click >Golden West Historic Display Preview-Panels.PDF<click

fwilliam@pdx.edu wrote: Hi Will, There was a photographer from the Oregonian there and I know that Michael Chappie Grice also took a lot of pictures. It was a fantastic evening and the only thing missing was you. Congratulations!

Felicia Williams

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source:by Brian Stimson, The Skanner
October 29, 2009

Anthony I. Allen never knew W.D. Allen, his grandfather and the original owner of the Golden West Hotel, but he knows all the stories. From the time he was a child growing up in Los Angeles, Anthony Allen learned all about Portland’s historic Black hotel — located at 7th and Broadway Downtown — one of the only formal lodging houses in town that catered to African Americans in the first few decades of the 20th century.

On Oct. 22, Allen and many others – including PSU Black Studies Professor Dr. Darrell Millner, W.D. Allen’s great-granddaughter Nicole Allen nallen@pdx.edu, City Commissioner Randy Leonard — gathered at Carlton Hart Architects to celebrate the unveiling of the new Golden West Historical Display. Visible from the street, the display features photos, historical descriptions and even an audio guide to what was once the center of African American culture in Portland.

Pictured above is Anthony I. Allen (right), Bill Hart of Carlton Hart Architects (center), who helped design the panels, and a supporter at Thursday’s event on 10.22.09.

Downtown library goes green with new ecoroof (PDF)

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http://goldenwest.wordpress.com/2009/11/07/unveiling/

>> Greetings Everyone: I am using this earlier email to get all of your email addresses. GREAT event on Thursday & many thanks to EV evarmitage@centralcityconcern.org for wonderful coordination & all of you great speakers. It was a grand success with so much positive energy in Bill’s office (major thanks to Bill & Carleton-Hart for hosting.

Will – we missed you terribly and you got the recognition that you deserve! I hope you are feeling better.

EV – please extend thanks to Robert from all of us, and the rest of the CC team. It was an unforgettable evening all around and first rate, from start to finish.Thanks again –Cathy Galbraith

Bosco-Milligan Foundation

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Will – I’m so sorry you’re not feeling well, we missed you at the Golden West exhibit celebration last night. It was a great event with over 160 people there and wonderful energy. The speeches and music went well and people were mingling, looking at the exhibit, and having a good time. You were specifically thanked by Ed Blackburn and Jackie Peterson for all your work making the project happen. And now the exhibit is up on the building for a long time to come, for anyone to see and hear. Thanks for your major role in moving this all forward and making it happen. – EV

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Will, It was a very moving and impactful experience for me and my wife to learn more about Blacks in Portland. We are close friends with Dick and Nola Bogle. Thanks for the picture and please keep me on your mailing list for any future events. Best Wishes, George

More “Unveiling” Photos |  New Golden West Historical Display

African-American-Historical-District.Com

fwilliam@pdx.edu wrote:
> Hi Will,
>
> There was a photographer from the Oregonian there and I know that Michael Chappie Grice also took a lot of pictures. It was a fantastic evening and the only thing missing was you. Congratulations!
>
> Felicia Williams
>
>
> Quoting INFO :
>
>> All =
>> I only could i find words…
>> Anymore pic to share?…
>> see link
>> “Unveiling” Golden West Historic Event:
>> http://tinyurl.com/ylln3n8
>> peace
>> will b.
>> ——– Original Message ——–
>> Subject: RE: Golden West History Exhibit Unveiling: October 22nd! THANKS
>> Date: Mon, 26 Oct 2009 11:57:54 -0700
>> From: Cathy Galbraith
>> To: ‘EV Armitage’ , ‘WILL BENNETT’ , , ‘michael gandsey’ , , , ‘Billy Anfield’ , ‘Jackie ‘ , ‘bill hart’ ,
>> References:
>>
>> Greetings Everyone:
>>
>> I am using this earlier email to get all of your email addresses.
>> GREAT event on Thursday & many thanks to EV for wonderful coordination & all
>> of you great speakers. It was a grand success with so much positive energy
>> in Bill’s office (major thanks to Bill & Carleton-Hart for hosting.)
>>
>> Will – we missed you terribly and you got the recognition that you deserve!
>> I hope you are feeling better.
>>
>> EV – please extend thanks to Robert from all of us, and the rest of the CC
>> team.
>>
>> It was an unforgettable evening all around and first rate, from start to
>> finish.
>> Thanks again – Cathy Galbraith,
>> Bosco-Milligan Foundation
>>
>> GOLDEN WEST PROJECT
>> http://goldenwest.wordpress.com
>> BUILDING A NETWORK FOR PRESERVATION OF
>> PORTLAND’S & OREGON’S AFRICAN AMERICAN
>> EXPERIENCE/HISTORY…AND MORE!!!

