Category Archives: History

King School Students Work on History/Gardening Project

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Second and third grade students from the King School SUN afterschool program are participating in a partnership with the Emerson Street Garden to learn gardening while working with neighborhood elders to help transform a vacant neighborhood lot into a community asset.

Sixth through eighth graders are partnering with artist Joe Sneed and students from da Vinci Middle school in a five day-a-week class on N/NE History, Art and Culture. They are collecting stories of local neighborhood history from local residents and incorporating these stories into a design for an archway entrance to the garden.

Eight grade students in the King School Technology and Design course will be working with engineers from the Portland Water Bureau to develop a learning center to be built at the garden to be used for educational opportunities and workshops into the future. The Technology and Design course is part of the International Baccalaureate program at King School.

If you would like to get involved contact Joe Sneed at joe.b.sneed@gmail.com or call 503.995.2632

N/NE History & Storytelling

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From Groundwork Portland:

A remarkable group of individuals have come together over two meetings at Reflections Coffee and Talking Drum Bookstore to plan an inter-generational exchange between community elders and King School students. Students in the Schools Uniting Neighborhoods program on Tuesdays and Thursdays over the next 5 weeks will learn from community members about their experiences growing food, living in N/NE, neighborhood changes overtime, and what it means to have a community garden in King Neighborhood today.

Students will be taking the stories and lessons they learn and creating art that will then go at the Emerson Garden site.

Would you like to participate or help?
Contact Cassie at cassie@groundworkportland.org or 503.662.2590

Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd Gateway and Heritage Markers Go Forward

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The PDC will hold a meeting Thursday, April 21st at Irvington Village, 420 NE Mason St. The advisory committee and neighborhood land use chairs will be updated on the Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd. Gateway and Heritage Markers Project. They are in the final phases of the project; it is currently in the permitting process and the design team is preparing drawings for bidding. Construction will begin this summer. They will be soliciting input from the representatives on a quotation that has recently been added to Project on the screen walls.

Background
The Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard Gateway and Heritage Makers project originated in community planning efforts begun over a decade ago by area residences and business owners. In the 2007- 2008 planning process, the 12-person Stakeholder Advisory Group further delineated the project in a Concept Master Plan with three goals:

• Create a clear threshold announcing the arrival into a unique neighborhood district
• Preserve, interpret and celebrate the diverse history of the area’s cultural community
• Focus the Heritage Markers on local neighborhood stories

This group guided the design work until the project slowed down while PDC determined how the project would be maintained. Metro has now agreed to maintain the project, so the project is ready to move into construction.

The final design includes two curvilinear screen walls that define this intersection as a gateway in and out of the N/NE neighborhood and business district. A small plaza provides pedestrian open space for the neighborhood. Pedestrian access to the plaza is from the blocks to the north and east. Four, twenty foot high Heritage Markers, are located in the plaza each with interpretive panels celebrating the diverse communities that have contributed to the North/Northeast neighborhoods.

During the 2007-2008 planning process quotations from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. were discussed. The design team would like to get feedback on a quotation from Dr. King that was added to the two curvilinear screen walls to accentuate the Gateway into and out of this unique and diverse neighborhood district. They would like to provide an update of the project and get feedback at the meeting on April 21st.

For additional information please contact Irene Bowers 503 823-2419 or Kathryn Krygier 503 281-0202

Here’s a listing of the markers to be installed and what they signify: http://www.pdc.us/pdf/ura/convention_center/mlk/MLK-Neighborhood-People-Places.pdf

Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom at Portland Playhouse

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Starting this week at your neighborhood theater on Prescott Street is another August Wilson play by Portland Playhouse. The third installment of August Wilson’s ‘Century Cycle’ or ‘Pittsburgh Cycle’, which chronicles the lives of African-Americans through the twentieth century, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is set amid the initial rumblings of the Chicago Black Renaissance, an era that nurtured the extraordinary artists Langston Hughes, Louis Armstrong, and Margaret Walker.

Pulitzer Prize winning playwright August Wilson (April 27, 1945 – October 2, 2005) is one of the most influential writers in American theater. He is best known for his unprecedented cycle of 10 plays, often called the Pittsburgh Cycle because all but Ma Rainey is set in the Pittsburgh neighborhood where August Wilson grew up. The series of plays chronicle the tragedies and aspirations of African Americans during each decade of the 20th century. Radio Golf, a previous production of Portland Playhouse was from this cycle.

Most shows are sold out for the next three weeks. The run continues through May 15th. Check showtimes and purchase tickets online by clicking here.

Sherman: A Jazz Opera

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Sherman Jazz Opera poster

From NECN:

Sherman: A Jazz Opera (see attached poster) is loosely based on the life of saxophone player Sherman Thomas, who died tragically in the ’70s. But it also celebrates the legacy of post-war North Williams Avenue when it was known as “Black Broadway,” because live jazz by black musicians and singers from around the country – including Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong and Billy Holiday – was being played night and day in a least 10 clubs along the entertainment strip and in other parts of the city. Continue reading →