an interest in employing more minority staff These changes were voted upon, and passed, by the Black United Front at a mass meeting at the King Neighborhood Facility. One of the major forces behind this effort was Ronnie Herndon, who, with Reverend John Jackson, is BUF co-chairman. Herndon has been a Portlander since 1970. He is the director of the Black Educational Center and is active in child care programs and early childhood education. He is married and the father of two children. Ronnie was a leader in a Black student demonstration and strike at Reed college in 1970. That movement resulted in the establishment of a Black Studies Program at Reed. Previously. Herndon was a community organizer in Harlem, and has been involved in numerous political and social battles concerning Black rights and freedom. The following interview happened on September 7, 1979, at the Hughes Memorial Church day care facility in Northeast Portland. Quarterly: After 18 months of study, do you think the Community Condition for School Integration recommendations were stronger than the school hoard expected, or wanted; and did this help set the stage for the Black United Front's action? Herndon: 1think they were stronger. I think they were more thorough, and (hey were better documented than the school board wanted or had expected. 1heir findings were invaluable to us because their research was extensive. Some of the areas they pointed out were critical. We were able to use that information and organize. We were very appreciative and thankful for the work the coalition did. Quarterly: I’d like you to elaborate on how the Blanchard-Newman .Schools lor (he Seventies plan was svsiemalic discrimination. Specifically, (he areas of gerrymandering, the use of the Early Education Centers, and I'd like you to elaborate on what had gone on at Jeff and at Adams to devalue their academic programs. Herndon: The. . . Schools for the Seventies plan said two things: one. (hey were going to move towards having middle schools that cover sixth, seventh and eighth grades; and two. they were going to start early childhood centers that would go from three, four, five-year-old children up through kindergarten. The way they went about doing this was that they set up early childhood centers in almost all the schools in the black community, strongly recruited white parents to send their children to those schools, to the point that black parents in the neighborhood often were excluded from taking advantage of the childhood centers. Quarterly: What did they do to recruit white students? Herndon: Oh. they went out and built the program up in the white community, talked about services that it would offer to the child. I think Dr. The point is that for the first time this community had a choice o f where its children will go to school. | Robert] Blanchard [Portland Schools Superintendent] himself sent his child to a program at Elliott School, so they used all the. . all of the resources they had at their command to sell this program in the white community. While they were doing that, they cut out the upper grades in all of the schools in the black community. So they put black people in the position of having to bus their children if they wanted them to continue receiving public school education. Once the children were bused out. the parents had to sign a form which said they would keep their children in the feeder pattern, which meant if they went to a grade school that was near Wilson High School, if they were bused to a grade for that particular grade school, then they would have to attend Wilson High School. If (hey were bused to a grade school that was near Lincoln, then they would have to go to Lincoln. If they were bused to a school that was near Franklin, they would have to attend Franklin. And the form specifically said they could not bring their children back. White parents who brought their children into the early childhood centers never had to sign a form like that. Systematically, they would take advantage of the program for the preschool portion of the experience. Once their children finished pre-school, they sent them right back to their same community so you would have to specifically show that at the pre-school level approximately 50, 60, 70 percent of the students, let’s say 60 percent of the students were white in these early childhood centers, but after the first grade. . the percentage would drop dramatically, and you would find that only 30 percent are white, and then by third grade it generally would be 20 percent or less. White parents were given the option of sending their children to these schools, whereas black parents were forced to bus their children out and did not have the alternative of bringing them back to neighborhood schools. So that was part of this Schools for the Seventies plan. Another part was the middle schools. They never designed or set up a middle school in the black community so you had the same problem, black parents who wanted their children to continue getting the public school education |had to have them bused out to middle schools). So those were parts of their Schools for the Seventies plan that affected the black community in a detrimental manner. Quarterly: Okay, what happened at Jeff? Herndon: In 1977, I think it was, [Jonathan] Newman [former School Board member] said that he was concerned about the number of black children that were going to Jeff. His proposal was that the black population at Jefferson High School would never be more than 25 percent of Jefferson. The way he was going to accomplish this. . .would require that parents of children who attended Boise and, I think. Humboldt, would have to have their children bused out to high schools out of their community. When that plan surfaced the black community rose up, because they would not be able to send their children to their closest high school. From that developed the interest of other organizations, which led to the formation of the Coalition, But that was their plan for Jefferson, to limit the number of black children who could by board policy attend it. Quarterly: At that time, I was surprised that the ground swell happened so slowly because it seemed such a systematically racist thing to do. To say, “Okay, we’re going to do this to Jeff, and then, for the first time in 15 years, we’re going to put money into Jeff, and we’re going to put it in in such a way as to attract kids from all over the city and strip away the cultural background that existed at Jeff." Herndon: I think the reason that it may have appeared that reaction was slow, was because for so many years in Portland black leadership had been bought off. and you had a situation where, for some length of time, the man that was the head of the NAACP was also working for the school district. You had a situation where your m a jo r ... some of your traditional organizations that you had looked to to provide a direction for a long time, did not speak out on issues. So people did not have, as in other cities, leaders or organizations that they could go to and depend upon to lead the struggle around an issue. So what you have are people feeling their own way, you know, and not having done this before, not really knowing how to do it, maybe not having ever organized any kind of protest movement, but knowing that it should be done and going through all of the trials and tribulations of initiating this concept. To me, the miraculous point in all of this is that even without having that kind of experience in the past, not having had strong leadership, the people in the community were able to launch the kind of protest that they did. To me, that’s miraculous, given the kind of experience that they didn’t have, and it just shows the kind of courage that the people in the community do have, even without having had the experience, having had leadership that could be counted upon to come out and rally around a certain issue. They raised the issue and did if themselves, and that’s what I think started the whole process. 1 know that’s what 14
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