. . . Tentative title of the new book I am writing (still have to publish the first one I wrote…) regardless, the research calls me here now! Below I have provided part of the introduction to this new research book, covering the long history of jazz excellence in Oregon’s historic & contemporary BIPOC communities, and how that wove its way through the 1970’s cultural revolution in Eugene that birthed the restoration of Siletz & Grand Ronde tribe’s, the first gay rights bill in history, and BIPOC equality passed in Oregon law. The national names in civil rights that came to Oregon in this time to speak on the inequality in our land, is too extensive to list here. I hope that the story I am writing of our precious history of cultural excellence in the face of vast generational systemic oppression, and how just a mind boggling array of revolutionary intersections happened right here in Oregon . . . well I hope someone appreciates it, at least. There is so much that has been erased from even our history of just the recent 1970’s, the gay liberation movement’s intersections with radical indigenous voices on the same spaces with the same peoples, the national figures in civil rights, and the jazz excellence that played the themes of this cultural Oregon revolution that truly affected this nation in ways that until I had read this research myself, I had never heard of! I have many interviews to conduct with people who lived in this era and knew many of these names I am researching, and I couldn’t be more excited making these new friends and about this new research road, it feels like Creator has suddenly put train tracks under me and I’m on the ride now . . .
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[Introduction]
“This land has much to learn from our culture. Our culture is rich. We’re saying we want the option to be what we are.”
Frank Martinez, Oregon Latino rights leader, 1970.
“If it’s necessary, we’ll take to the streets again so you don’t rip-off the third world people here. So just watch out, people.”
– Irv Wainer, Radical Oregon Activist, 1971.
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The Associated Student’s of University of Oregon (ASUO)’s Symposium on Racism, featuring Oakland born jazz quartet, “The Black Messengers”. Eugene, 1970 . . .
“An estimated 15,500 persons missed a good jazz concert Thursday afternoon when the Black Messengers, an Oakland-based black jazz quartet, per-formed for two hours to a small audience in the EMU ballroom . . . Those who didn’t write the event off as a minor feature on the agenda of the ASUO’s Symposium on Racism were treated to some of the best jazz to be presented in the Eugene area this year. Why wasn’t the group given more publicity, they wondered.”
It is of a completely understated historical merit and value to the foundations of modern civil rights & its many deep intersections with BIPOC musical culture in Oregon and across this nation, that this humble jazz quartet afternoon in the early fall of 1970 at the University of Oregon’s EMU Ballroom goes so unheralded in our history today. I suppose history as we regard it today is a matter of hotly contested perspective across an ever-widening gulf of ideology . . . perhaps the Black Messengers jazz quartet was just another show in a string of related presentations in the University of Oregon’s student Symposium on Racism [10.22.1970] . . . perhaps just as much as Rosa Park’s experiences were no more than a bus ride and a bad day, “Parks said, “When that white driver stepped back toward us, when he waved his hand and ordered us up and out of our seats, I felt a determination cover my body like a quilt on a winter night.”
It was just six months before the Black Messengers jazz quartet played the University of Oregon student Symposium on Racism, in October of 1970, that on April 15th, 1970, “. . . Tear gas was used on the Uni-versity campus for the first time in its history Wednesday evening as (anti-war) demonstrators assaulted ROTC facilities on two separate occasions. The tear gas was used by the Eugene police, backed up by Lane County Sheriff’s deputies and State Police after over 400 demonstrators surged toward the ROTC facilities in French Hall, some throwing rocks, firecrackers and torches and chanting “Smash ROTC!” at about 8:30 p.m.”
So we see how polarized Eugene, Oregon, and as we know the whole of the U.S. was at this time of great social unrest and civil upheaval. For an Oakland born jazz band to make the conscious choice to not just come to Eugene at this time of mass protests and riots surrounding the Vietnam War & civil rights, but also to knowingly play the student’s week-long Symposium on Racism . . . was in and of itself an act of bold defiance & bravery in the face of now recorded historic racist & systemic oppression of their time. It was just the day before the Black Messengers played the University of Oregon EMU Ballroom, that a panel debate was held on Wednesday October 22nd, 1970, in the EMU featuring some of the most instrumental voices of the entire civil rights era in both Oregon and across America, “Panel Debate on Racism and Political Power” . . . featuring; “…Kent Ford, Portland Black Panther Party. John Trudell, Indians of all tribes, Alcatraz Island. Frank Martinez, Valley Migrant League. Gloria Gonzalez, Chicano Student Union. Charles Evers, Mayor of Fayette, Mississippi. David Sanchez, Brown Berets in Los Angeles.”
