Pioneering Black journalist Beatrice Morrow Cannady took on Oregon’s Ku Klux Klan, challenged official hypocrisy
Updated Feb 19, 2021;
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Beatrice Morrow Cannady’s profile is on the rise again in her adopted state.
A Northeast Portland affordable-housing complex called The Beatrice Morrow opened in 2018. The following year, Beatrice Morrow Cannady Elementary School in Happy Valley began classes. A Portland city park soon might be known as Cannady Park.
Such recognition, Oregon civic leaders increasingly recognize, was overdue.
Cannady, who died in 1974 at age 84, was one of the most impactful -- and controversial -- Black activists in 20th century Portland, but the passage of time allowed her name to slip from collective memory.