Building the ‘Freedom Dream’ Together

Rhodes Scholar Aryn Frazier found an audacious vision alive in Portland  

Aryn Frazier didn’t just move to Portland. She was drawn to it. Drawn by the energy and spirit animating the city’s Black community. 

Leaders had spent decades organizing and activating, building power despite generations of displacement and the destruction of homes, businesses and neighborhoods. The Albina Vision Trust had emerged as the largest restorative redevelopment effort in America—yes, in the nation—primed to buy back land and rebuild the Black community in Portland’s central city. 

So, when she heard a new organization called the Center for Black Excellence was looking for an Executive Director, Frazier took notice. 

“What is going on in Portland?” Frazier remembers thinking when she heard about a position leading an independent nonprofit dedicated to transforming the educational experience of Black children. “It intrigued me. (I thought) ‘They’re not only trying to do this, but they’re succeeding.’” 

In the months since, Frazier has developed a theory about why Black Portlanders have built and sustained this momentum. She talked to Oregon Community Foundation about the legacy of Black leaders building educational power and her organization’s focus on elevating the Black educational experience.  

Aryn, in 2020, voters overwhelmingly approved $60 million in capital funds to create the Center for Black Student Excellence, a community hub and service center dedicated to supporting Black students and families in Portland Public Schools. You lead a separate community-based nonprofit with a similar name. Help us understand how the district’s center and your organization intersect and where they diverge. 

The Center for Black Excellence is holding the district accountable for making good on the promise (of the Center for Black Student Excellence) and offering strategic guidance to the district. 

The district has a lot of things going on and tough challenges on their plate, including figuring out how to build several schools and complete renovations on them. One aspect of our work is reminding them that completing the Center for Black Student Excellence is also something that is on their plate.  

We recognize that they may very well be stretched thin. So, we're offering our thoughts, partnership and assistance wherever it makes sense to make sure we can get this over the finish line.   

We’re also doing things that are unrelated to the district, but that will certainly benefit it because they will benefit the children who attend the schools.  

Our primary purpose is not to offer programs or services. A lot of organizations are good at providing programs and services to students and families already. The role that we play in this educational ecosystem is to try to add some coordination and cohesion amongst organizations that are serving the kids that we all care about, so that we can be sure that we're having a maximum impact as we try to achieve our collective goals.  

We also play a policy role. There are meaningful policy conditions that need to be set in the state to make it possible, frankly, to better educate and serve all children here.  

You say that you were drawn here by the energy and spirit animating Portland’s Black community. Now that you’ve been here awhile, what do you think is the source? 

I think that it's something about the West. The history master's program that I was a part of (Note: Raised in Maryland, Frazier is a Rhodes Scholar and studied at the University of Oxford in England) always had a guest professor from a U.S. university. I studied with a professor who taught the whole course from this perspective of thinking about what the West means in the American imagination and for the ethos of the country.  

One of the pieces that has always stuck with me is to just think about what it took to get out here from Mississippi, Arkansas or Louisiana. There's something adventurous about that, something bold.  

For Black folks, that's even greater because the world that they were looking for when they left was also one that they could only imagine. I think the West for Black folks was a freedom dream. And unfortunately, when they got here, it wasn't quite as free as they had dreamed. But they've been working towards that ever since. That must be core to the energy and spirit. 

There are a lot more pieces that have fallen into place here than almost anywhere else in the country. What undergirds all that work is the importance of a connected and cohesive community. For all the freedom of the West, there's also a small streak of individualism. Part of how we overcome that is being in community with each other.  

What makes the Center for Black Excellence’s approach unique? 

If we have one theory of transformation, it’s that we must fully resource every child. We can't just give them 20% of the pie here or fill in one piece of the puzzle. We're trying to make mosaics; we're trying to paint portraits. To do that, we must get them everything that they need, which is often more than any one of us can give, even when we're giving our all.  

That’s why community is so important, because it says, not only do I know that you are there, but I know that I need you. I trust you to provide the thing that you're best positioned to provide. That's how we build a thriving community and set a standard for the kinds of worlds we build for the children who we dream can be freer than we ever were.  

What should we look for from the Center for Black Excellence in the next year? In the next five years?  

Our goals are intentionally big so that people from every part of our community can see their place within making those goals into a reality.  

The first of those goals is something that we call the E.T.H.O.S. Enrichment Initiative. That's rooted in research that shows that by sixth grade, kids from working class families have had, on average, 6,000 fewer hours of high-quality out-of-school learning opportunities than their peers from middle- and upper-class families. (Note: According to the Center for Black Excellence, that’s the equivalent of more than six years of instructional time in Oregon.)  

So, our goal is to connect every Black child to 8,000 hours of out-of-school enrichment by the end of eighth grade.  

The second big goal is something that we call our Possibilities Labs, and that’s developmentally appropriate K–12 career exploration.  

The third is what we call G.O.A.T. Curriculum Enhancements. G.O.A.T stands for “greatest of all time” curriculum enhancements.  

We're thinking about ways that we can review existing curriculum to find the gaps in culturally responsive and deeply engaging materials and create a repository that educators can pull from to make the content that they're providing the kids more relevant, and add some local history, too. It is one thing to learn in Portland about things that Black folks did in Harlem, and another to learn about what they did at your school or on your street.  

And then of course there's the Center for Black Student Excellence (at Portland Public Schools). So, we’re working with the district to ensure that it comes to fruition and adopts strategies that allow it to live up to its big name. It’s not a name that centers student proficiency. It's not a name about filling in gaps. It's a name that calls for student excellence. 

We’re launching a centralized digital resource hub, which will be stood up by the end of this year. It’s rooted in this idea that right now there is no physical space. Even when there is a physical space, there will be all sorts of reasons that folks may not be able to get to it. But we can have digital spaces now. We can make it easy for students and families and educators to access those resources without having to run all over town.  

What role does OCF play in the work of the Center for Black Excellence? 

OCF was one of our first funders. OCF is taking an audacious step. You're investing in the coordination and the cohesion that will help us reach big goals. I appreciate you all stepping out and being a part of this work with us, because it will take everybody.  

We’re glad you came to town.  

Thank you! I'm glad I came to town, too.