At the tender age of twelve, Norman Sylvester, long before he would be known as "The Boogie Cat" or share stages with legends like B.B. King, embarked on a transformative journey from rural Louisiana to the distant promise of Portland, Oregon. His childhood was steeped in the sensory richness of the Southern landscape: the sweet burst of wild muscadine grapes from his family’s farm, the quiet tranquility of bayou fishing, and the rhythmic cadence of his grandmother’s gospel hymns accompanying the churn of butter at the kitchen table. When his father, seeking better economic prospects, summoned him to Portland, Sylvester felt an acute sense of displacement, a wrenching departure from a perceived paradise.

This migration occurred in the autumn of 1957, a period when Oregon held a deeply unwelcoming reputation for Black families. From its territorial days, Oregon had enacted a series of exclusionary laws designed to prevent Black people from settling within its borders, a discriminatory stance that persisted until 1926. The Oregon Donation Land Act of 1850, a cornerstone of westward expansion, lavishly granted up to 640 acres of free land to white settlers while explicitly prohibiting Black individuals from claiming any land whatsoever. The state’s resistance to federal progress was further underscored by its refusal to ratify the 15th Amendment, and in 1917, its Supreme Court sanctioned racial discrimination in public accommodations. By the 1920s, Oregon had become a stronghold for the Ku Klux Klan, boasting the largest chapter west of the Mississippi.

Despite this formidable history of hostility, Black pioneers were among the earliest to establish roots in Oregon, diligently carving out lives and striving for equality amidst pervasive prejudice. The Portland chapter of the NAACP, founded in 1914, stands as a testament to this enduring activism, recognized as the oldest continuously operating chapter west of the Mississippi River. Nevertheless, Oregon’s anti-Black policies acted as potent deterrents; by the time Sylvester arrived, African Americans constituted less than one percent of the state’s population, and Portland’s Black community was the smallest among major West Coast cities. This stark contrast to his Southern upbringing profoundly impacted Sylvester as he stepped off the train at Portland’s Union Station, entering a world of immediate culture shock.

Sylvester’s first destination in his new city was a barbershop near the bustling intersection of North Williams Avenue and North Russell Street, a necessary stop before commencing seventh grade at his first integrated school. Upon reaching the corner, he was struck by the vibrant scene: a handsome brick building crowned with an onion-shaped cupola stood sentinel on one corner, while homes and businesses – a cafe, a drugstore, a produce market – lined the others. To his surprise and immediate comfort, the street teemed with African American people, engaged in commerce and exuding a palpable sense of confidence and pride. He observed them managing businesses, driving well-maintained cars, and moving with an undeniable swagger. He would later draw parallels to the famed Harlem, but on that inaugural day, the familiar sights and sounds of a thriving Black community served as a powerful reminder of the home he had left behind. Despite the thousands of miles separating him from the muscadine vines that graced his grandmother’s fence, standing on that Portland corner, Sylvester felt an immediate sense of belonging, as if the very air was laced with the comforting aromas of Southern cooking and the infectious rhythms of gospel and jazz. "The place just embraced me," Sylvester recalled. "Everybody was singing the same song, if you know what I mean."

This pivotal intersection marked the heart of a neighborhood known as Albina. In the early 20th century, Portland’s Black residents, many of whom worked as railcar attendants, began to congregate in this area due to its proximity to Union Station. Over the ensuing decades, a confluence of landlord discrimination and deeply entrenched institutional policies, including a 1919 Portland Realty Board resolution deeming it unethical to sell homes in white neighborhoods to non-white buyers, effectively pushed Black individuals into Albina, concentrating the community there. By 1940, more than half of Portland’s Black population, then numbering just under 2,000 individuals, resided within Albina’s boundaries.

The onset of World War II dramatically altered the demographic landscape of Portland, drawing over a hundred thousand newcomers to the city, including approximately 20,000 African Americans, to fill vital roles in the burgeoning shipyards. Among these wartime migrants were Sylvester’s parents, aunt, and uncle, who settled in a defense housing development called Vanport. Constructed behind a railroad embankment in the floodplain of the Columbia River, Vanport became the nation’s largest wartime housing project. Roughly a quarter of its more than 40,000 residents were African American, making it by far the most significant Black community in Oregon.

