Rogue Valley organization wants to raise community awareness about the African-American

It’s still in its infancy, but a new group is forming to help give blacks a greater presence in the Rogue Valley.

Called Southern Oregonians For African-Americans Rising, the group aims to set up a library of black history, an art gallery of black-oriented art and a theatrical group which can tell the African-American story in schools, churches and night spots, said organizer Dennis Franklin, a state social worker.

"The goal is to give African-Americans a voice and a presence and to set up a vehicle for dialogue with a mostly white society that may forget about us, just because there are so few of us," said Franklin, 51, a Medford resident and member of the city’s Multicultural Commission. Blacks make up less than 1 percent of the population in Jackson County, according to the 2000 U.S. Census.

The Rogue Valley, like much of the country, has been through its civil rights battles and feels "enough already with racial problems," said Franklin. But it doesn’t know how to educate itself and take the next steps toward working out problems as problems — and not as racial problems, he said.

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When he first arrived in Medford in 1980, Franklin said he couldn’t find work. His car was repossessed and he used his child’s half-size bike to pedal in cold winter winds to a pizza parlor in Phoenix, where a dishwashing job had been advertised.

"Without reading it, they laughed and tossed my application in the trash," he said. He got a paper route to survive, he said.

Franklin’s son, Jabbar, a member of SOFAAR, was called racial epithets when he was a high school student and, because he "responded to violence with violence, he didn’t graduate," said Franklin.

"There have been a lot of positive changes here since the sundown laws," said April Franklin, wife of Dennis Franklin’s brother Bruce. "We’re at the point of acceptance and toleration, but not of concern and care, not of unity and love."

Being out on town with a black man on her arm has been a "mostly negative experience," said April Franklin. "We’ve gotten looks of daggers. People move away from us. Many friends stopped returning my calls."

Mercedes Colgrove is a black Medford nurse married to white pediatrician Eric Colgrove. She reported no adverse reactions in public but said she joined the group to "raise up the African- American community" and because the Rogue Valley needs some consciousness-raising about diversity.

The Rev. Isaac Skidmore of Ashland’s Eastern Orthodox Church joined the group because of the "theological energy" inherent in issues about race, he said, and because of the opportunity to "work through the struggle in peaceful ways to unleash the dignity that people are capable of."

To reach Dennis Franklin, call 732-1482.

John Darling is a free-lance writer living in Ashland. E-mail him at jdarling@jeffnet.org.