Mulugeta Seraw

4060

In 1988, an Ethiopian immigrant was murdered in inner southeast Portland. 

But I get ahead of myself.

On a number of street blades on corners near SE 28th and Stark, and a little north and a little east of this, you will see this topping them:

A lot of people know about it, but a lot don't, and I see the questions about them, so I figured I'd leave this here to be found.

It's an unusual design. The gentleman's photo, the unfamiliar script, the lifespan meted in one set of numbers on one side and another set, with seven years' difference, on the other. I'll tell you a little about that, now. For the back story, one can check out this Wikipedia page on Mulugeta Seraw; if you don't go there, understand this much: on a night in 1988, on SE 31st Avenue between Stark and Burnside, three local white supremacist skinheads affiliated with the White Aryan Resistance and another group called East Side White Pride encountered the then-28-year-old man and, indicting him on being African and an immigrant, beat him to death with a baseball bat, because amongst white supremacists this amounts to a capital crime.

The top of display is a cameo depiction of Mulugeta Seraw, which should be an obvious point. His name is rendered in the Amharic language in the Ge'ez script which is the lingua franca of the Ethiopian nation and its graphic method of expression, respectively. The difference in the years comes from the fact that, in Ethiopia, they reckon years a little differently; there is a seven years' difference. Mr. Seraw was born in 1960 by our calendar but 1953 by the Ethiopian one.

So it's a memorial to Mulugeta Seraw in the area which he was murdered, an attempt to never forget what happened and also a way to remember why. These are battles which we still fight today and are still waging. Strangely, there are those amongst us who still insist that this is the proper way to treat other human beings, and so the reminders must persist.