Following the war, many residents began to depart Vanport. While Sylvester’s mother returned to Louisiana, his uncle secured employment at a local hospital, and the remainder of the family decided to remain in the Portland area. Barred from residing in most neighborhoods due to racial covenants, they continued to live in Vanport. It was there, on Memorial Day in 1948, that tragedy struck. The Columbia River, swollen by relentless spring rains and snowmelt, breached its embankment, unleashing a devastating torrent upon the city. Within a mere forty minutes, Vanport was submerged. At least fifteen lives were lost, and over 18,000 individuals, a third of whom were Black, were rendered homeless.

Sylvester’s family, along with the majority of African Americans displaced by the flood, found refuge in the only Portland neighborhood where they were welcomed: Albina. By the time Sylvester settled in the city, four out of every five Black Portlanders called Albina home. Despite persistent issues of redlining, underinvestment in public services, and negligent landlords that sometimes led to overcrowded and dilapidated housing conditions, the neighborhood fostered a strong sense of community and vibrancy. Black-owned businesses, churches, and social gathering spots flourished, creating a self-sustaining ecosystem. "Everything you needed in a community was right there," Sylvester affirmed.

Central to this community’s lifeblood was music, and Albina, during the decades following Sylvester’s arrival, was a veritable incubator for musical talent. Gospel choirs filled churches with resonant harmonies, while soul bands packed the Cotton Club, then the premier soul music venue in the Pacific Northwest. Jazz, blues, and funk could be heard emanating from the neighborhood’s numerous venues almost every night, from teen clubs to all-ages spaces, with bands frequently forming in basements, backyards, schoolrooms, and churches.

At the age of thirteen, fueled by his father’s hard-earned wages from two jobs – one at the hospital by day and another at the foundry by night – Sylvester acquired his first guitar. It wasn’t the gleaming red electric he yearned for, but an $11.95 pawnshop acoustic. His father’s promise was clear: learn three songs, and the electric guitar would be his. Finding musical instruction in Albina proved remarkably accessible. Sylvester learned his initial guitar licks from an elderly Creole gentleman who owned the house his family rented. Later, a fellow high school student introduced him to the intricacies of the blues. A naturally gifted learner, Sylvester quickly mastered his instruments, and the guitar soon became a powerful tool for self-expression. As a shy country boy from the South, he often felt overwhelmed by Portland’s urban youth, his stutter hindering his verbal communication. "But with my guitar in front of me, I could express myself," he explained.

Now eighty years old, Sylvester has dedicated his life to musical expression. His first band, Rated "X," was among Portland’s pioneering soul ensembles. They recorded a single in 1972 and were gaining local traction when Sylvester’s demanding graveyard shift at the trucking company forced him to leave the band. Undeterred, he continued to play, eventually establishing himself as a formidable blues musician. For the past forty years, The Norman Sylvester Blues Band has been a fixture on the music scene, sharing stages with icons like B.B. King, Buddy Guy, and Mavis Staples, and earning him a place in the Oregon Music Hall of Fame in 2011.

Sylvester’s considerable achievements are but one thread in the rich tapestry of musical talent that emerged from Albina. He is part of a deeply interconnected community of Black musicians, educators, and arts advocates who converged in this neighborhood during the latter half of the 20th century, transforming the region into a vibrant musical hub and forging a legacy that continues to resonate today. Until recently, however, the profound story of Albina’s musical history resided primarily in the memories and private collections of its inhabitants, a generation of artists now advancing in years.

By the time Bobby Smith arrived in Albina in the early 2000s, the neighborhood bore little resemblance to the predominantly Black community of Sylvester’s youth. Smith, a young white schoolteacher and occasional music journalist, was aware of Albina’s vibrant jazz scene in the 1940s and 1950s, an era chronicled in Robert Dietsche’s 2005 book Jumptown. However, the public narrative of Black music in Portland seemed to abruptly end in 1957, leaving Smith to wonder about the subsequent decades. As an avid record collector, he embarked on a quest for commercial recordings by Portland’s Black musicians from the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. His search through used record stores and consignment shops yielded few results, with Sylvester’s 1970s 45 with Rated "X" being one of the rare finds from those periods. Concurrently, Smith engaged with his neighbors, frequented local parks to soak in any available music, and spent time at Clyde’s Prime Rib, one of the few venues consistently featuring elder Black performers.