african-american-historical-district.com

Source: The National Museum of African American History and Culture

In describing the legendary gospel singer, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said: “A voice like hers comes along once in a millennium.”

african-american-historical-district.com

Exhibit Honors the History of African-Americans in Downtown PortlandOn Thursday, October 22, 2009,

Central City Concern will host an unveiling celebration for a newly installed permanent exterior exhibit on two sides of the Golden West Building, former center of Portland’s African-American social and business life in the first decades of the twentieth century, located at the corner of NW Everett and Broadway. The celebration is free and open to the public, from 5:00 – 6:30 p.m., at Carleton Hart Architects, 322 NW 8th Avenue. The event will feature timeless music from “Sweet Baby James” and remarks at 5:30 p.m. by City of Portland Commissioner Randy Leonard and members of the project advisory committee. No RSVP is required to attend the celebration; questions may be directed to EV Armitage.

The exhibit tells a social and ethnic story of the vibrant African-American community in Portland in the early 1900s and the successes and challenges of its residents.  “In that early generation of the Black community here, you could find the very powerful strains of what you might call pursuit of the American dream,” said Dr. Darrell Millner, Professor in the Black Studies Department at Portland State University and a consultant on the exhibit.

Central City Concern (CCC) owns the Golden West Building which is one of the earliest architectural landmarks of African-American history in Portland. “It’s our great pleasure to celebrate this building’s historic value,” said Executive Director Ed Blackburn.

The exhibit consists of six visual panels on the exterior of the building and a visitor activated sound component. Curator Dr. Jacqueline Peterson-Loomis of Washington State University-Vancouver and the Old Town History Project worked with an Advisory committee composed of community members and historians to create the display.

“So much of the neighborhood’s rich history is unknown to Portland residents,” said Dr. Peterson-Loomis. “This street level installation is a first step – and a long-term goal of the Old Town History Project –  in bringing the neighborhood’s multiethnic history to life in a series of public street level exhibits and soundscapes.”

The history display was made possible in part by grants from the City of Portland Vision Into Action program, and from Oregon Humanities, a statewide nonprofit organization and an independent affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities, which funds Oregon Humanities’ grant program. For an advance look at the panels, click here.

A Golden West Project for more info go to>>> Amateur Historian Pushes Behind the Scenes History & http://www.visionpdx.com/news/pressGoldenWest_8-7-08.pdf & African-American-Historical District.Com/GOLDEN_WEST_PROJECT

Will T. Bennett

Create Your Badge

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Will, thanks to you every City Bureau’s Diversity Committee has a DVD of “Local Color”. The Bureaus have been showing it regularly and I have facilitated a number of small group discussions following the showing of the video. We also showed the film as part of our 2008 Black History Month Celebration in the auditorium in the Portland Building.

I am also facilitating a showing of the film at our upcoming16th Annual Public Employees Diversity Conference. This will provide an opportunity for employees and managers from 8 public agencies in the 4 county area to view Local Color as well.

The City has a committee to plan an implement Black History MonthActivities. If you have ideas for us don’t hesitate to let me know. I’m on vacation until Monday.

As always your support of local Black History is much appreciated.

Donny R. Adair
Human Resources Coordinator
Diversity Development/Affirmative Action Office
City of Portland, Bureau of Human Resources
1120 SW 5th Avenue, Rm. 404
Portland, Or. 97204
(503) 823-4169
Cultural Competency is a journey not a destination!

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Youth Day » City of Portland Celebrates Black History Month

BLACK HISTORY FILM SERIES 2009 » “Local Color: The History of Racism in Oregon”

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Ku Klux Klan

AFRICAN-AMERICAN-HISTORICAL-DISTRICT.COM

Life Story: Earl Winchester

Posted by Joan Harvey, The Oregonian Joan Harvey, The Oregonian –> July 25, 2009 09:00AM

Earl Henry Winchester

Born: Oct. 5, 1921, in Kinsley, Kan.

Died: July 11, 2009, in Portland

Survivors: Wife, Virginia B.; daughter, JoAnn “Jody”; sons, James, Phillip and Peter; sisters, Mellow Dee Barnett, La Verna Fuller, Dorothy Marshall, Elva June Terry, Norma Kennedy; and one grandchild

Service: Has been held

Remembrances: Bethel A.M.E. Church

Earl Winchester in concert at Wilshire Methodist Church in 1979.

One Sunday morning in 1979, Earl Winchester stood in Wilshire Methodist Church in Northeast Portland and lifted his voice in song.

It was a brooding, woeful concert of what he called Negro spirituals, sung in the traditional way he insisted on, a lone male voice with simple piano accompaniment. The tall, distinguished-looking man was dressed in an impeccable gray suit and wine-colored tie, his demeanor and voice echoing his deep religious conviction and the heritage he knew so well.

