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EVENTS
An ice storm closes the airport, fells trees and knocks out transformers,
leaving 100,000 homes without heat or electricity. The National Weather
Service can't predict when the freeze will ease, because the storm cuts
power to its Portland computers.
A solar eclipse darkens the Pacific Northwest for two minutes
beginning at 8:13 on the morning of Feb. 26. Predictably, the skies over
Portland are overcast, forcing most Portlanders to watch the event on
TV instead.
Ominous signs of economic trouble on the horizon: Unemployment
is inching upward, gas prices are soaring, tourism is down, and inflation
climbs to 15 percent.
After 123 years of local ownership, the Blitz-Weinhard brewery
at Northwest 11th Avenue and West Burnside Street is sold to Pabst Brewing
of Milwaukee, Wisc. Things get blurry afterwards: Pabst will sell the
brewery to G. Heileman Brewing, which will eventually merge with Stroh
Brewery Co., which will, in turn, sell the Henry's brand to Miller.
A new technology--the color copier--reenergizes a flagging art
form: Xeroxing your naked body. WW views the resulting images,
on display at Marylhurst's Mayer Gallery, with a certain disdain.
Retired painting contractor and carpet-layer Walter Powell teams up with
his son Michael to set off a bookselling revolution--juxtaposing new and
used titles on the same shelf. From a derelict storefront in Northwest
Portland, Powell's Books will grow to employ 430 people and carry
an inventory of more than 1 million titles.
The Oregon Dairy Products Commission defends its failure to use
black models in its billboards by claiming that "blacks can't digest milk."
Portland historian E. Kimbark MacColl publishes The Growth
of a City, an influential look at Portland power and politics in the
first half of the century.
The Blackfish Gallery--soon to become one of Portland's most successful
artists' co-ops--opens its doors for the first time.
After asking for the resignations of his entire cabinet, President Carter
appoints Neil Goldschmidt as his new Secretary of Transportation.
Following weeks of speculation, political
wrangling and tied council votes, Commissioner Connie McCready
is
ultimately appointed to succeed Goldschmidt as mayor.
WW says the Lotus Cafe and Card Room "has a forbidding
façade with a reputation to match. A gaping hole in the plaster
by the door stands above a littered stairway leading to a now-defunct
hotel. Tired old men with sunken cheeks stand outside the card room entrance
smoking cigarettes.... Beer is only 30 cents until 10 am."
Floods, Prohibition, two world wars--nothing, it seems, can dent the
charm of Huber's, Portland's oldest restaurant, which this year
celebrates a mind-boggling century in business. Originally named for scholarly
mixologist Frank Huber, the saloon hit its stride with the arrival of
Jim Louie, a Cantonese stowaway who cooked and carved up turkey sandwiches
for Huber (originally given away free with each drink) and took the helm
in 1911. His descendants still own the joint, renowned for its turkey
and signature flaming Spanish coffees. In 1990, Huber's earned the dubious
distinction of selling more Kahlua than any other bar in the nation.
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FIRE AND ICE
BY PATTY WENTZ
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Mount Saint Helens didn't merely "erupt"
on the morning of May 18, it exploded. "This is it!" geologist David
Johnston radioed in from nearby Coldwater Ridge, seconds before the
mountain detonated. Those were his last words. He was one of 57 people
who died that day, including mountain man Harry Truman, who refused
to believe the mountain would really blow, and former WW photographer
Reid Blackburn, who was on assignment for National Geographic.
The eruption blanketed Portland in an eerie post-apocalyptic layer
of gritty gray ash that settled on trees and puffed up from the ground
with every step. As the news spread across |
the globe, phones rang off the hook as distant friends called to see if
we, too, had become part of the 75 tons of ash that was ejected 16 miles
into the air and is still circling today.
THE ULTIMATE POLICY WONK
He was an unlikely candidate--a lanky bundle of nerves who flunked the Oregon
Bar exam three times. His major accomplishment: a successful referendum
to reduce the price of dentures. He'd never held an elective office. But
in May, RON WYDEN, the 31-year-old co-founder of the Oregon Gray Panthers,
stuns the pollsters by crushing incumbent Bob Duncan 60-40 in the Democratic
primary for the 3rd Congressional District, which covers Portland's east
side. Wyden went on to trounce his Republican opponent in the general election.
THE NUMBERS GAME
BY NIGEL JAQUISS
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The battle over desegregation dominated
Portland's school agenda in 1980. The fight became so tense that at
one point Black United Front leaders Ron Herndon and A. Halim Rahsaan
disrupted a School Board meeting by standing on top of a desk.
The two activists were billed for $400 for damaging school furniture,
but more importantly, the black community got what it wanted--the
board dismantled some of its most discriminatory policies.
Nationally, the backdrop for desegregation was the mandatory busing
that federal judges ordered to integrate the public schools. Portland
escaped
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mandatory busing by coming up with a voluntary plan in the '70s, but in
the eyes of the black community, that plan simply replaced one injustice
with another.
Instead of improving predominantly black schools, the district eliminated
the middle grades at most of them, which meant that black middle-school
students either traveled to white schools or didn't go at all. "There were
no middle schools in the black community," recalls Rahsaan, who was the
Black United Front's education chairman. "That made it de facto forced busing."
Two new board members--utility executive Bill Scott and teacher Steve
Buel--had been elected on the strength of aggressive desegregation leanings.
The board was divided, however, on how best to address under-achievement
at traditionally black schools.
When board member Phyllis Wiener died in July 1979, it took dozens of
ballots to name her successor: integration champion Herb Cawthorne, who
became the first black man to serve on the board.
By the end of 1979, the black community was fed up. "We knew the schools
over here were inferior," Rahsaan says of North and inner Northeast Portland.
"We had worse test scores and fewer resources, and the teachers weren't
as good."
The Black United Front organized one-day school boycotts in 1980 and
1981 and presented the board with a steady stream of demands. "There was
a period of a few meetings when the Black United Front essentially wouldn't
let us conduct our business," recalls Scott, who was then board chairman.
Front members attended School Board meetings en masse and created a "ruckus"
if they felt ignored, says Rahsaan.
In the desegregation plan adopted in April 1980, the board created Harriet
Tubman School--which would be the only middle school in the Albina area.
It was a major victory for the Black United Front because it ended what
amounted to forced busing for black students.
Although the majority of the board favored sweeping changes, they also
saw Superintendent Robert Blanchard, then the longest-serving big-city
superintendent in the country, as an impediment. In a surprise move, the
board fired Blanchard in June. Blanchard's supporters launched a well-financed
campaign to recall the board members who voted to fire him, but the recall
ultimately failed.
Demographically, the plan has done little; many schools that were considered
"racially isolated" in 1980--meaning they had more than 50 percent minority
populations--remain so today. The overarching aim of Portland's plan,
however, was not so much to address head counts as it was to equalize
opportunity.
Rahsaan says that focus was admirable, but in reality, outcomes haven't
changed much in the past two decades. Last year, for example, black students
in Portland lagged behind whites by more than 220 points on the SAT and
were twice as likely to drop out of school. "Obviously, the desegregation
policy hasn't worked," he says. "We were fighting for the same thing then
that we're still fighting for now."
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