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NORTHWEST NEWS

A Conservative Quest to Limit Diversity Programs Gains Momentum in States

In support of DEI, Oregon and Washington have forged ahead with legislation to expand their emphasis on diversity, equity and inclusion in government and education.

Epiphanny Prince Hired by Liberty in Front Office Job Day After Retiring

A day after announcing her retirement, Epiphanny Prince has a new job working with the New York Liberty as director of player and community engagement. Prince will serve on the basketball operations and business staffs, bringing her 14 years of WNBA experience to the franchise. 

The Drug War Devastated Black and Other Minority Communities. Is Marijuana Legalization Helping?

A major argument for legalizing the adult use of cannabis after 75 years of prohibition was to stop the harm caused by disproportionate enforcement of drug laws in Black, Latino and other minority communities. But efforts to help those most affected participate in the newly legal sector have been halting. 

Lessons for Cities from Seattle’s Racial and Social Justice Law 

 Seattle is marking the first anniversary of its landmark Race and Social Justice Initiative ordinance. Signed into law in April 2023, the ordinance highlights race and racism because of the pervasive inequities experienced by people of color

NEWS BRIEFS

Mt. Tabor Park Selected for National Initiative

Mt. Tabor Park is the only Oregon park and one of just 24 nationally to receive honor. ...

OHCS, BuildUp Oregon Launch Program to Expand Early Childhood Education Access Statewide

Funds include million for developing early care and education facilities co-located with affordable housing. ...

Governor Kotek Announces Chief of Staff, New Office Leadership

Governor expands executive team and names new Housing and Homelessness Initiative Director ...

Governor Kotek Announces Investment in New CHIPS Child Care Fund

5 Million dollars from Oregon CHIPS Act to be allocated to new Child Care Fund ...

Boeing's financial woes continue, while families of crash victims urge US to prosecute the company

Boeing said Wednesday that it lost 5 million on falling revenue in the first quarter, another sign of the crisis gripping the aircraft manufacturer as it faces increasing scrutiny over the safety of its planes and accusations of shoddy work from a growing number of whistleblowers. ...

Authorities confirm 2nd victim of ex-Washington officer was 17-year-old with whom he had a baby

WEST RICHLAND, Wash. (AP) — Authorities on Wednesday confirmed that a body found at the home of a former Washington state police officer who killed his ex-wife before fleeing to Oregon, where he died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, was that of a 17-year-old girl with whom he had a baby. ...

Missouri hires Memphis athletic director Laird Veatch for the same role with the Tigers

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Missouri hired longtime college administrator Laird Veatch to be its athletic director on Tuesday, bringing him back to campus 14 years after he departed for a series of other positions that culminated with five years spent as the AD at Memphis. Veatch...

KC Current owners announce plans for stadium district along the Kansas City riverfront

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — The ownership group of the Kansas City Current announced plans Monday for the development of the Missouri River waterfront, where the club recently opened a purpose-built stadium for the National Women's Soccer League team. CPKC Stadium will serve as the hub...

OPINION

Op-Ed: Why MAGA Policies Are Detrimental to Black Communities

NNPA NEWSWIRE – MAGA proponents peddle baseless claims of widespread voter fraud to justify voter suppression tactics that disproportionately target Black voters. From restrictive voter ID laws to purging voter rolls to limiting early voting hours, these...

Loving and Embracing the Differences in Our Youngest Learners

Yet our responsibility to all parents and society at large means we must do more to share insights, especially with underserved and under-resourced communities. ...

Gallup Finds Black Generational Divide on Affirmative Action

Each spring, many aspiring students and their families begin receiving college acceptance letters and offers of financial aid packages. This year’s college decisions will add yet another consideration: the effects of a 2023 Supreme Court, 6-3 ruling that...

OP-ED: Embracing Black Men’s Voices: Rebuilding Trust and Unity in the Democratic Party

The decision of many Black men to disengage from the Democratic Party is rooted in a complex interplay of historical disenchantment, unmet promises, and a sense of disillusionment with the political establishment. ...