Continue reading the entry…

– Joan Harvey: joanharvey@news.oregonian.com

AFRICAN-AMERICAN-HISTORICAL-DISTRICT.COM

State of black Oregon: precarious

Bleeding_of_albina.pdf

Sharon Peters, who has a daughter headed to college a son who’s a senior in high school, waits at the state WorkSource Central Metro office in North Portland. She’s looking for work, but can’t find it. Black Oregonians are twice as likely to be unemployed as white Oregonians.

Take a moment and consider the havoc Oregon’s record-level 12.2 percent unemployment rate has wreaked across the state. Hard-working people jobless for months. Homes lost and cars repossessed. Safety nets evaporated.

Now imagine that what is now the third-highest state unemployment rate in the nation has been your community’s jobless rate for the past 30 years. And that during this economic freefall the unemployment rate could be 20 percent or higher.

This is the reality for black Oregonians.

“If Oregon’s unemployment rate is considered a crisis, then the black community has been in crisis for years, ” says Marcus Mundy, president of the Urban League of Portland. “It’s a scary place right now because when things go bad for everyone, it’s exponentially so for black folks.”

This week, the depth of that crisis will become clear as the Urban League releases its first assessment in 17 years of how the state’s tiny black population — smaller than four sellout crowds at the Rose Garden — fares in Oregon.

The civil rights organization brought in educators, policy specialists and academics to research and document key areas of black life and hired the consulting firm ECONorthwest to collect data.

The study reveals a community that falls near or at the bottom of almost every quality of life indicator in the state, including infant mortality, high school graduation, proximity to environmental toxins, incarceration and poverty rates.

But most troubling to advocates is the devastation that the financial disaster has wrought on the state’s black population that already struggles with a poverty rate more than twice the state average.

The unemployment rate for African Americans in Oregon has consistently been double that of white Oregonians, even in good times. Black unemployment probably is now close to 24 percent.

Black Oregonians are losing homes and wealth in what is nationally projected to be the largest loss of black wealth in U.S. history, according to a national report.

“The effects are very devastating in a community where this high of a percentage are out of work,” says Karen Gibson, an urban studies professor at Portland State University who wrote a piece on employment for the report. “It’s like an invisible, silent disaster. How can they maintain their family, start a business, be a role model?”

•

When the Urban League of Portland moved to take new stock of the state’s black population, the financial disaster had not yet dug in its heels in Oregon.

The national Urban League issues an annual State of Black America, but the local chapter has channeled its energy in recent years into rebuilding after years of turmoil and dysfunction.

Discuss:To discuss this article or talk more about race, go to Nikole Hannah-Jones’ race blog: oregonlive.com/race

Read the report:

The Urban League of Portland releases the State of Black Oregon report Monday. Read it online at www.ulpdx.org

For help:

Housing or foreclosure assistance: Contact the African American Alliance for Homeownership at www.aaah.org or 503-595-3517

Job search assistance: www.worksourceoregon.org or 800-237-3710

Mundy, a California transplant who came on board as interim president in 2006 and as president January 2008, said he decided the chapter needed the report after running into what he sees as Oregonians’ progressive blind spot: race.

“I kept hearing things that I couldn’t verify, like, ‘Oh, it’s not so bad,’” Mundy says. “We weren’t looking for problems. We were looking for facts. It’s hard to advocate without the numbers.”

As the economic meltdown took its toll, the report gained a new urgency.

“The state of black Oregon is precarious,” says Mundy. “We are on the precipice of turning back many gains of the civil rights movement in a real way.”

Black Oregonians are particularly vulnerable to recession, says Gibson of Portland State.

Because of the state’s history of discrimination and segregation, the population is small and has less wealth and lower incomes than black communities nationally. Black Oregonians found it difficult to enter certain fields and to attend college, Gibson says, so are newer to many professions and therefore among the first to be let go in hard times. Workers also are concentrated in the service and manufacturing sectors, which are lower paying and more likely to cut jobs.

Unemployment figures measure the numbers of jobless Americans who are actively seeking work, but can’t find it.

The state keeps no monthly data on unemployment by race, so the latest figures on black unemployment come from last year, before Oregon’s overall unemployment rate jumped more than 6 percentage points.

But economists say the doubling trend probably is continuing for black Oregonians. A new study lends credence to the high rate.

The Economic Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, D.C., released a state-by-state report last week on racial disparities in unemployment, but Oregon’s black population was too small to measure. However, Michigan — suffering like Oregon with anoverall unemployment rate higher than 12 percent — recorded a black unemployment rate of 22.8 percent for the second quarter of the year. That’s close to the peak national unemployment rate during the Great Depression.

