Portland State Magazine Spring 2012

Saving a black family's story A new collection in the PSU Library chronicles a Portland couple's commitment to civil rights. WRITTEN BY SUZANNE PARDINGTON FOR MUCH of the 20th century, Verdell Rutherford collected thousands of rare documents, newspapers and phorographs recording the hisrory ofAfrican Americans in Portland. Verdell and her husband, Otro, were leaders in the black community, and their northeast Portland home was a hub of social and political activity from the era of racial segregation through the civil rights movement. Verdell saved everything, hoping chat someday her archive would tell the srory of the ciry's early African American communiry ro future generations. And now it will. The Verdell Burdine and Otto G . Rutherford Family Collec– tion will open ro the public for the first time this summer, when it goes on display as PSU Library's newest special coUection. Verdell and Orro's daughter, Charlotte Rutherford '76, gave the collection ro the library and Black Studies Department at the suggestion of hisrory professor Patricia Schechter and former State Sen. Avel Gordly, whose own papers are housed at the library. University archivist Cris Paschild oversees the library's special collections. Schechter's students archived the collection item by item and are working with Paschild ro create an exhibit that will be on display in the first floor of the library during fall term. The students found everything from the 1914 charter for the Port– land branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) ro Verdell's brown and crumbling wedding corsage from 1936. "What you see in the Rutherford Collection is how everyday people helped advance the civil rights movement, and often those people were women," Schechter says. "Ir puts Oregon on the map of the larger American srory of freedom." 0 REGO N was more than a decade ahead of the federal government in ratifying civil rights legislation, and Otto and Verdell were instrumental in passing Oregon's version in 1953. At the time, Otro served as president and Verdell as secretary of the local NAACP. Prior ro the law's passage, African Americans were routinely banned from or segregated at many public places in Oregon, such as hospitals, hotels and amusement parks. Employment 10 PORTLAND STATE MAGAZINE SPRING 2012 opportunities were limited ro service jobs. Restaurants posted signs saying, "We cater ro white trade only." African Americans were not allowed ro live in most Portland neighborhoods. In 1921, Otto's father bought the fan1ily home on Northeast Ninth and Shaver, then a white neighborhood, with the help of someone who could "pass" for white. Even after Oregon's anti-discrimination law passed in 1953, it often was not enforced. Charlotte Rutherford recalls sitting in a movie theater balcony in the 1950s and roller skating at a rink only on Mondays in the early 1960s. At the time, she was unaware that she was not allowed ro sit anywhere else in the theater or roller skate on another day because of her race. The Rutherford collection "confirms that Oregon has a particular srory to tell about civil rights that is different from the South or the East," says Schechter. "It's going ro help us tell the Pacific Northwest story." For more information about the Rutherford and other col– lections, visit library.pdx.edulspecialcollections.html. To support PSU Library special collections, contact Jennifer Wilkerson at 503-725-4509 or email jwilk@pdx.edu . ■ Suzanne Pardington, a staffmember in the PSU Office ofUni– versity Communications, wrote 'i1 Brilliant Life"for the Winter 2012 Portland State Magazine.