November 22, 2017 The Skanner Page 3
News
cont’d from pg 1
Black, heavily gentri-
fied Northeast Portland
neighborhoods. Surveys
are anonymous.
“This is much more
than about a physical
building,” Guerrero said
at a Thursday-morn-
ing press conference in
SEI’s auditorium. “This
is about establishing and
supporting a thriving
school community.”
“This is a key landmark
with a history of betray-
al,” said Tony Hopson,
SEI’s founder and CEO.
Hopson and Guerrero sat
on a panel alongside Al-
bina Head Start director
and longtime education
activist Ron Herndon,
as well as the Rev. Dr. Le-
roy Haynes of the Albina
Ministerial Alliance and
Joe McFerrin, president
of Portland Opportuni-
ties
Industrialization
Center.
In October, the school
district’s plan to reopen
the historically Black
middle school — which
closed in 2012 — ap-
peared to have hit a snag
as school board members
voiced concerns about
environmental hazards
in the area. Hopson not-
ed the previous promise
that Tubman would re-
open in 2017 led to the
closure of SEI Academy.
Albina Head Start di-
rector and longtime
education activist Ron
Herndon said the envi-
ronmental concerns are
not new. The Tubman
site is near the intersec-
tion of North Flint and
Russell, uphill from In-
terstate-5.
“The same arguments
Exhibit
Seattle Black Panthers
One of the original founders of the Seattle Black Panthers, Aaron Dixon, points out another member of the Seattle Chapter to Kathleen
Cleaver, the former Oakland Black Panther Party Central Committee communications secretary during the Seattle Chapter of the
Black Panther Party’s 50th Anniversary fundraiser Nov. 18 at the Ruins. The event was held to raise money for the 50th Anniversary
Celebration of Seattle’s Black Panther Chapter, to take place April, 2018. The fundraiser also featured a welcome by Aaron Dixon, spoken
word performances by several poets — including activists Nikkita Oliver and Jerrel Davis — and a performance by the Septimus Band.
Grace
cont’d from pg 1
tions is no, do I want to spend
my time or my money with this
company?
“I think knowledge is power and
when you understand what your
power is, hopefully you make
different choices and for me the
civic and social justice,” Grace
said. “It’s about not being afraid
to say, ‘I support companies that
support me.’”
Grace is the senior vice presi-
dent of U.S. strategic community
alliances and consumer engage-
ment at Nielsen, a market re-
search firm best known for mea-
suring television ratings.
She will be the keynote speaker
at The Skanner Foundation’s Mar-
tin Luther King, Jr. Day Breakfast,
which takes place from 8:30 a.m.
to 10:30 a.m. at the Red Lion Hotel
on the River on Hayden Island.
Grace has been with Nielsen for
13 years, and for the past seven
years has overseen the produc-
tion of a report on Black consum-
ers.
The most recent report, “Af-
rican American Women: Our
Science, Her Magic,” hones in on
the consumption habits of Black
women. The title is a nod to the
hashtag campaign #blackgirl-
magic, a social media campaign
about celebrating Black women’s
“
When you un-
derstand what
your power is,
hopefully you
make different
choices
accomplishments and ideas.
The report focuses in part on
the social media habits of Black
women.
Not only are Black women more
likely to use social media, Grace
said, they use it for a wide variety
of purposes.
“We are 86 percent more likely
to spend five hours or more on
social media platforms. We don’t
just use social media to look at cat
videos. We use it to galvanize and
share opinions,” she said.
Black women’s purchasing hab-
its also influence people in their
own communities — 47 percent
say people come to them for ad-
vice on purchasing decisions —
and trends and styles that become
popular with Black women tend
to influence trends among other
demographics and ethnicities.
Nielsen’s 2011 report on Black
consumers was the first to hone in
on a specific racial demographic.
Since then, the company has be-
gun producing reports on Asian
and Hispanic consumers as well.
