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BLACK
HISTORY
MONTH
February 15, 2017
Housing Named for Civil Rights Pioneer
Development
to bring 80
affordable
apartments
Beatrice Morrow-Cannady, a
historic Portland pioneer in the
fight for racial equality, has been
honored by Community Rein-
vestment Initiatives (PCRI) by
naming their future affordable
housing complex on Northeast
Martin Luther King Boulevard
in her honor.
The new building, just south
of Fremont Street on the former
Grant Warehouse site, will be
named “The Beatrice Morrow”
to recognize Morrow-Cannady’s
work to achieve equality for the
African American community
A new affordable housing complex coming to the former Grant
Warehouse site on Northeast Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard will
be named after Beatrice Morrow-Cannady, a civil rights pioneer.
and to improve race relations.
“PCRI is proud to honor Ms.
Morrow by naming our newest
development ‘The Beatrice Mor-
row,’” stated Maxine Fitzpatrick,
executive director of PCRI. “She
is the basis of the opportunities
available to African Americans
in the State of Oregon and mo-
tivates us to continue her work
to achieve equity and equality.”
Plans call for 80 affordable
apartments at the location which
will be prioritized for historic
residents of north and northeast
Portland who have been dis-
placed. In addition, the devel-
opment will offer community
space and community-serving
commercial retail at street level.
Construction will begin this
spring, with completion antici-
pated in 2018.
An important, but often over-
looked and hidden figure in the
fight for racial equality in the
Pacific Northwest, Beatrice
Morrow-Cannady worked tire-
lessly to improve race relations
in Portland and to secure equal
rights for the Oregon’s African
American community.
She moved to Portland in 1910
at the age of 20 and worked as the
business manager, associate edi-
tor, linotype operator, and edito-
rial and news writer for the Af-
rican American newspaper, the
Advocate. She helped found the
Portland chapter of the NAACP
and mobilized African-Ameri-
can women for the war effort, as
president of the Colonel Charles
Young War Savings Club and as
head of a local Red Cross Auxil-
iary’s knitting unit.
She graduated from Portland’s
Northwestern School of Law in
c ontinued on p age 19