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The Pioneer Log

February 3, 2012
News
Brady
Hales
Smith
Dont miss this opportunity to hear
three leading candidates for mayor
E||een Brady Char||e Ha|es Jefferson Sm|th
share their views on education,
the environment, and sustainability
in Portland.
President Glassner will moderate
and be joined by a panel of students
and faculty from our three schools.
Monday, February 13, 7 p.m.
Agnes Flanagan Chapel
A reception will follow in Stamm Dining Room.
Th|s forum |s free, but advanced
reg|strat|on |s requ|red.
www.lclark.edu
Mayoral Candidates Forum
Monday, February 13, 7 p.m.
PARTI CI PATE I N DEMOCRACY.
I NFORM YOUR VOTE!
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Student-created exhibit
honors civil rights
heroes, local & beyond
A tour to historically black colleges by Roosevelt High School students,
inspired students to create an exhibition on Freedom Riders and
Portlanders who were involved in the civil rights movement of the 1960s.
An exhibit honoring 15 local civil rights
heroes, as well as the original Freedom Rid-
ers, concluded its tour of Portland last Friday
in the Lewis & Clark Graduate School con-
ference center.
Te Freedom Riders & Fighters exhibit,
created and conducted by Roosevelt High
School students, was inspired by a tour of
historically black colleges and universities
that several Roosevelt students participated
in last year.
A small group of students learned about
the limited access to higher education that
many minorities and poor students face, and
how the black rights movement centered
around universities and university students.
In addition, the trip contextualized the situ-
ation that many Roosevelt students face in
the modern civil rights struggle: the right to
higher education.
Roosevelt High School is located in the
most ethnically diverse neighborhood in Or-
egon; the school is composed of over 60%
minorities. In addition, Roosevelt High
School bears the unwelcome distinction of
being the most poverty-stricken school in
the state, as measured by free and reduced
lunch participation.
Te school also has the lowest graduation
rate in Oregon. Roosevelts College and Ca-
reer Transition Center conceived the HBCU
tour and Freedom Riders & Fighters exhibit
as parts of a massive overhaul of their college
preparatory program. Te student direct-
ed program is intended to inspire students
to become more involved and to empower
them with the idea that they are capable of
achieving a change, even if it is on the local
level.
Assisted by University of Portland edu-
cation students, the participants collected
interviews, photographs, quotes and stories
from Portland area citizens working to im-
prove the lives of the disadvantaged through
community outreach and their own barrier
breaking accomplishments. Emphasizing
the contributions of Portlanders to both the
black rights and womens rights movements,
the multimedia display that was created fea-
tured a variety of individuals, from the op-
erator of a local food bank to two original
participants in the Freedom Rides. A sepa-
rate display featured a chronological history
of the origins and progression of the Free-
dom Rides, which were a series of bus rides
in the segregated South during the height of
the Black Rights movement.
Intended to test Supreme Court decisions
that ruled that segregated Interstate buses
were illegal, thousands of activists nation-
wide focked to bus stations throughout the
south and rode buses between states, even
when threatened with violence and arrest.
A number of the participants of the Free-
dom Rides were university students, and
their fght for social justice fgures a large role
in the motivation that the Roosevelt students
feel in their fght to spread the message of
the inequalities faced by students of the past
and present.
Te Freedom Riders project is designed
to be an ongoing one, with future genera-
tions of students contributing more name
and stories. Te Roosevelt students hope
that the Freedom Riders exhibit will serve as
a positive and inspirational legacy for those
students that succeed their class.
BY JOSH FREEMAN
Staff Writer
ILLUSTRATION BY SAMANTHA SARVET
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