While Nielsen reports are pre-
pared for businesses who want to
understand demographic trends
and how best to advertise to their
target audiences, Grace said she
also wants to help consumers un-
derstand their own buying power
and think more carefully when
making purchasing decisions.
“When you don’t stop to think
about your collective power it’s a
missed opportunity,” Grace said.
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was happening on the national stage.
Nevertheless, through the dedicated
efforts of volunteers, the Pioneers have
composed a regional portrait of the
struggle towards equality from vari-
ous archives, private collections, and
personal and public stories. The result
is a larger cultural and legal context
of discrimination and displacement at
that time.
“It’s important to point out that the
photo work in (the exhibit) is really
of Oregon’s time and Oregon people,”
said Black Pioneers president Wil-
lie Richardson, who noted many civil
rights movement retrospectives focus
on southern states. “You’re going to be
looking at your hometown folks who
were activists.”
A new Black identity
In the 1960s, Black culture went
through tremendous change, giving
rise to a new sense of Black identity
with Afro-centric style. So part of the
fun of the exhibit, the Pioneers told The
Skanner, is seeing how the some of the
movers and shakers of Oregon commu-
nities — including Portland State pro-
“
It’s important to
point out that the
photo work in (the
exhibit) is really of
Oregon’s time and
Oregon people
fessor Darrell Millner and education
advocates Ron Herndon and Joyce Har-
ris — looked back then.
“I think one of our lessons learned
from prior exhibits is that because
there is so much material, and so much
to say , that you tend to want to say it
all,” said Carr. “And yet in an exhibit,
you have to find that balance between
saying it and showing it — or having
people experience it.”
In addition to rare photographs of
the movement’s key players, “Racing
to Change” includes artifacts, captions
and quotes in place of heavy texts, as
well as interactive components, in-
cluding a chance for visitors to act out
scenes from the Sidney Poitier classic
film, “A Raisin in the Sun.”
Students as catalysts for change
Visitors can also experience a mock
dormitory room – decorated with post-
ers of Black Power icons and various
paraphernalia of the era — to get a
sense of what a college campus might
look like back then.
“A lot of what was going on then was
centered on college campuses, so you’re
looking at eastern Oregon, southern
Oregon, that’s where the action was
taking place,” said Carr. “The more re-
search we did, the more we found how
important young people were as a cata-
lyst for that across the state.”
PHOTO BY HUGH ACKROYD (B. 1913)
“
This is a
key land-
mark with
a history
of betrayal
you hear now came up
then,” Herndon said.
“Can’t you come up with
a new fake?”
He added that if officials
are concerned about air
quality, they need to test
the air near Lincoln and
Benson Polytechnic High
Schools as well. Benson
is situated in Northeast
Portland near I-84; I-405
runs through southwest
Portland near Lincoln
High School.
“I’m just as concerned
about those little kids,”
Herndon said.
Guerrero said the site
would need to be as-
sessed thoroughly, but
also that he had so far
seen nothing in the re-
cords that should fur-
ther delay the school’s
reopening.
Herndon offered a
brief history of the mid-
dle school, which opened
in the early 1980s as a re-
action to the perverse ef-
fects of school desegrega-
tion. In the 1980s, Black
students were bussed
from Northeast Portland
to 32 different schools
around the metropolitan
area. The long distance
from home made it hard
for Black students to
participate in extracur-
ricular activities; White
schools opened pre-
schools and accelerated
programs Black children
couldn’t access.
While some of the ar-
guments for and against
reopening the school
continue, he said, one
thing is different: Guer-
rero’s engagement.
Guerrero, a former
deputy superintendent
from San Francisco, was
hired in August and
started his job Oct. 1.
“We hope today’s press
conference will be a cel-
ebration of what will be,
not a continuation of
what has been,” Hopson
said.
PHOTO BY SUSAN FRIED
Tubman
NAACP picketing City Hall. Sept. 30, 1963
Carr herself was actively involved in
the civil rights movement in Los Ange-
les, where she attended a small private
college.
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