It was the next day on the 23rd of October 1970, that the Black Messengers would play the EMU Ballroom in that afternoon . . . immediately following this Oakland jazz quartet performance, in the evening hours of the students Symposium on Racism; Charles Evers, black civil rights leader and then mayor of Fayette, Mississippi would address a crowd of over 800 people at McArthur Hall; “There is only one course for change, and that’s to gain control of the American political and economic system by placing new people in public offices, said Evers. “You can’t shoot your way out, you can’t talk your way out, you can’t bomb your way out. You’ve got to become part of the system. Those persons in power have got to be removed,” he said. Violence has destroyed many people—Black and White, said Evers. Blaming their destruction on “violent thinking politicians who control our counties and towns,” he said “we have to go after the rascals responsible—the people who hold elected positions . . . Oppressed people must become the mayors, the constables, the sheriffs—but by non-violent means. That was the point emphasized by Charles Evers, Black mayor of Fayette, Mississippi, who addressed a crowd of over 800 persons Wednesday night in McArthur Court.”
These are the words of a man who had already suffered the deepest forms of loss possible to racial violence in his lifetime of growing up a black man in the pre-civil rights era south, “…After his brother’s assassination in 1963, Evers took over his position as field director of the NAACP in Mississippi. In this role, he organized and led many demonstrations for the rights of African Americans.” To lose his brother by assassination for the crime of being black in 1963’s Mississippi, and then just 7 years later be on the civil rights panel, lecture & debate circuit on an undeniable foundation of Martin Luther King’s civil disobedience & non-violence philosophy . . . reminding the reader that Mr. Charles Evers, and the entire black community had also lost Doctor King to assassination just three years prior to this speach before a crowd of 800 at McArthur Hall, 1970, University of Oregon, Eugene . . . this man, this boldest & bravest of spirits, chooses to seek not the violence inflicted deeply upon him, but to rise above it, and to continue to spread the message of racial unity, love, togetherness, and those most sacred of Doctor Martin Luther King’s civil rights tenets in civil disobedience, but most especially in non-violence.
At the Wednesday, 22nd of October 1970 debate panel at the EMU Ballroom, Santee-Dakota poet-activist John Trudell offered a different perspective on the uses of violence in society; “…Answering this was Trudell, saying, “If people are to use violence, it is a tool they are to use, and that they are not a tool of it.” . . . (Charles) “Evers countered Trudell’s remark, emphasizing, “I just can’t condone violence. Racism has to be changed non-violently or we’re all going to be destroyed.” . . . “Trudell, who was sitting in between Evers and Ford on the panel, then said all minorities had to respect each other’s views. He said that Evers advocated non-violence while Ford advocated violence, and that if each didn’t respect the other’s view, then each was being just as racist as Whites are. “I can’t tell them (other minorities) ‘do it my way,’ because then my skin is turning White,” Trudell concluded.” It was less than 9 years after John Trudell’s remarks on this panel that, “…his pregnant wife, three children and mother-in-law were killed in 1979 in a suspicious fire at the home of his parents-in-law on the Shoshone-Paiute Tribes Duck Valley Indian Reservation in Nevada.”
After several more key figures in Oregon & the U.S.’s civil rights scene of 1970 hotly debated topics of racial equality as pertaining to their own communities of color; a man instrumental in the history of Oregon’s Chicano movement & Latino rights, Frank Martinez, spoke to the crowd of over 500, “Martinez said at the outset of his speech. He said the typical stereotype of a Chicano is a person sitting under a cactus plant with a big sombrero. “We’re trying to do away with that image,” Martinez continued. Martinez explained the situation of Chicanos by saying, “We are called Mexican greasers because we are dirty and we’re brown. Because they (Whites) go to the camps where we live… Would you live in a camp with substandard con-ditions? Can we fight it? The politics say no.” Chicanos “are gonna sit here and bug you (Whites) until the conditions here in this state improve. This land has much to learn from our culture. Our culture is rich. We’re saying we want the option to be what we are,” Martinez said. “Political institutions,” Martinez added, “keep us out because they have training after training after training …” Chicanos “are going to be out of the migrant stream in five years,” Martinez stated, “extinct like the American buf-falo.” Politically, Chicanos “have no power. When an outstanding person rises up,” Martinez added, “he winds up in San Quentin.”