In 2014, Smith began DJing for XRAY-FM, a nascent community radio station broadcasting from Albina. By then, he had amassed a modest collection of recordings from the region’s musical past and started inviting local musicians to the station to discuss them on air. One of his initial guests was Calvin Walker, a drummer, bandleader, and self-proclaimed "child of Albina." Walker’s scheduled thirty-minute interview stretched into three hours as he recounted his life story, inadvertently mapping out an entire ecosystem of musicians and educators who had profoundly shaped and been shaped by Albina. "If you’re really curious about this, here’s a list of people you need to start talking to," Walker advised Smith. "And I’ll help you."

Smith’s weekly radio show soon transformed into a vital platform where elder Black musicians came to share their experiences and musical legacies. Despite facing systemic barriers that limited their access to the mainstream recording industry, Albina’s musicians had diligently documented their own work, preserving a wealth of unreleased material in the form of demos, reel-to-reels, cassettes, and VCR tapes. This ever-expanding collection of music and memorabilia pouring into the station began to reveal an extraordinary legacy of Black arts and culture in Portland, an untold chapter of Oregon’s history.

In 2015, Walker, Smith, and Ken Berry, another respected local musician and community leader, established the Albina Music Trust (AMT) with the ambitious goal of preserving thousands of obsolete and deteriorating media items and making them accessible to all. Volunteer engineers generously donated their time and expertise, providing training to volunteers on how to operate archaic recording and playback equipment. Every item was meticulously digitized and cataloged into a comprehensive database. After a decade of dedicated effort, AMT publicly launched the Albina Community Archive in 2024, believed to be the only community archive in the United States devoted to the restoration of a Black community’s musical heritage.

The online repository now houses over 13,000 items sourced from 180 different contributors. This extensive collection includes not only music – encompassing live recordings, out-of-circulation albums, and unreleased demos – but also film, newsprint, posters, handbills, and oral histories. The archive functions less like a static museum and more like a dynamic seedbank, safeguarding historical artifacts that are then revitalized through various projects. The art installation Wall to Wall Soul showcases restored and recolored posters and photography in striking images exhibited across the city and now permanently displayed at Clyde’s Prime Rib. Under the record label of the same name, AMT releases vinyl albums featuring never-before-heard music from Albina’s past, alongside new works by contemporary artists from the community. An audio tour, The Albina Soul Walk, guides listeners on a mile-long, music-infused journey through Albina, visiting former venues and gathering places, with musicians and club owners narrating the neighborhood’s rich history. Experiencing the tour feels akin to donning 3D glasses, bringing an unseen dimension of the past into vivid focus. Even after removing the earbuds and re-entering the present-day sounds of the city, the voices from the tour lingered, transforming the familiar streets with a renewed sense of historical depth.

One summer morning, I met Smith, Walker, and Berry at AMT’s compact office in northeast Portland, a space that felt more like a cozy gathering place than a formal office. Shelves laden with neatly labeled boxes lined one wall, while a fascinating array of audio equipment spanning different eras – turntables, reel-to-reel machines, cassette players, CD drives – occupied every available surface. A vibrant grid of framed record sleeves adorned a lime-green wall, and the air was filled with the smooth sounds of jazz.

Settling into one of the four mismatched chairs felt less like a professional meeting and more like joining a family around a warm kitchen table. The conversation flowed effortlessly, one story seamlessly leading to another, a testament to the deep camaraderie forged over years of shared passion and dedication. The experience was reminiscent of Smith’s initial encounter with Walker: an expectation of an hour-long discussion that evolved into an afternoon of shared stories and connections.

