Avel Gordly, one of Oregon’s most influential civil rights champions and a politician who was often referred to as the “conscience of the state Senate” for her strong moral compass, died at home on Monday. She was 79.
Her death was confirmed by her younger sister, Faye Burch.
Gordly’s personal history is interwoven with Portland’s and the community she loved. She was born at Emanuel Hospital. Her doctor was one of the state’s first Black doctors, DeNorval Unthank. She grew up on North Williams Avenue, where she often roamed with her younger sister as they walked between their family home and that of her grandparents.
“We would stop in every shop along the avenue [Williams Avenue], visiting with the shop owners,” Burch said. “We knew them all very well. They knew us. They would be expecting us.”
Gordly’s parents were Fay and Beatrice Gordly. Her father was a Union Pacific Pullman porter and her mother was active in championing women’s rights.
“Our family struggled, but we didn’t know a lot about it … we had a coal furnace … and there wasn’t always coal, but we survived,” Burch said.
Gordly’s grandparents’ home was later destroyed in the name of the city’s urban renewal efforts.
In a piece in The Oregonian, which revisited the era when hundreds of homes owned by Black people were bulldozed in the late 1950s and early 1970s, Gordly called the current North Williams — after the destruction and displacement of Black Oregonians in what was once the heart of Black Portland — a “tunnel of pain.”
In 1996, after serving three terms in the state House, Gordly was elected to the Oregon Senate. Gordly was the first Black woman elected to that chamber in the state. She became a champion for civil rights, mental health reform and the environment. She was instrumental in getting racist language removed from the state constitution. And she pushed to have Juneteenth recognized as a holiday in Oregon.
Margaret Carter, who was Gordly’s friend, and also the first Black woman to be elected to the Oregon Legislature, said Gordly was a tireless worker.
“She loved her friends and she loved, loved, loved her community,” Carter said.
State lawmakers from both political parties took time on Tuesday to remember Gordly.
“There aren’t many people in this building that get to say they served alongside a legend,” said Sen. Bruce Starr, the Senate Republican Leader. “I’m one of the lucky ones.”
By the time Starr was first elected to the Senate in 2002, he said, Gordly was already a fixture.
“For nearly two decades in this Legislature, she fought to make Oregon live up to its promise,” he said. “Working to remove the Black exclusion laws from our constitution, championing cultural competency and mental health and education. And reminding the rest of us constantly that justice is not an abstract. It has faces and names and neighborhoods.”
Starr said Gordly had a “moral clarity that was rare” and a “warmth that made it hard to stay away,” and even when the debate was sharp, she “never lost her grace.” Gordly was open about her own mental health struggles in her memoir, “Remembering the Power of Words.”
Starr noted that Oregon Health & Science University named its behavioral health center after her, the Avel Gordly Center for Healing.
“That feels just about right, maybe exactly right,” Starr said. “Because that is what she spent her life doing: healing what was broken, lifting up what had been pushed down and building something better in its place.”
Gordly had a Bachelor of Science from Portland State University and also studied leadership at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. In 2007, she became an associate professor of Black studies at PSU. Gordly’s son, Tyrone Waters, is a U.S. Navy veteran. Gordly was also a member of OPB’s Board of Directors from 2008-2014.
U.S. Rep. Janelle Bynum, a Democrat from Oregon who also once served in the state Legislature, wrote on social media that Gordly was her friend and mentor.
“My fondest memory of her was being able to welcome her back to the House floor,” Bynum wrote. “Her presence was regal and distinctive. I knew I was standing on the shoulders of a giant. Sadly, her tenure as an elected Black Oregonian was so rare that many in the chamber thought she was a relative rather than the esteemed public servant who had dedicated and delivered so much to Oregon.”
Michelle Burch, Gordly’s niece, said her family is proud of the legacy she leaves and the way she lived her life.
“She is an inspiration to the next generation of social justice warriors,” she said.
An editorial in The Oregonian said Gordly stood out in Salem for being one of the last holdouts against “growing partisanship.”
“Gordly didn’t come to the Legislature to play politics. She came to do something about the state’s cruel, haphazard system of mental health,” the editorial board wrote. “She came to help make preschool available to low-income families and to support schools. She came to improve public safety and address the fact that people of color are overrepresented in prisons.”
In the end, they noted, she made history.
And “she also helped make this state a better, more compassionate place.”
