep. Mark Hatfield at the bill’s signing. A copy of this image now hangs in the State Capitol in Salem. The couple’s persistence to enact the watershed civil rights legislation came af- ter 33 years of effort. All they did on be- half of advancing civil rights at the time c ontinued on p age 5