Avel Louise Gordly served three terms in the Oregon House of Representatives, became the first Black woman to be elected to State Senator in 1997, taught as a professor of Black Studies at Portland State University, and was a lifelong community activist in Portland.
Gordly, who died Feb. 16 — three days after her 79th birthday — is survived by her son, Tyrone Waters, and her sister, Faye Burch.
And she leaves behind a vibrant political legacy.
According to Gordly’s memoir, “Remembering the Power of Words,” her political path began in high school. At the age of 16, she attended a protest in the wake of the 1963 killing of four Black girls in Birmingham, Alabama.
“That march was a defining moment because it exposed me to people who spoke out in support of something of great importance—civil rights—and against something horrible—the murder of innocent children,” she wrote. “That march told me that I could have a voice, too, even as a young person.”
Gordly was born and raised in the Albina District, a historically Black neighborhood in Northeast Portland that was a thriving cultural hub before city leaders intentionally targeted it for demolition and displacement from the 1950s through the 1970s.
Gordly spoke to Renée Watson in an interview for The Elder’s Project about being an “Unthank Baby,” welcomed into the world by the first Black doctor in Portland, Dr. DeNorval Unthank. She was born to Beatrice Bernice Gordly, who came to Portland in the 1920s from Alabama, and Fay Lee Gordly, who came to Portland in 1937 from San Antonio.
Gordly was deeply inspired by her grandmothers, Lessie Gordly and Alberta Louise Randalf, as well as her mother. As she told Watson, all three women were strong community activists and carried a wealth of interconnected knowledge.
“It’s like mom had these tentacles that reached out into different places in the community and there were always women at the end of those tentacles,” she said. “Women doing things.”
Avel Gordly was one of 20 Black students at the Girls’ Polytechnic High School in Portland — a sister school to Benson Polytechnic that eventually became the Da Vinci Arts Middle School. After graduation, she worked at Pacific Northwest Bell and gave birth to her son, Tyrone Waters. She returned to school at Portland State University and graduated in 1974 with a Bachelor’s Degree in Administrative Justice. She later went on to study leadership at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
After graduating from PSU, Gordly worked as a women’s work release counselor for Oregon Department of Corrections, and later worked as a probation officer.
In 1991, she was appointed to fill a vacancy in the Oregon House of Representatives. After serving three terms, voters elected Gordly as the first Black woman to serve as state senator in Oregon — a role she held from 1997 to 2009.
Gordly was instrumental in changing a foundational wrong in Oregon’s history.
In 1999, she was lead petitioner for an amendment to the Oregon Constitution that removed Black exclusion laws included by the Oregon delegates who wrote it in 1857. Two years later, Oregon became the only state to join the union with a constitution that specifically banned free Black people.
In 2008, Oregon Health & Science University named its new mental health institute after Gordly. The Avel Gordly Center for Healing specializes in culturally sensitive mental health treatment to address trauma and reduce the stigma of health services.
“Avel always operated from a position of love, no matter what,” Jo Ann Hardesty, former Portland city commissioner and state representative, wrote in an email to Street Roots. “I served on the board of the Avel Gordly Center for Healing for over four years and the mission of that mental health facility truly reflected the values Avel exemplified.”
In 2006, Gordly returned to PSU as an associate professor of Black Studies, while still serving as state senator. She donated her notes to the school when she retired from the legislature in 2008.
Patricia Schechter, professor of history at PSU, told Street Roots she oversaw the two-year project of organizing Gordly’s notes and making them accessible to the school and the public. When Schechter presented Gordly with the finding aid she had developed, Gordly asked Schechter to work with her on her memoir.
Schechter conducted over 20 hours of interviews for the memoir.
“Our hope was that the memoir was going to become a required reading for anyone who taught in Portland Public Schools — even in Oregon schools,” Schechter said. “It is a case study in both the damage that segregation and racism in education does and also the power of overcoming it.”
Gordly published “Remembering the Power of Words” in 2011, with help from Schechter and a foreword from Charlotte Rutherford.
Looking back at her time with Gordly, Schechter said education was one of the most important tools that Gordly shared with the world.
“It’s that effort and journey to understand ourselves and others fully and freely that leads to wholeness, to understanding, to healing, to progress, to anything worth fighting for, so I think education is the big lesson,” Schechter said.
Ten years later, Gordly and Schechter collaborated with another mutual friend, Carmen Thompson, to create the Avel Louise Gordly Scholarship for Black Women, which launched in 2021.
“Avel’s life is so reminiscent of the American story of resilience within the Black community,” Thompson told Street Roots.
“It was through the love and nurturing of her community and her family that really allowed her to flourish, even as she had a child and was going through her own personal struggles,” Thompson said of naming the scholarship after Gordly. “We thought that really exemplified the best of what we wanted to hold out hope for.”
Then-Mayor Ted Wheeler named March 30, 2022 as Portland’s official Avel Louise Gordly Day.
“She was a champion of human rights, of civil rights, battling mental health issues,” said Kerry Tymchuk, executive director of the Oregon Historical Society and Gordly’s longtime colleague and friend. “For those who were looking for solutions, and were tired of partisanship, of name calling, she was an advocate of all those causes. She was a true public servant, who made a positive difference for so many. When Avel hugged you, you thought you were being hugged by an angel. She just exuded grace and compassion. But don’t let that fool you, cause she was also very tough. You don’t get to be the first African American woman in the Oregon state senate by just being an angel.”
U.S. Representative Janelle Bynum, who in 2024 became Oregon’s first Black member of Congress, told Street Roots her memories of Gordly remind her to hold dignity and truth in high regard.
“She always held me to the highest of standards,” Bynum said. “Even when I didn’t know if I could do it. It was never an idea that you can’t do something. It was that you should do something, and the outcome was less important than the effort, and the effort is what moves us forward.”
This article appears in February 25, 2026.