Ken Berry arrived in Oregon from Kansas in 1953 at the age of four. His family initially settled in a house in southeast Portland near Laurelhurst Elementary, where he became the school’s first Black student. However, two years later, following complaints from anti-integration neighbors, their landlord demolished the house, forcing Berry’s family to relocate to Albina. It was there that he began playing piano during Sunday school at the New Hope Missionary Baptist Church, earning 75 cents a day. He joined the choir at Jefferson High and, after graduating, began playing the Hammond B3 organ at The Upstairs Lounge, then Albina’s most prominent jazz club. It was there he met Thara Memory, a trumpeter from Florida who, while traveling with his band en route to Seattle, stopped in Portland to play at The Upstairs Lounge. Captivated by Albina’s lush trees and vibrant community, Memory decided to stay when his band continued north. He and Berry soon formed Shades Of Brown, one of numerous collaborations that would profoundly shape Albina’s music culture for decades.

Around the same time, and not far from The Upstairs Lounge, Walker encountered Memory at another vital Albina community hub: the Albina Arts Center. As a teenager, Walker frequently performed at the center with his jazz-infused funk band, The Gangsters. "Thara comes in one night and says, ‘Can I play your trumpet?’" Walker recounted. He handed over the instrument, and Memory’s masterful playing left him awestruck. "I never played trumpet again!" Walker exclaimed. He continued with drums, and Memory joined him on trumpet.

In the summer of 1970, Portland hosted the American Legion’s annual convention. In an effort to divert potential war protesters, the city orchestrated the Vortex 1 festival, the only state-sponsored rock concert in U.S. history. Although The Gangsters were not officially invited, they transported their gear to the Albina Arts Center truck and drove to the festival, parking right up to the stage. When the manager informed them that all performance slots were filled, Memory retorted, "But you don’t have any all-Black bands." Thirty minutes later, The Gangsters were on stage, delivering a powerful performance. "We played for an hour and a half, and I think they even paid us!" Walker recalled with a grin.

Despite its significance, most retrospective coverage of Vortex 1, including books and television documentaries, omitted this pivotal moment. When AMT inquired about the exclusion, the answer was consistently the same: researchers simply did not know the story. Like much of Albina’s history, this narrative was held within the community, not within institutional archives. "The public library and the Oregon Historical Society have existed for over a hundred years," Smith observed. "But in the 10 years we’ve been around, we’ve become the largest digital repository of Black arts and culture in the entire state of Oregon." Walker nodded in agreement, adding, "People are putting their lives in our hands because they trust that their story will be told accurately."

AMT is part of a growing national network of community archives dedicated to preserving collective histories that have been overlooked or excluded from mainstream repositories. Over 300 such archives have been mapped across the country, each meticulously documenting a distinct facet of American life, from LGBTQ+ communities in the Deep South to Indigenous women activists and communities impacted by the death penalty. As control over historical narratives becomes an increasingly potent political tool, evidenced by challenges to institutions like the National Museum of African American History and Culture, community-based archives such as AMT play a crucial role in broadening the spectrum of voices that author history, thereby crafting a more inclusive and multifaceted narrative of America.

In the Trust’s modest office, Walker, Smith, and Berry wove together the story of AMT with an intimacy and rapport born from years of shared dreams and collaborative problem-solving. Their mutual respect, evident despite their diverse ages and backgrounds, created a seamless conversational flow. One man would recount an anecdote, another would clarify the timeline, and the third would provide essential context, demonstrating a synergy akin to a masterfully performed musical ensemble, where each musician contributes a distinct element without overshadowing the others, collectively creating a whole far greater than the sum of its parts.

Before departing, Berry handed me a copy of the YouthSound album and requested a text upon my safe arrival home. That evening, I placed the album on my turntable and pored over the liner notes as a chorus of voices – dozens of children and adults singing together in a high school auditorium four decades prior – filled my living room. "It was all about listening," one student recalled. "Anybody could put out a tune. But your tune gotta match the person standing next to you. This was about teamwork. We needed to sound as one."

While their work often involves the tangible preservation of the past, AMT’s ultimate focus lies in shaping the future. "In another 50 years, we don’t want a couple of guys like me and Ken sitting around talking about the good old days," Walker stated. To that end, the Trust actively collaborates with Portland schools and nonprofits to expand access to arts education, simultaneously connecting young students with the rich legacy of Albina’s Black music heritage.

