'Chávez Avenue' sparks debate

Mayor aids effort to rename Interstate Avenue for labor activist

By Lee van der Voo

The Portland Tribune, Jul 27, 2007, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (31 Reader comments)

If Rosa Parks and César Chávez were to meet for a drink in North Portland, they could meet at the Nite Hawk on Rosa Parks Way, formerly Portland Boulevard, where the road intersects with Interstate Avenue – which someday soon might become César Chávez Boulevard.

The cafe and bar has served North Portlanders and passers-by for 70 years on Interstate, once a thoroughfare between Washington and Oregon.

On this stretch of road still dotted with motels and neon signs, a Portland Latino group has been talking with neighborhood groups and businesses about renaming the road in honor of Chávez, the Mexican-American labor activist.

Mayor Tom Potter’s office provided staff to aid the effort after hearing a briefing from the group.

The idea is meeting with mixed reaction on a corner that’s still adjusting to the change from Portland Boulevard to Rosa Parks Way, now one year into a three-year transition.

So far, everybody in the conversation agrees on one thing: Chávez should be recognized in Portland, both for his work as a civil rights leader and for his activities in Oregon, which included speeches at local universities and opposition to legislation unfriendly to farmworkers in Oregon.

Some also like the similarities between Parks and Chávez. Both civil rights leaders made a stand against segregation. Parks refused to give her seat on a bus to a white man in Montgomery, Ala., in 1955; Chávez refused to sit in the Mexican section of a movie theater 11 years earlier.

But there is disagreement as to whether recognition for Chávez should come in the form of another name change for a street in North Portland.

At Interstate Avenue and Rosa Parks Way, a corner that needs little daily reminder of its diversity, the issue of a street name is a practical one.

“When we change it, it’s hard for people,” said Soheap Chea from Cambodia, whose family owns the Arco service station at the intersection.

Businesses on the opposite corners also are owned by immigrant families, one from South Korea and another from China.

The commercial area is anchored by a New Seasons Market that opened in 2005, a sign of changing times in the neighborhood since the Interstate MAX Yellow Line opened in 2004.

When the light-rail line became operational, it was this corner that the TriMet Public Art Committee chose to decorate with American Indian art, honoring native people living in the neighborhoods along Interstate Avenue.

The mix of cultural references now emerging at the intersection of Interstate and Rosa Parks is one Marty Krogh – owner of Art & Sole Comfort Footwear,a business near the intersection – says has been there all along.

“It’s beautiful,” said Krogh, a 10-year resident of the area who noted that the multicultural atmosphere has room for a little of everything, including Chávez.

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