36 COLLEGE OF LIBERAL ARTS AND SCIENCES Avel Gordly AVEL GORDLY is an activist and community organizer who in 1996 became the first African American woman to be elected to the Oregon State Senate. She served in the Senate from 1997 to 2009. Previously, she served for five years in the Oregon House of Representatives. In 1974, she became the first person in her family to graduate from college, earning a degree in the administration of justice from Portland State University. A key affiliation for Gordly was the Black United Front (BUF). A national civil rights group headquartered in Chicago, Portland’s dynamic BUF was founded in 1979 by a core group of activists, including Ronald Herndon and the Rev. John Jackson. In addition to handling media work for the group, Gordly coordinated the Front’s Saturday School, whose African American history program was tied to curriculum reform in the public education system. With the Front’s spin-off, Portlanders Organized for Southern African Freedom, and in concert with the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), Gordly helped score key antiapartheid victories in Oregon during the 1980s. Gordly was tapped to fill a vacancy created by a retirement in the legislature in 1991. Gordly was subsequently elected state representative from north and northeast Portland in 1992, and she served until retiring in 2009. Her legislative record includes an array of initiatives that focus on cultural competency in education, mental health, and the administration of justice. In 2008, Oregon Health Sciences University opened the Avel Gordly Center for Healing, dedicated to culturally specific mental health and psychiatric services. In 2009, Albina Head Start recognized Gordly’s championing of funding for their programs state-wide by renaming its administrative headquarters in her honor. Gordly has received awards from groups such as the NAACP, the American Leadership Forum of Oregon, the Oregon Youth Authority, Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, the Oregon Commission for Women, and the Urban League of Portland. Gordly's memoir, Remembering the Power of Words: The Life of An Oregon Legislator, Activist, and Community Leader, written with PSU history professor Patricia Schechter, recounts her personal and professional journey and was published in 2011 by Oregon State University Press. She received an honorary doctorate from Portland State in 2017. COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS
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