Afrocentric Program Seeks Nominees for Courage Award

Nov. 3, 2026

A community award being presented by Central Oregon Community College’s Afrocentric Program will honor a member of the community whose courage and care strengthen the people around them. The deadline to nominate an individual for the Beatrice Morrow Cannady Ubuntu Courage Award is Dec. 1.

Eligible nominees include secondary and post-secondary students, educational faculty and staff, community leaders and community members.

“Ubuntu is often loosely translated as ‘I am because we are,’” said Marcus LeGrand, Afrocentric program coordinator at COCC. “The philosophy holds that our humanity is shared and that we thrive when our whole community does.” Courage principles for nominee consideration include building community, encouraging collective action and serving the vulnerable.

Beatrice Morrow Cannady was a pioneering civil rights activist in Oregon who served as the editor and eventual owner of the state’s leading Black newspaper, The Advocate. The founding member of the Portland NAACP chapter in 1914, she was the first Black woman to practice law in Oregon.

In the early 1920s, Cannady visited Central Oregon on multiple occasions to speak on racial equity at local churches and social clubs. Cannady and the Rev. J. W. Anderson inspired the creation of the Bend Colored Men’s Business Club in 1926. An elementary school in Clackamas County bears her name.

Award nominees will be announced on Martin Luther King Jr. Day and a community panel will vote and make a selection by Feb. 1 to recognize the individual for COCC’s Black History Month Celebration.

For more information, contact Marcus LeGrand at mlegrand2@cocc.edu or call 541-330-4376.