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About Portland observer. (Portland, Or.) 1970-current | View Entire Issue (May 24, 2017)
Page 4 May 24, 2017 Celebrates Pastor’s 20th Anniversary Sunday, June 4, 2017 4:00PM Location: Maranatha Church, 4222 NE 12th Avenue Theme: “I can’t come down, I am doing a great work” --Nehemiah 6:3 Rev, Dr. LeRoy Haynes Keynote Speaker: Reverend, Robert C. Jointer Bethesda Baptist Church Showdogs is a full service salon. We do baths, all over hair cuts, tooth brush- ing, nail trims, soft claws, flea treatments, mud baths, and ear cleaning. We also have health care and grooming products to keep your pet clean in between visits. Show Dogs Grooming Salon & Boutique 503-283-1177 Tuesday-Saturday 9am-7pm Monday 10am-4pm Yo dawg is gonna look like a show dawg and your kitty will be pretty. Gentle, Effective Chiropractic Care Specializing in: • Motor Vehicle Accidents • Workers compensation • Headaches • Neck, Shoulder and Back Pain 3539 N. Williams Ave Suite #2 Portland, Or 97227 Dr. Marcelitte Failla Chiropractic Physician Call for Appointment: 503-228-6140 C ontinued froM f ront water fountain. “They didn’t care about my col- or. We played together. The teachers were just fabulous,” she said. Outside of Vanport, a different reality existed for the black commu- nity. Signs hung in nearby Portland store windows saying: “No colored allowed. We serve whites only.” Moss’s mother would go once a month to shop at the now closed Newberry’s store downtown and as a treat would buy chocolate covered peanuts from the restaurant, but said only white people could sit and eat at the lunch counter. Moss recalls with fondness the school she attended in Vanport with her brother and sister. Moss was given the nickname Caldonia after the Louis Jordan hit and the neigh- borhood boys would tease her with a lyric from the song: “What makes your big head so hard?” She took regular classes and enjoyed elec- tives like home economics, sewing and basketball. An experience in gym class brought back the memories of seg- regation she learned in the South. She fouled a girl in a game of bas- ketball and suddenly became ter- rified that she wasn’t supposed to touch white people under the norms of prejudice so prevalent at the time. “All that came back from when we were living in Tallulah,” she said. “I had wrapped my arm around a post and the teacher came by and said ‘What’s the matter, Marge?’ I told her, I touched the girl and the teacher said: “That’s okay. That’s okay. It’s just a game. I couldn’t get the message and could not let go of the pole, but the teacher was so nice ACCESSORIES 926 N. Lombard Portland, OR 97217 Memories of Vanport to me.” On Sunday, May 30, 1948 Moss was making dinner with her moth- er at home in Vanport, and her sib- lings were at the movies when the flood alarm began to sound. Her father rushed to the theater to grab the children and a dinner guest, who was one of the few to own a car, and they piled the Moss family inside the vehicle to escape to safety. Once they reached Denver Ave- nue, Moss looked out at what was once the most welcoming town in her young life and saw the wooden houses uprooted and floating. The family lost everything in the flood, except her mother’s sewing machine, which she requested to be put in the car at the last minute. A city bus transported Moss and others to Boise School in north Portland which served as an evac- uation center. She saw hundreds of people in tears, feeling lost and in shock. The government provided a more permanent shelter for the Moss family in an apartment near the Willamette River, but the loca- tion terrified her because it was so close to another river that was seen as dangerous because of high spring runoffs. Moss says she suffered from post traumatic stress disorder for years after the Vanport flood, not from just witnessing the destruction, but also from losing a community that was open and inviting to her as a young African American girl. “For us, Vanport was a good place to be,” she said. “There are people who say it wasn’t, unfortu- nately many of them are from the white community. But, the story is coming out now and I’m so proud to be a part of it.” Cambridge Tradition APPAREL Allen Temple CME Church In short “Cambridge” is for the excellence and “Tradition” is for the consistency. Email: Website: Insta: Facebook: info@cambridgetradtionllc.com www.cambridgetradtionllc.com @cambridge_tradition Cambridge Tradition