Of the notable speakers of this week of symposium debate on racism in America, Ojibwe indigenous civil rights voice Naawakamig Dennis Banks was in attendance at the morning panel on “Racism and Education”, as well giving an address later that same evening at McArthur Hall with Nathan Hare whom was and is today, “American sociologist, activist, academic, and psychologist. In 1968 he was the first person hired to coordinate a Black studies program in the United States. He established the program at San Francisco State. A graduate of Langston University and the University of Chicago, he had become involved in the Black Power movement while teaching at Howard University.” Naawakamig Dennis Banks is most known amongst indigenous communities for his advocacy and fight as a founding person in the AIM (American Indian Movement), his participation in the occupation of Alcatraz Island in 1969, as well as being one of the leaders at the Wounded Knee standoff with the FBI he would participate in just 3 years after his speeches at University of Oregon in 1970.
Capping that historic week in October of 1970 of civil rights speakers, artists, film makers, & cultural leaders, was the Thursday performance of the Black Messengers (.50c at the door…EMU Ballroom 4:30 p.m.), followed immediately by the address of Mr. Charles Evers to 800 plus people at McArthur hall . . . the next and last day of this historic convergence of voices from across the BIPOC communities of Oregon and the nation, truly a transformational, transcendent, and intersectional time in Oregon & U.S. history; saw those underscoring & overlapping notes of music that wove itself through this entire era of 20th century civil rights movements . . . On the last day of the week-long student’s University of Oregon Symposium on Racism, two legendary musical figures in the black civil rights and musical culture scene were scheduled to play not separately, but together in a joint performance that Friday the 23rd of October 1970, starting at 8 p.m., Mac Court; it was Odetta and Charles Lloyd, two blue-note jazz & blues artists who wove their ways through the middle 20th centuries pre-during-and-post civil rights eras with their excellence and unmatchable caliber in musical performance and civil advocacy.
Odetta Holmes, known artistically as just, Odetta, “. . . was an American singer, actress, guitarist, lyricist, and civil rights activist, often referred to as “The Voice of the Civil Rights Movement”. Her musical repertoire consisted largely of American folk music, blues, jazz, and spirituals. An important figure in the American folk music revival of the 1950s and 1960s, she influenced many of the key figures of the folk-revival of that time, including Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Mavis Staples, and Janis Joplin. In 2011 Time magazine included her recording of “Take This Hammer” on its list of the 100 Greatest Popular Songs, stating that “Rosa Parks was her No. 1 fan, and Martin Luther King Jr. called her the queen of American folk music.” Though widely advertised for a month before their scheduled show at Mac Court, Odetta & Charles Lloyd would suddenly cancel for unknown reasons during the week of the symposium on racism; leaving the Black Messengers jazz quartet the final show for a week of historic civil rights, arts, music and culture debate, “…the week’s musical honors must go to the quartet— partly by default, admittedly, with news of the cancellation of the Odetta-Charles Lloyd con-cert, but not ujustly for all that.”
Just seven months after this historic gathering of civil rights voices at the Symposium on Racism, Eugene and the campus of University of Oregon would see more violent clashes with police during anti-war & civil rights protests in the week before May 14th, 1971. It was during this week in mid-May of 1971, that the anti-protest group “People Interested in Government Services (PIGS)” was formed in Eugene, comprised of local residents who charged then Mayor Les Anderson that, “…he has handcuffed Eugene police and pampered radical students . . . (PIGS) has been organized in Eugene to protect the rights of all people, according to John Dotson, one of the group organizers. “We want to see the rights of a lot of people put back in the framework of the law and the constitution,” said Dotson . . . “We will ask the governmental bodies with power to get things back within the framework of the constitution. If they don’t, we will ask them to step aside,” declared Dotson. He indicated that any steps PIGS take will “be within the legal boundaries of the constitution.”