Sharon Peters is engulfed in the struggle to find a job. The 45-year-old suddenly found herself searching for work after her husband died in November. She graduated from Spelman College where she studied pre-med, but she hasn’t worked in recent years.

She has networked, stopped by businesses and sent out resume after resume, but hasn’t gotten a single call back. With her daughter headed to college in Los Angeles this fall and her son entering his senior year of high school, the worry shows on her face.

“It’s bad,” she says as she waits at the North Portland unemployment office where she hoped to sign up for a medical certification course. “I’m told I am either overqualified for some jobs and underqualified for others.”

Peters looks at her 17-year-old daughter, Ta’Nia. “I’m really concerned about the future because I have people depending on me.”

An employment specialist calls her back and says her online resume looks good. Then he runs it through a program that matches skills with job openings.

No current matches, the screen says. He gives a sympathetic smile, then says, “That’s not that uncommon given the way the economy is going.”

•

Unemployment among African Americans in Portland has been worse than for African Americans in every major West Coast city and the nation as a whole since at least 1979.

And even for those who’ve tried to beat the odds through education, a college degree provides little buffer.

“The unemployment rate for blacks with some college education is consistently higher than whites who dropped out of high school,” says William Darity, a professor of public policy, African American studies and economics at Duke University. “For folks who think that discrimination is passe, I don’t know how they explain that.”

In April, the unemployment rate among African American college graduates nationally was 7.2 percent, nearly twice as high as that of their white counterparts and significantly higher than that of Hispanics and Asians with four-year degrees, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The impact, Darity says, is a population in which many are unable to get a foothold in the American dream.

“It damages the progress that has been achieved by some segments of the black population that we call the middle class,” he says.

Don Wesley is one of those people.

In May, after nearly 24 years with Nike, Wesley went to work only to leave a few hours later, carrying a box brimming with the contents of his desk. He had known layoffs were coming as Nike trimmed its staff. But he had been told not to worry.

“In conversations with my boss, I was thinking I should be OK,” he says. “Then I was told as part of the reorganization I was not being retained.”

Wesley’s carefully ordered world crashed — the one he had constructed since he graduated with a business degree from Memphis State University.

He was born 52 years ago in Birmingham, Ala. His mother, who worked as a domestic for white families, pushed her four children to college after Wesley’s father died when he was 6.

Wesley joined Nike in Tennessee and worked his way through the ranks when a promotion brought him, somewhat reluctantly, to Oregon in 1996. “As white as it is now,” he recalls. “It was whiter back then.”

Wesley made a life for himself here. Bought a house. Raised his kids. Spent frugally and saved lavishly.

“The only thing I’ve done for the last 23 years is get up and go to work and do a good job like I was raised to do — then suddenly Don Wesley, who’s been working since he was 14 years old, doesn’t have a job,” he says. “I broke down. I carried my boxes to my car, cried a little bit, then came home and cried a little bit, drank a beer, and cried a little more.”

Even though he has a daughter in college, Wesley is OK for now. He got a severance package from Nike, where he worked with computers. But as weeks without work have turned to months, he worries that the comfortable life he’s built could slip away.

“We’re going to be OK,” he says. “But if I haven’t found a job in a couple of months, it may be a different story.”

And then there’s that nagging feeling.

“Even in the professional ranks, you still have the old boys club,” he says. “I’m not saying that’s what happened to me, but you get into circles of influence and we might do a good job but not necessarily get in those circles. And if there are only five slots and there’s five people in the circle and you’re not one, then you’re out. I don’t know if it’s racial or not, but where it is race is whether we get invited into those circles.”

•

The scope of inequities between black Oregonians and the rest of the state’s residents aren’t a simple matter of individuals making bad choices, Mundy says.

The Urban League contends the problems are systemic — and has a list of recommendations that it plans to push with local and state government officials to change the system. Among them:

As the state works on its economic stimulus, ensure racial minorities get job training and work, particularly with green and infrastructure jobs.

Reform welfare programs so people receiving assistance don’t lose benefits when they want to work.

Make sure African Americans get equal access to business loans and government contracts.

The group also wants the state to expand its earned income tax credit to help people transition out of poverty; strengthen laws and enforcement concerning predatory lending; preserve affordable housing; and help more African Americans buy homes.

The report will set the Urban League’s agenda for the next two years.

“It’s oxymoronic for Oregonians to call themselves progressive and be aware of the facts in this report — they obliterate the notion that we are post-racial,” Mundy says. “This is not a progressive state if it continues to let this exist. I want them to be as outraged about this as I am.”

– Nikole Hannah-Jones; nhannahjones@news.oregonian.com

Bleeding_of_albina.pdf

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