Last June, I traveled to the school district headquarters for "Rhythms of Tomorrow," one of 38 public events AMT hosted in 2025 alone. This event, a collaboration between AMT and Portland Public Schools, marked the first district-wide celebration of Black Music Month. On my way, I stopped for lunch on Mississippi Avenue, a street steeped in Albina’s history. There, I joined a throng of lunch-goers, predominantly white individuals in their thirties and forties, enjoying tacos. Nearby, a cafe offered boba tea and artisanal donuts, while a boutique nursery displayed mounted ferns for $150 each, a testament to the area’s gentrification. Yoga studios and brewpubs dotted the landscape.

Decades after city bulldozers tore through Albina, another wave of displacement significantly altered the neighborhood’s fabric. In the 1990s, the area’s affordable housing attracted white residents priced out of other districts. The city began reinvesting resources into Albina, implementing measures to curb predatory lending and address housing abandonment. These changes primarily benefited middle-class white newcomers, leading to a rapid escalation in housing prices that pushed many long-term residents out of reach. By 2000, less than a third of Black Portlanders resided in Albina, and for the first time since the 1960s, the area no longer maintained a Black majority. "A lot of folks are out in The Numbers now," Sylvester lamented, referring to the far eastern reaches of Portland. He reminisced about his 1974 Dodge Charger, complete with a sunroof and an 8-track player, which allowed him to greet dozens of people during a drive through Albina; now, he noted, he could traverse the same route without encountering a single familiar face.

A mile south of Mississippi Avenue stands the sprawling 10.5-acre campus of the school district headquarters. This structure, one of the "urban renewal" projects that displaced residents in the 1960s, is a drab, industrial building resembling a parking garage. However, the day of my visit, its uninspiring exterior contrasted sharply with the vibrant scene unfolding within. Children darted about, enjoying watermelon slices and salami from a bountiful snack table, while adults exchanged warm hugs and handshakes. A DJ, positioned behind a setup of turntables and mixers, captured the attention of many eleven-year-olds, filling the room with infectious beats.

Norman Sylvester opened the event, initiating a lineup of musicians and speakers that spanned genres and generations, from blues to hip-hop, high school students to seasoned elders. He approached the stage, his guitar held more as an extension of his being than a mere object. While Sylvester has explored various musical genres throughout his career, his roots remain firmly planted in the blues. When asked about his enduring connection to this music, he reflected, "I can only imagine a man like Muddy Waters or Son House, plowing a field, driving a tractor all day, and still being able to play a guitar and sing at that quality. Where did that come from?" Before I could offer a guess, he provided his own answer: "From the dedication they had to doing something better. Those journeys just mean something to me, so I want to keep that going."

Listening to him play that afternoon, his guitar bending notes into melodies that were at once achingly sweet and profoundly resonant, I was reminded of his words and their profound implication: a song is not merely an artifact to be archived, but a form of archive itself, a repository of life’s experiences preserved in melody, lyric, rhythm, and pitch for future access.

The gospel quartet, featuring MaryEtta Callier, Arietta Ward, Nafisaria Mathews, and LaRhonda Steele, took the stage following Sylvester’s performance. Ward and Mathews, sisters, are the daughters of Janice Scroggins, a legendary Albina musician who passed away in 2014. Renowned as a virtuoso pianist, Scroggins was also a beloved educator and composer. "My mother started playing when she was 2 or 3," Ward shared. According to family lore, Scroggins, a seemingly sickly child prone to crying, found solace and silence at the piano. Placed on the keys, her distress subsided. Years later, while playing at a church in Idabel, Oklahoma, a wealthy parishioner recognized her exceptional talent and offered to sponsor formal lessons. Her teacher not only imparted fundamental musical knowledge but, as Ward emphasized, "showed my mother that music was something a woman could do."

Upon arriving in Albina in the 1970s, Scroggins became one of many remarkable female musicians central to the community. While some, like the acclaimed singer Linda Hornbuckle and bassist Marianne Mayfield, are no longer with us, many others, including Steele, Callier, and Shirley Nanette, continue to perform today. However, the archive’s visual record, with its preponderance of male faces, underscores the male-dominated nature of the music industry, a reality not unique to Albina and one that persists today. According to a USC Annenberg study, over 94% of producers and 62.3% of recording artists on 2024’s top songs were male. "Making it as a musician has always been more difficult for women," Ward confided, sharing experiences of receiving less compensation than male performers for identical shows, a sentiment echoed by Tahirah Memory. "It takes tenacity," Ward added, "but it makes you stronger."