At the same time that this unrest was occuring within the community of Eugene along deeply divided racial & ideological lines surrounding civil rights and the pull out of U.S. troops in Vietnam, on May 13th, 1971, on the University of Oregon campus; “A crowd of about 150 persons packed the ASUO Senate meeting room Thursday to discuss incidental fee budget requests for 1971-72. But after four hours of discussion and debate, mostly concerning minority student union and student community projects requests, little action was taken. “What we’ve been seeing here tonight is a degree of sub-jective racism” in a “political game,” said Alycia Simmons near the close of the meeting. Members of the Black Student Union, Chicano Student Union and Native American Student Union presented their budgets to the Senate and discussed in detail their programs. After lengthy discussion, the Senate decided to take no action on considering the requests by the three unions. The unions had made requests of $15,874, $9,893.50 and $7,438, but $1,640 had been recommended by the ASUO Fiscal Committee for each union . . . Throughout the meeting frequent mention was made of the Athletic Department’s (AD) budget request, which originally totalled $254,000 . . . At the end of the session, former Emerald editor Grattan Kerans called the meeting “the worst piece of procedural bullshit that I’ve ever seen.” Radical activist Irv Wainer told the senate, “If it’s necessary, we’ll take to the streets again so you don’t rip-off the third world people here. So just watch out, people.” Gemayel explained the committee’s cuts of the minority student union requests, saying, “Money doesn’t make any program successful. Dedication can” . . . Jackie Minnis, vice president of BSU, then presented a revised budget proposal for the group—called a Black Cultural Enrichment Program” saying, “I don’t think people understand what the nature of the student unions are,” she said, “You are trying to fit us in by the same rules of your system. You’re trying to cut our programs down because you never funded this before or that before. But you never did anything for us before. “We’re not involved with your programs. We don’t use the repertory Program or the Forensics Program. You have $700,000 for your cultural programs. We’re asking $9,000 for our own.”
By January of 1973, it would seem a contemporaneously familiar sort of social dynamics created a tensely maintained peace in the community of Eugene. The reports of rioting, anti-war and civil rights protests end after 1972, though that single constant that wove itself through the entire movement since its inception in the earliest days of Jim Crow & the Indian Reservation . . . Jazz . . . remained. January 28th, 1973, a swiftly up-and-coming jazz artist on the national scene is scheduled to play two showings in one evening at the EMU Ballroom, 7:30 & 10:00 p.m., “Grover Washington Jr. . . . was an American jazz-funk and soul-jazz saxophonist and Grammy Award Winner. Along with Wes Montgomery and George Benson, he is considered by many to be one of the founders of the smooth jazz genre.”
8 months after this seminal jazz performance at the historic intersectional EMU Ballroom, it would be just an hour and a half away, at a humble VFW hall located in Siletz, Oregon, that a meeting held September 30th, 1973, would change the face of not just native civil & sovereign rights in Oregon, but the face of Oregon, and thus this nation itself for the next 50 years to the present. From 1970 onward, Siletz tribal peoples still remaining in Lincoln County & the Portland area, were beginning the grass-roots civil actions necessary to start reorganization as a tribal body again after the U.S. Federal government had terminated our tribe along with many others during the tribal “Termination Era” of Harry Truman’s 1953 just 17 years earlier.
“There was a lingering sadness, broken hearts, at a life with few dances, songs, and stories – and no land . . . The perception – the charge – of, “not being indian anymore” especially hurt. Ed Ben remembered, in anger and frustration, that “after termination we would go to pow-wows and recognized indians would talk down to us. When we told them we were Siletz, they would say ‘oh yeah, you’re those terminated Indians.'” . . . “It made me feel vulnerable, deficient, ready to fight anyone who said we weren’t indian people,” Agnes Pilgrim said. “I hated that word, ‘termination’, it was like ‘extermination’, I felt like I lost my identity.” . . .
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To be continued in the book…
If you have enjoyed this history and have a personal life experience in this time you would like preserved, please do let me know here and perhaps we can arrange a casual interview over the phone or in person. Many thanks, shu’ shaa nin-la.
Oregon Intersections in History & Modern Culture 