寻梦

Rukaiyah Adams, 95年 left a high-powered finance career in Manhattan to return to her hometown of Portl和, 俄勒冈州, 她在哪里致力于恢复该市历史上的黑人社区.

如果你问 Rukaiyah Adams在95年谈到了她的工作，她说，“我赚钱.这是真的:她的工作包括管理一家波特兰市的8亿美元基金, 俄勒冈州, 表现排名前10%的粉底. She also has a high-stakes volunteer job chairing a committee that manages a $92 billion state fund for public employee pensions.

但这个数字并不能反映全部情况. 亚当斯是另一个项目的公众代言人:一项名为“全民运动”的草根运动 阿宾娜愿景, which she hopes will transform about 90 centrally located acres of the Portl和 cityscape through thoughtful, 包容的重建. 虽然这是一份志愿者工作, 这是严肃的事情, requiring her to st和 her ground with government 和 development interests that have other ideas for the property. 亚当斯不喜欢这部分，但她说:“我觉得我不能退缩.”

Some people see the 阿宾娜愿景 as a way to reverse gentrification, a hot topic in Portl和. But Adams sees it as continuing the legacy left by people like her great-gr和mother.

伊内兹·阿德金斯·戴维斯 had a grade school education 和 worked as a cook to support her family in Shreveport, 路易斯安那州, 然后决定去西北的大篷车. 抵达波特兰, 戴维斯和她的亲戚们发现了大量的植物群, 振兴降雨, 和 a river close enough to catch food for dinner 和 big enough to accommodate a World War II shipbuilding boom. Adams imagines what that felt like for the thous和s of African Americans who migrated to Portl和 during this time. “My great-gr和mother gazed across the river 和 thought she could build a community,” she says.

歧视将非洲裔美国人拒之门外, 所以他们在一个非正式的叫做阿尔比纳的地方定居下来, 这里也是许多移民家庭的家园. Albina had a thriving downtown strip where middle-class white women 和 African Americans entered nightclubs through the same door. 亚当斯说，与路易斯安那州相比，“这肯定就像登陆月球一样.”

Davis 和 other members of her community were fleeing the choking restrictions of Jim Crow, 暴力, 和贫困, 但他们也在朝着一个新的愿景前进.

“我过着我曾祖母想象中的生活，”亚当斯说. 然而，她不禁感到几代人之间失去了一些东西.

在七八十年代长大, Adams lived with her two brothers 和 their mom just down the block from Davis 和 other family members. 社区, 现在主要是非裔美国人, 经济状况很差, but Adams saw its riches: neighbors looked out for neighbors 和 families went back generations. They enjoyed a wealth of community, 和 her great-gr和mother’s generation helped build it.

在公立学校表现优异, 亚当斯获得了波特兰一所高级私立高中的奖学金. 回顾, 亚当斯相信，即使没有精英教育，她也能找到自己的路, but the opportunity also gave her a sense of how people outside her social 和 economic milieu lived. 当GG电子官方软件下载的招聘人员来到校园时, Adams was hooked by a photo of the chapel with the sun shining on colorful fall leaves. 她于1992年来到GG电子官方软件下载.

副院长利兹·西纳(Liz Ciner)当时就被亚当斯打动了. “我记得她提高嗓门抗议一大堆事情，”Ciner说. 虽然她不是亚当斯的顾问, Ciner和她一起完成了她的高级竞赛项目, 哪个关注公共住房. Current research at the time suggested that moving low-income families to “scattered site” housing in mixed-income neighborhoods produced better outcomes than isolating poor people in public high-rises. 但在她的论文中，亚当斯对这个概念感到困惑. Growing up, Adams felt not hardship 和 blight, but the nurturing embrace of community. 非裔美国人如果分散就失去了这一点.

20世纪50年代, I-5公路开始施工, 把阿尔比纳区分开，切断了社区通往威拉米特河的通道. 最终，476个家庭和许多企业被夷为平地，以建造一个篮球场. In the 1960s, another 200 houses were demolished for a hospital expansion that never happened. The pain caused by forcing all of those families to move out of Albina still lingers in Portl和 today.

Watching Adams wrestle with the differences between the research 和 her own experience, Ciner对此印象深刻. She recognized Adams’s “rich family background 和 community background that grounded her.她看到这个年轻的女人是如何通过一流的教育而更加成长的. “我希望她能利用她所受的教育为世界做好事, 因为我知道那是她想做的,Ciner回忆道.

随着毕业临近，亚当斯为下一步该做什么而苦恼. “获得权力，”辛纳说，“然后使用它.”

亚当斯回忆道:“我记得当时在想，这有点重. But she has held onto those words, turning them over in her mind, in the decades since.

当她去斯坦福大学法学院的时候，她想到了他们, 然后加入了实力强大的世达律师事务所, 板岩, 米格尔 & 她在那里专门从事并购业务. 当她回到斯坦福大学攻读MBA时，她考虑了这些问题. 和 she returned to them again when she became chief operating officer of a Manhattan asset management firm in 2009.

到那时，波特兰的老社区已经经历了更多的变化. 在90年代末, a city-sponsored redevelopment plan had pushed out more African Americans to create opportunities for business interests 和 developers. 如今，亚当斯的许多老邻居都买不起阿宾纳的房子. It’s what happens when neighborhoods gentrify, 和 you can see it happening all over the country.

大约八年前, 当她回家探亲的时候, Adams went jogging 和 saw a man sitting on a bench looking despondent 和 surrounded by people asking for money 和 who appeared to be living on the street. 那个人是她的弟弟. In her mind, she had been working so hard to ensure that her family’s basic needs were met. 然而，他却独自坐在公园的长椅上. She began to see her time away from her hometown, family, 和 community as a kind of “moral failure.”

她再一次回到了Ciner的话上. She thought about the community her great-gr和mother helped build 和 how much it had invested in her education. 她想，“我接受这么好的教育有什么意义? 难道只是为了我积攒财富，住大房子吗? 机会和教育的恩赐不应该只让我的家人受益.”

所以, in 2012, Adams returned to Portl和 和 became director of investment management at The St和ard, 保险公司, 和, 晚些时候, 迈耶纪念信托的首席投资官, where she currently manages a large portfolio that funds efforts to create social equity.

和, 通过阿宾娜愿景, she’s working to restore some of what Davis saw when she came to Portl和 70 years ago. 在这一点上，这个计划确实是一个愿景——一个跨越20年、30年甚至50年的愿景. Step one is lobbying government to put a cap on the freeway that divides the old neighborhood 和 move the basketball arena’s parking garages underground. 这将为新住宅创造空间, 公园, 还有小企业，那里现在是混凝土的海洋. They’re also looking for community-minded organizations to buy large pieces of property to build mixed-income housing. 分别, the city is devising incentives to help families who were displaced by the historical redevelopment projects to return to the area.

“阿比纳愿景”尚未提出具体建议. 主要目的是深思熟虑，避免过去的错误. 波特兰最后一个经历重大重建的社区, 被称为珍珠, 应该包括经济适用房，结果却贵得离谱. 到目前为止, Portl和 mayor Ted Wheeler has supported the 阿宾娜愿景’s general goals of addressing affordability 和 displacement, 4月，他承诺调查公众对该项目的看法.

Adams thinks often about her great-gr和mother’s journey from the Deep South to the Pacific Northwest 和 how she might continue her family legacy. “我的目标是推动我们走向社区财富，”她说. “这就是我的曾祖母想要做的.”