I don’t think it’s any question that this year’s Portland NAACP Freedom Fund Dinner was successful on many levels. We must count it as a measure of progress because 27 years ago, we marched around the Convention Center protesting the absence of Black Jobs on the Convention Center site and other construction on Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.

As I held my grandson this year, it is clear that we must continue the fight if he and other black kids are to have a bright future in Portland.