Performing as Mz. Etta, Ward has carved out a dynamic career in Portland as a genre-fluid singer and bandleader, her powerful vocals radiating joy and effortless strength, drawing enthusiastic crowds. Ward attributes her perseverance to the supportive Albina community. "People talk about the Great American Songbook," she remarked. "Well, my great American songbook looks a lot different, because growing up I was exposed to all these Black composers. I was shown that we can do anything in a time when other people said we couldn’t." Her mentors – Ken Berry, Linda Hornbuckle, Norman Sylvester, LaRhonda Steele, and her mother – instilled in their students not only the technical skills to master complex compositions but also a profound sense of self-worth and freedom. Ward continues this tradition of mentorship, collaborating with AMT on programs like the public school event, as well as jam sessions and community concerts that amplify the legacy of Albina’s female musicians. "They may not have been at the forefront, but their imprint was very poignant."

In the school auditorium, Ward and the gospel quartet opened with Walter Hawkins’ song "Be Grateful." Their voices intertwined, building a sound so rich and layered it felt tangible. A young girl nearby, mid-bite into a cookie, paused, her mouth agape, mesmerized by the singers. The song enveloped the room, immersing the audience in its profound resonance.

The event concluded with a presentation by Portland-based producers Tony Ozier and Jumbo, two of the five artists who remixed archival recordings to create contemporary, beat-based tracks for AMT’s 2025 album, Soul Assembly. "We figured we could be the bridge, not just to take the old to the now, but to pass the torch so the youngsters can take it from us and walk forward," Jumbo told the assembled crowd.

Soul Assembly derives its name from a 1968 musical theatre production conceived by the Black Student Union at Jefferson High in response to the escalating racial tensions following Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. Performed throughout the city, the show illuminated African American history while celebrating the vibrant culture and creativity of Portland’s Black community.

Upon encountering this history in the archive, Ozier, who moved to Portland 19 years ago as a young funk musician, was struck. He admitted that Portland is not typically recognized for its Black culture, and he had not anticipated discovering such a deeply rooted Black music scene. However, his encounter with Janice Scroggins introduced him to a wealth of local funk musicians. "I thought I was funkin’," Ozier recalled with a laugh. "She said, ‘You are funkin’ – but Portland ain’t new to funk.’" Ozier now teaches youth music classes for the Bodecker Foundation and hopes that AMT projects like the Soul Assembly album can help connect young people to the music and stories of Albina’s past. "This is Black history in Portland – where else do you hear that?" he posed. Culture, Ozier asserted, is significantly shaped by the music youth engage with, noting how the words of songs like "Say It Loud – I’m Black and I’m Proud" or "You Used to Call Me on Your Cell Phone" embed themselves in one’s consciousness.

Ozier and Jumbo then performed two tracks. The first, "Searchin’ for Love," recorded in the 1970s by Shades Of Brown and released in 2024 on AMT’s label, offered a laid-back groove and piercing vocals that were both irresistibly catchy and infused with a palpable sense of anguish. Described in the liner notes as a "cry for decency," the track reflected the Albina community’s dismay at the city’s neglect of their neighborhoods. Jumbo followed with a remixed version, layering samples from his own formative years over the original track. A thumping beat and electronic distortion lent new potency to the original vocals, which reverberated relentlessly throughout the space.

The song seemed to collapse time, captivating the audience, who listened with heads nodding in mesmerized appreciation. Its impact felt particularly profound in that setting: within a building constructed on the very ground where homes once stood, now filled with members of the displaced community who had gathered to celebrate the enduring fruits of their still-flourishing culture. The space mirrored the sonic landscape Jumbo had crafted, where layers of history intertwined and the echoes of the past mingled with present-day aspirations. Like the song, the event served as both a tribute to history’s enduring influence and a powerful testament to human resilience and the capacity to create something new from what has been inherited.

Before the summer’s end, I attended another AMT event: the latest performance of TimeSound, Albina’s historic concert series, recently revived by AMT after a three-decade hiatus. This performance was part of the grand reopening celebration for the expanded Albina Library. Situated on Russell Street, the library is just a block east of the intersection where a twelve-year-old Norman Sylvester found himself in the fall of 1957, searching for a haircut. Before the show, I walked to the crossing.

