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About The skanner. (Portland, Or.) 1975-2014 | View Entire Issue (Oct. 3, 2012)
News ASALH: Reflections on African American History Michelle Duster, great-grand daughter of the freedom fight- er Ida B. Wells-Barnett, who has put together books for irst there was Bill. He drove us in his taxi from the young people called “Ida in her Own Words.” Michelle is Pittsburgh airport and welcomed us with a generous leading an effort to build a monument to the memory of Ida spirit to a new experience: The 97th meeting of the B. Wells-Barnett. This monument is of special importance Association for the Study of African American Life and since the housing project in Chicago built in 1941 that bore History. It was my first visit to this conference, but ASALH her name is now closed. Michelle has raised $50,000 of a has been with us for almost a century. Based in Washington, projected $300,000 to build a fitting artistic monument to D.C., and founded by the eminent historian, Carter G. her great-grandmother, information about which is avail- Woodson in the mid-1920s, ASALH brought us Black His- able at www.idabwellsmonument.org. tory Month and a consistent forum for community-based Everything about this meeting was both historic and per- and scholarly research. The sonal; in that connection was celebration that will come its power. I was able to greet with ASALH’s centennial is Sonia Sanchez and tell her “ Say We Are Here: Culture, Community and something to be celebrated far personally how much I loved Activism across Four Generations of Black and wide. What better time her. I thanked her for being on Oregonians ,” drawn from the Verdell A. Burdine than now to plan for an Ore- the PSU campus in the early gon presence at this important and Otto G. Rutherford Family Collection, opened 70s, reading her poetry, and marker in our history? again in the early 1980s, when on Sept. 24 and will run through December at PSU’s I attended this meeting to she addressed the National Library. A special celebration and panel discussion participate in an author’s sign- Black United Front Conven- will be held on Nov. 8 at 5:30 pm. ing event for my book, tion which met in Portland at published last year, “Remem- Vancouver Avenue Baptist bering the Power of Words.” Church. I also was able to My book was especially welcomed because the theme of personally thank another of my sheroes, Paula Giddings, at the meeting was “Black Women in American Culture and a lunch Patricia arranged for the three of us. Paula Giddings History.” My co-author, Patricia Schechter, and I were just wrote the acclaimed book, “When and Where I Enter: The one pair among 62 authors of books whose titles and stories Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America,” I found stirring, like that of Shirley Sherrod, “The Courage back in 1984, a book that I and so many others read avidly to Hope: How I Stood up to the Politics of Fear” and of and have treasured for many years. By way of thanks, I by Avel L. Gordly F Page 8 The Portland Skanner October 3, 2012 The author signing books at the Association for the Study of African American Life and History convention gave her a copy of my own book. I attended a very special commemorative panel put together by the Association of Black Women Historians which honored the “Founders of the Field,” who started the organization 33 years ago in 1979. Rosalyn Terborg-Penn, emeritus Professor History of Morgan State University, warmly greeted Patricia and me. We had met earlier this year in Berkeley, Calif., at another history conference and we all delighted in the momentum of our learning and sharing now renewed at ASALH. Terborg- Penn and her colleague Darlene Clark Hine of Northwestern University, are the co-editors of “The Ency- clopedia of Black Women in America,” now in its second edition. At this session, a special memory of my education- al experience at Harvard back in the 90s with Judge A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr., was evoked by the remarks of his widow, the accomplished Harvard historian Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham. She told her audience a story about discov- ering the archive that went into her book about Nannie Helen Burroughs and the women of the Black Baptist church. Higginbotham more or less bumped into all the boxes stored in Burroughs’ school, still operating in Wash- ington D.C., when she was a young graduate student at Howard University in the early 1980s. Her story under- scored the importance of talking to community elders, preserving our documentation, and sharing our stories. Each expert, scholar, and artist at the sessions that I attend- ed talked about black women who answered the call to activism with an enduring passion for justice. At a panel on “The Importance of Having African Amer- ican Archivists Process the Collections of African Americans,” a number of things stood out for me. First, the presentations affirmed and confirmed that the work we are doing to preserve our history in Oregon is of vital impor- tance. We are accomplishing this work in the Oregon Black Pioneers organization, based in Salem, at the Portland State University Library, where the Rutherford (and Gordly) papers reside, and at Oregon Historical Society, which host- ed Vancouver Avenue Baptist Church’s exhibit in 2009 and will soon open a new display on Black Pullman Porters in the Pacific Northwest. October is National Archives Month, the theme of which this year is, “The Power of Col- laboration.” How fitting that African American history is moving forward in exactly such ways in our community. And how important it is that we continue to expand this work and bring as many people across generations and neighborhoods together to do it. The exhibit “Say We Are Here: Culture, Community and Activism across Four Gen- erations of Black Oregonians,” drawn from the Verdell A. Burdine and Otto G. Rutherford Family Collection, opened on Sept. 24 and will run through December at PSU’s Library. A special celebration and panel discussion will be held on Nov. 8 at 5:30 pm. You are warmly invited to these events. Bring a friend. Bring a neighbor. Bring a family member, old or young, and get involved. It is an amazing journey from the past into the future, through our shared present. At the end of our weekend in Pittsburgh, there was Bill, again. He had given us his card when he dropped us off at the hotel and invited us to call him when the conference was over. During that first drive across the city that he knew so well, Bill spoke with special love of his eight children and eight grandchildren. “I can catch all my kids!” he proudly told us, as he regaled us with little snapshots of himself, their “Pap-Pap,” enjoying everything from swimming, to bicycling, to skateboarding with his kids. “It doesn’t mat- ter if I fall down a lot or even just stand around and watch them,” he noted, “they just want me there.” Bill’s devotion and genuine presence with his family struck me. I was touched when he brought his wife and one daughter with him to see us off at the end of the weekend. “Now you know my heart,” he said as we hugged good bye.