AFRICAN AMERICANS IN THE NEWS

Bishop stabbed during Sydney church service backs X's legal case to share video of the attack

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — A Sydney bishop who was stabbed repeatedly in an alleged extremist attack blamed on a teenager has backed X Corp. owner Elon Musk’s legal bid to overturn an Australian ban on sharing graphic video of the attack on social media. A live stream of the...

Biden just signed a bill that could ban TikTok. His campaign plans to stay on the app anyway

WASHINGTON (AP) — When President Joe Biden showed off his putting during a campaign stop at a public golf course in Michigan last month, the moment was captured on TikTok. Forced inside by a rainstorm, he competed with 13-year-old Hurley “HJ” Coleman IV to make putts on a...

2021 death of young Black man at rural Missouri home was self-inflicted, FBI tells AP

ST. LOUIS (AP) — A federal investigation has concluded that a young Black man died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound inside a rural Missouri home, not at the hands of the white homeowner who had a history of racist social media postings, an FBI official told The Associated Press Wednesday. ...

ENTERTAINMENT

Music Review: Jazz pianist Fred Hersch creates subdued, lovely colors on 'Silent, Listening'

Jazz pianist Fred Hersch fully embraces the freedom that comes with improvisation on his solo album “Silent, Listening,” spontaneously composing and performing tunes that are often without melody, meter or form. Listening to them can be challenging and rewarding. The many-time...

Book Review: 'Nothing But the Bones' is a compelling noir novel at a breakneck pace

Nelson “Nails” McKenna isn’t very bright, stumbles over his words and often says what he’s thinking without realizing it. We first meet him as a boy reading a superhero comic on the banks of a river in his backcountry hometown in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Georgia....

Cardi B, Queen Latifah and The Roots to headline the BET Experience concerts in Los Angeles

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Cardi B, Queen Latifah and The Roots will headline concerts to celebrate the return of the BET Experience in Los Angeles just days before the 2024 BET Awards. BET announced Monday the star-studded lineup of the concert series, which makes a return after a...

U.S. & WORLD NEWS

Columbia's president, no stranger to complex challenges, walks tightrope on student protests

Columbia University president Minouche Shafik is no stranger to navigating complex international issues, having...

US abortion battle rages on with moves to repeal Arizona ban and a Supreme Court case

Action in courts and state capitals around the U.S. this week have made it clear again: The overturning of Roe v....

Former tabloid publisher testifies about scheme to shield his old friend Trump from damaging stories

NEW YORK (AP) — The former publisher of the National Enquirer testified Thursday at Donald Trump's hush money...

Russia vetoes a UN resolution calling for the prevention of a dangerous nuclear arms race in space

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Russia on Wednesday vetoed a U.N. resolution sponsored by the United States and Japan...

A Chinese ship remains the focus of the investigation into Baltic Sea gas pipeline damaged last year

HELSINKI (AP) — A Chinese container ship remains the focus of an investigation into what caused the damage last...

Macron outlines his vision for Europe to become an assertive global power as war in Ukraine rages on

PARIS (AP) — French President Emmanuel Macron warned Thursday that Europe could “die” if it fails to build...

Caryn Rousseau the Associated Press

CHICAGO (AP) -- For six decades, civil rights pioneer Ida B. Wells was woven into the fabric of Chicago's South Side as the namesake of a public housing project.

A Rosa Parks-like figure during her era, the journalist and suffragist was so revered that 1930s leaders put her name on a project that promised good, affordable housing for working class families. Within a few decades, however, the homes deteriorated, growing more violent and becoming riddled with gangs and drugs - not as notorious as the city's Cabrini-Green public housing high rises or Robert Taylor Homes, but certainly not a monument to Wells' legacy.

Then, nearly a decade ago, the city tore the Wells housing project down, leaving the activist's great-granddaughter Michelle Duster and her family worried Wells wouldn't be remembered at all.

Now, to mark the 150th anniversary of Wells' birth in 2012, an effort is under way to build a sculpture to honor her legacy at the site of the housing development and renew her relevance for future generations.

"When the housing project was coming down we were like `Her name is going to be gone,'" Duster said, sitting in her South Side home, a portrait of her great-grandmother hanging on the wall. "Her name and what she did can't be lost with the housing project."

