Portland honors the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on the 82nd Anniversary of his birth.

Sixty-nine years later, the nation reflects on Pearl Harbor

69th

In solemn observance of the 145th Anniversary of the adoption of the 13th Amendment

The 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution officially abolished and prohibited slavery in the country. It provides that "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."

The amendment, called the "final constitutional solution to the slavery issue", was drafted by Senator Jacob Merritt Howard (R-Mich) and passed the Senate on April 8, 1864, and the House on January 31, 1865. It was finally ratified on December 6, 1865. However, the Amendment's ratification  went unwitnessed by the one person who labored tirelessly to ensure that the work started by his Emanipation Proclamation would not be overturned in the post war era...President Lincoln...felled by an assassin's bullet 8 months earlier.

Senator Howard was a native of Vermont, who had moved to Detroit and established an illustrious career, where he served as city attorney of Detroit, state Representative, congressman and Michigan attorney general. In Congress, he served as chairman, Committee on Pacific Railroads and  died in Detroit on April 2, 1871; where his memorial  in Elmwood Cemetery bears a quote from the history-making amendment.

There are several great websites on the 13th Amendment

Commemorating the 55th Anniversary of Rosa Park's refusal to give into racial segregation

A little over half a century ago, the calendar marking the milestones of the American Civil Rights Movement added the  singular and highly significant actions of  a Montgomery, Alabama bus passenger to the timeline. On this date in 1955, Rosa Parks, a seamstress and Voters League worker, was arrested after refusing to give up her seat to a white man while riding on  the #2857 bus . Immediately following her arrest and conviction "for disorderly conduct",  a 381 day boycott of the Montgomery bus system became one of the catalysts leading up to the 1956 Supreme Court decision which banned segregation on public transportation in America.

Honored today as the "Mother of the Civil Rights Movement, Parks passed away at the age of  92, the recipient of both the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal, which are two of this nation's highest civilian honors - for her act of defiance.

Here in Portland, Oregon, the work of the freedom fighter have been acknowledged and honored in several ways, with the one of the Portland Public Schools located in the New Columbia development in North Portland named after Parks. Then in 2006, N. Portland Boulevard was renamed to Rosa Parks Way, and a Max Yellow Line Station was dedicated in her honor in 2009.

Today's 55th Anniversary saw various celebrations of Parks' life and achivements taking place all over the country. Online, Google users were reminded of the day as the search engine  celebrated Parks with one of its signature doodles showing children running toward a bus similar to the one that Rosa Parks would take to work. It was reported that in Milwakee, Wisconsin,that the city transit buses are running their headlights all day with placards on the front seats of the buses honoring Parks.

Just like our elderly World War II veterans, these domestic "Freedom Fighters", the leaders of the most recent Civil Rights Movement in America are passing away in larger numbers with each passing year. It is to be hoped that their oral histories, published autobiographies, daily journals and correspondence are being collected and placed in university libraries or in the National Archives or African Amerian History museums for future generations to study and disseminate to the public.

Inspired by Oregon's Sesquicentennial, we are currently researching the lives of African Americans who chose to move West to make Portland their home in the early years of our statehood. It is difficult work, because the scarcity of records due to  archive fires, sloppy census penmanship, and displaced neighborhoods. Despite the hostilities and challenges they faced on a daily basis, these Pioneer black settlers, continued to plant their roots deep into Oregon . They, and their counterparts across the nation, were the trailblazers who fought the first battles for equality in the 1800s, the true and tested role models for future freedom fighters like the immortal Rosa Parks.