The afternoon sun pooled on the asphalt, broken by the shade of street trees. Cars passed, and a woman walked her toddler along the sidewalk. I pictured Sylvester standing there all those years ago, wondering if that young boy would recognize anything if he returned today. Apartments occupied two corners, and a commercial complex on the third housed the Urban League of Portland, a civil rights nonprofit. On the fourth corner, where the brick building with the distinctive onion-shaped cupola once stood, a chain-link fence enclosed a rectangular plot of bare land.

This space had remained vacant since its demolition in the 1970s. Now, half a century later, that situation is finally changing. In February, a collaboration spearheaded by the Black-led nonprofit Williams and Russell CDC broke ground on a residential and commercial development designed to prioritize access for individuals with generational ties to the neighborhood. The city of Portland, which in June agreed to a $8.5 million settlement for 26 descendants of displaced Black families, is among the project’s partners. Funding for the development is partially provided by the 1803 Fund, an organization dedicated to investing in Black Portland and supporting restorative development initiatives in Albina. Juma Sei, the organization’s community partnership manager, emphasized the crucial role of culture, stating, "You can have a bunch of buildings, but it doesn’t matter if there isn’t a culture to put people into those buildings."

Sei first encountered AMT shortly after returning to Portland in 2024. Having grown up in the area, his parents immigrated from Sierra Leone, leaving him without direct generational connections to Portland’s Black community. Seeking to deepen his understanding of local Black history, he explored archives and discovered AMT. The experience was profound. Sei had lived in cities like Atlanta, Washington D.C., and Detroit, all renowned for their Black cultural contributions. "Portland isn’t on that list," he remarked. "But here was this living, breathing thing – the largest archive of its kind in the U.S. – right here in Portland. To me, it was a treasure trove."

Demographically, Sei acknowledged, Albina is no longer the epicenter of Black life in Portland, with most Black Portlanders now residing further east or outside the city limits. While earlier events at the library celebration – including puppet theater and 3D printing demonstrations – showed a limited Black presence, the TimeSound concert presented a starkly different scene.

In a spacious meeting room, a dreamy mural served as a backdrop to a stage, with glass doors opening onto a courtyard where attendees enjoyed complimentary horchata oat-milk popsicles under the sun. The space, bathed in light, was nearly at capacity, filled predominantly with Black families, though a diverse representation of all ages was present, from seniors to infants.

Calvin Walker was the first to address the audience. "Is this not a miracle?" he exclaimed. "To have this beautiful facility, the second-largest library in Portland, right here?" The room erupted in applause. "There was a time when nobody wanted to live in Albina," he continued. "After Vanport, this is where we landed, and we made it vibrant. Now, it’s going to come back, and it’s going to come back with all of us."

The concert was directed by Ward, who, in the spirit of TimeSound, led an intergenerational ensemble performing works by Albina’s Black composers. When Berry invited her to direct, Ward expressed some apprehension, admitting, "It’s hard not to get imposter syndrome. These musicians are my heroes, my teachers. They’ll always be legendary to me." Yet, on stage that afternoon, her confidence and admiration for Albina’s musicians, past and present, shone through. To highlight the community’s female artists, she had curated a set primarily composed by women, beginning with a song by her mother. The audience fell silent, many hearing the composition for the first time, while others likely recalled it from past performances, unlocking a trove of memories. Through the open courtyard doors, a riff of music drifted on the wind, prompting the question: if a young boy were standing on the corner of Williams and Russell at that very moment, might he hear it?

Near the concert’s conclusion, Ward invited Berry onstage to sing. He approached the microphone, shaking his head with a mixture of wonder and delight. "I was just having a flashback," he said, recounting an evening approximately thirty-five years prior. He had been performing at another Portland library, participating in a community concert. Ward and her sister Nafisaria, then young children, were present. "Arietta was right here," he stated, gesturing to his ribs to indicate her height at the time. As he looked up, his eyes welled with tears, yet a smile graced his face. "It’s just so good to see that we are still whole when there’s been so much to break us apart." He paused, then turned to the band, signaled them to begin, and allowed the music to convey the rest.