The Ida B. Wells Commemorative Art Committee is seeking $300,000 in donations after commissioning noted Chicago artist Richard Hunt to create the sculpture, which is expected to combine images of Wells with inscriptions of her writings. They have raised a little more than 10 percent of the money so far.

While Wells' name endures on a grade school and a professorship in the city, the monument will aim to reflect the full legacy of a woman who was born into slavery in Mississippi and went on to become a well-respected crusader against injustice and outspoken anti-lynching activist.

Orphaned at age 16, Wells was left to support her five siblings. She became a teacher and moved to Memphis, where she sued a railroad because she wasn't allowed to sit in the ladies coach. When she later became a journalist, Wells wrote about that incident and the lynchings of three of her male friends.

Her writings enraged others and led to Wells being forced to leave the South. She kept writing and speaking about lynching across the U.S. and England. She died in 1931 and is buried in Chicago.

Planning for the Ida B. Wells Homes started three years after her death, as a project of the Public Works Administration. The homes opened in 1941 and first lady Eleanor Roosevelt visited the complex, with its 1,662 units - more than 860 apartments and nearly 800 row houses and garden apartments.

By the 1990s, the housing complex had fallen to drugs and violence. In an infamous 1994 case, two boys, ages 10 and 11, dropped a 5-year-old boy to his death from a vacant 14-floor apartment. The boys were convicted on juvenile murder charges. The same year two neighborhood teenagers produced an award-winning radio documentary "Ghetto Life 101," which aired on National Public Radio.

A year later, prosecutors charged seven people with running a cocaine ring out of the Ida B. Wells Homes that authorities say did such booming business drug buyers lined up 50 at a time.

By 2002, the last buildings were torn down in a nationally watched urban renewal plan initiated by then-Mayor Richard Daley that also targeted other housing projects - including Cabrini-Green, which saw the last of its high-rises crumble under wrecking balls earlier this year.

As Wells Homes residents focused on finding new places to live, some also requested something be done in tribute to the activist.

"I want people to remember Ida B. Wells the woman, not Ida B. Wells the housing community," her great-granddaughter, Duster, said. "Something should be done to remember who she was. I think who she was as a woman got lost when it was attached to the housing projects."

When the money is raised, that something will be a sculpture in the middle of a large grassy median on 37th Street and Langley Avenue in the historically African-American neighborhood of Bronzeville on the city's South Side.

The site, across the street from a large park, isn't far from the 19th-century stone house where Wells lived from 1919 to 1929. The Ida B. Wells-Barnett House is now a National Historic Landmark.

Hunt envisions a sculpture in his metallic, free-form style that will incorporate images and writings of Wells. He said he hopes to convey "what a courageous and intelligent and committed person that she was."

Carol Adams, president of Chicago's DuSable Museum of African-American History, said the sculpture will be a lasting monument to Wells and a place where people can learn about her influence. The neighborhood is already home to the Ida B. Wells Preparatory Elementary Academy, and Chicago's DePaul University has a professorship named for Wells.

"Her name itself just reverberates through the community," said Adams, who once worked in the Ida B. Wells Homes. "It was her voice, her stance that she took regarding lynching and how she used the media to wage that fight, what that fight meant to us. This was very significant for black people all over the country."

Duster said the sculpture will "have a lot of meaning" for those who lived in the homes named after her.

"I think they will have a huge sense of pride," she said. "Those who lived in Bronzeville when the homes were there, it's a source of pride for our neighborhood. For others it's a sense of pride in the city of Chicago."

Mostly though, she said, remembering her great-grandmother will teach a new generation that one person can make a difference and defy the boundaries of society's expectations based on race, class and gender.

"It's important to speak up when you feel you've experienced something not fair," Duster said. "Don't wait for somebody else to say something. That's one thing Ida did that I think is a legacy. She used her voice and talents to raise consciousness."

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Online:

Ida B. Wells Monument: http://www.idabwellsmonument.org/

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The Skanner Foundation's 38th Annual MLK Breakfast