My Involvement with the Portland Chapter of the Black Panther Party
Sandra Ford
My name is Sandra Ford. I became involved with the BPP
through Jeff Ford who was the captain of the Portland
Chapter of the BPP (later on I would marry him and have
children by him). My first involvement was working to
establish a Free Health Clinic in Portland in 1969. We
started organizing and found a location for the clinic, then
started calling doctors and nurses to volunteer. It took us
about a year before the clinic was ready to open. We named
it Fred Hampton Free Health Clinic. The clinic was staffed
by Party members and volunteers and was badly needed and
embraced by the Portland community.
Before we opened the clinic, we started a Breakfast for
School Children Program at Highland school. The breakfast
program was open 5 days a week. We collected donations from
surrounding businesses, merchandise as well as cash
donations. We served between 100-150 kids a day. The
children helped us with the mornings also, they cleaned
tables and dumped trash and other helpful things to show
their love.
After the clinic was open for a while we started working on
setting up a Free Dental Clinic. We found an office as well
as a person who taught at the Dental College and we got
volunteers from there. The dentist's equipment was hard to
get, very specialized. We finally got the needed equipment
and opened up, and the clinic is still there today (2004),
run by OSU (Oregon State University). It's name is now
Cleve Allen Dentist Clinic, named after a brother who was
shot and later came to work at the clinic everyday for years
until he died.
Our Medical Clinic did Sickle Cell Anemia testing at schools
and community affairs and we taught a Health class at the
community college. The class was about health issues like
high blood pressure, high blood sugar, diet and exercise,
the things that people need to know about. This was a free
class in which 20-30 people attended weekly. We had a nice
connection with the people who lived in the area surrounding
the clinic. We provided health care for them and we would
even write letters for them about the service they weren't
getting from local hospitals. Manuel Hospital was opposed
to the clinic and even went as far as to steal the property
the clinic was on forcing the clinic to relocate. A Black
doctor was retiring and let us have his spot. We moved into
a better location. The original location was at Vancouver
and Russell Street and the new one was on Williams and
Russell.
Since I helped open up the clinic, I had many roles. I
aided doctors, helped them with female patients, went out
and asked for volunteers and did scheduling, cleaned the
clinic and ordered supplies. Through this experience I
developed an interest in health care, went to school and
then returned as a practitioner at the clinic. I
occasionally worked as a dental assistant. We were
especially concerned about making things nice. This was a
free clinic, but we made it a clean, nice place to come to.
We got a lot of harassment. One day the cops came by and
said, "Kent, the next Panther clinic will be named after
you." Most of the clinics were memorial clinics. They
would call on the phone and say, "We’re gonna get you."
I stayed in the Party until the late seventies, but I've
always been an activist. I was in the youth group of the
NAACP when I was 15 and have participated in many boycotts
and marches. After I left the Party, I got some more
training and later worked in a Community Mental Health
Clinic for several years.
My son is Patrice Lumumba Ford. He is 33 years old and was
arrested Oct. 4th by the FBI. He is being held in Portland
with six other brothers, all Muslims. Their charges are
traveling out of the country to aid the Taliban, money
laundering because he sent his friend $500, and a weapons
charge although the weapon he had was legally bought. The
government is spending a lot on this trial. We believe they
were singled out because they went to China, trying to get
to Afghanistan to work for the Red Crescent, which is like
the Red Cross except it is a Muslim organization.
The government used that as an excuse to pounce on them. We
believe this is a political move by Bush to keep people
fearful, especially afraid of Muslims, take their minds off
the economy and the erosion of civil rights and to help him
get reelected. (They recently worked out a plea bargain.)
By Sandra Ford
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