February 27, 2019
Page 5
Many believe that only black students take courses in the Black
Studies Department at Portland State University, but department
chair Shirley Jackson says the curriculum is really for everybody.
50 Years of
Black Studies
c ontinued from f ront
Aug. 22, 1969.
“It was deemed experimental
because it was so new — there
was no guarantee that this would
actually be something that would
continue to exist,” Jackson said.
Charlotte Rutherford, a for-
mer civil rights attorney with the
NAACP Legal and Educational
Fund who donated a vast collec-
tion of her family’s black memo-
rabilia to the PSU Library, earned
her certificate in the program in
1976. She said she took classes
from the program — and contin-
ues to support it — through her
desire to learn “about our history
as black people both in Oregon
and the in the history of the U.S.”
“The public school system then
and probably now does little to
teach race history and the true sto-
ry of how black people (and other
people of color) have contributed
to and been treated in this coun-
try,” she said. “I always knew
there had to be more information
than I had been given in school but
I had no idea so much information
had been suppressed.”
Initially, the program focused
on the African American experi-
ence, based on what was happen-
ing around the country at the time.
The few years before its found-
ing saw marches on Washington,
D.C. and in the American South,
the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the
assassinations of both Malcolm X
and Martin Luther King, Jr., the
founding of the Black Panthers in
1966, numerous race-fueled riots
in American cities, and the emer-
gence of the Black Power move-
ment.
The program also had the mis-
sion of providing assistance and
support to Portland’s black com-
munity.
“At that time the majority of
Portland black residents resided in
an area known as Albina,” recalled
Phil McLaurin, the center’s first
director. “Black Studies offered
courses to Albina-area residents
at a PSU-funded facility known as
Albina Presence, and was actively
involved in all issues impacting
the community residents.”
The mission broadened in the
ensuing years to include courses
on the black experience in Europe,
the Caribbean and Latin America.
It added travel opportunities, and
next December will offer study in
Santiago de Cuba and has plans to
develop a study trip to New York
City — probably the most diverse
black population in the United
States.
The curriculum is multidis-
ciplinary, covering history, so-
ciology, cultural anthropology,
literature, film and other fields.
Although many believe that only
black students take courses in
Black Studies, Jackson said it’s
really for everybody.
c ontinued on p age 14