Reed College - Vanport Mosaic Partnership
This website and series of education guides came out of a partnership between Reed College and the Vanport Mosaic, stewarded by Associate Professor Kate Duffly and Assistant Professor Michael Stevenson, in collaboration with Vanport Mosaic co-director, Damaris Webb. The goals of this partnership were to connect Reed students with the Vanport Mosaic and affiliated community members, to learn about our region’s history of racism and exclusion, as well as honoring the stories of resilience, survival, and ongoing narratives of BIPOC communities in the region. We sought to give students the opportunity to establish and solidify connections to local and national histories, the communities in which these histories occurred, and the contemporary manifestations of these histories in the very city they are living and learning in.
Students in the Reed College course, “Race and Identity in American Theatre” (Spring 2023) created this education guide to support Vanport Mosaic’s goal to circulate this play to young people and communities throughout the region, beyond the city. These lesson plans are intended to be available to middle school and high school settings to accompany the touring play.
In addition to conducting research, students attended a performance of Walking Through Portland with a Panther in the final portion of their semester. They also participated in a community conversation following the show, attended a walking tour with Mr. Ford, and met with Damaris Webb, co-founder of the Vanport Mosaic, playwright Don Wilson Glenn, and Mr. Ford..
Students in Assoc. Professor Kate Duffly’s course, “Race and Identity in American Theatre” were invited to connect their work in the class to an applied context by creating lesson plans that asked them to research the social and political context of a theatrical performance and to connect it to their own geographical context. They connected coursework from the writing of W.E.B. Du Bois calling for work “for, by, about and near'' the black community, to August Wilson’s speech, “The Ground on Which I Stand.” This grounding informed their understanding of “Walking Through Portland with a Panther,” a project rooted in a sustained long term engagement with Mr Kent Ford, founder of the Black Panther Party in Portland, who continues to lead walking tours and share stories of his lived experience as an activist and organizer.
By studying the play, its creation, and the community-informed method with which the creative team realized the production, students learned of personal stories that gave historical context to local policies, stories that function to restore lost memories of gentrified Black historical sites where the Panthers used to make an impact in the city. Through this multi-nodal engagement, Reed students were able to experience a place in which history, culture, and community-based arts coexist, in Portland’s Albina Corridor, where the Panthers were based in the 1960s and 70s, carfting relevant lesson plans for other young people in the area.
Photos by Kate Duffly
Vanport Mosaic
Vanport Mosaic is a Portland-based “memory-activism platform.” The organization’s mission is to “amplify, honor, present, and preserve the silenced histories that surround us in order to understand our present, and create a future where we all belong”. Since 2017, the organization has produced various projects that are rooted in their mission to amplify the narratives of Portland and the surrounding communities that have been forgotten or have gone untold – many of those stories are rooted in the histories of BIPOC communities in Portland. The projects range from the “All Power to the People Black Panther Legacy Tour of Albina”, to documenting oral histories of community members who lived through the Vanport Flood of 1948, to commissioning of original plays rooted in the histories Vanport Mosaic seeks to uplift.
Mr Ford leads walking tour for third graders from Oliver P Lent Elementary School.
Credit: Damaris Webb