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About Portland observer. (Portland, Or.) 1970-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 27, 2019)
Celebrating ‘City of Roses’ BLACK HISTORY MONTH Volume XLVIII • Number 9 www.portlandobserver.com Wednesday • February 27, 2019 Established in 1970 Committed to Cultural Diversity photos courtesy p ortland s tate u niversity Portland State University faculty member emeritus and former longtime Black Studies Chair Darrell Millner lecturing in a PSU classroom in 1975. 50 Years of Black Studies PSU department was first in Northwest by d anny p eterson t he p ortland o bserver 50 years ago, Portland State became the first college in the Pacific Northwest to of- fer a program in black studies following the greatest decade of change for African Americans since the Civil War Over the years, it went from being an experimental program that was criticized by some in the academic community who questioned its legitimacy as a discipline to a full-blown--and accepted--department. After a half-century, it remains unique to the region. “I think not only Portland State, but the whole Portland community should be proud of that,” PSU professor emeritus and former department chair Darrel Millner told the Portland Observer. While other universities in the North- west offer courses in ethnic studies or Af- rican-American studies, PSU is the only one with a full degree-granting department with the word “black” in its name. “At the time of our founding, ‘black’ was a very powerful and political term,” said current department chair Shirley A. Jackson. “It was a way of throwing off the older ways of referencing people who had black skin.” An influential assortment of students and faculty pushed the idea of starting the pro- gram in 1968 and 1969 as part of a wave of other universities around the country doing the same. Millner, who joined the depart- ment in 1975, said the effort was a product of the often student-led movements that characterized the civil rights and anti-war efforts of that era. Portland State— which had just gained university status — approved the Black Studies program as an “experiment” on c ontinued on p age 5