[Editor's Note: The following article is part of BlackOut: A Five-Year Retrospective on Portland’s Racial Justice Movement, a joint publication from Donovan Scribes and the Portland Mercury. Written exclusively by Black Portlanders, the purpose of BlackOut is to remember and reflect on the May 25, 2020 murder of George Floyd at the hands of police, and the 100+ days of protests in Portland that same year. You can find BlackOut in print at more than 500 locales citywide, inserted inside the Mercury's Food Issue. You can read all the BlackOut articles here.]

The 1803 Fund—an investment fund created by and for Black Portlanders, that seeks rooted, prosperous life for Black folks in the city—has three program areas that guide its investment practice, both into community partnerships and real assets:

Place - Investments that create and preserve homes, structures, and infrastructure.

Culture - Investments that enrich Portland vibrant Black culture. 

Education - Investments into the wellbeing of Black youth and the communities that surround them.

Rukaiyah Adams wrote the first business concept for 1803 Fund in 2020, born from a desire to do something transformative for Black folks in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. Juma Sei joined 1803 in 2024, moving home to Portland to run the fund’s communications practice.

The following exchange between Adams and Sei reflects on how the 1803 Fund came to be, and how Portland is the core of its vision for national impact. 

JUMA: I viscerally remember where I was in early 2020 when I heard the US had entered a state of emergency. I was in DC for spring break, then Trump came on the TV–that's when my mom gave me a call and was like, “Boy, get your ass home, like right now.” Where were you that Spring?

RUKAIYAH: I was in Los Angeles on a business trip. I went out to dinner and, when I got back to my hotel, there was a note at my door. It basically said, “The state of California has been closed down. You must leave.” I stuffed as much as I could into a suitcase, ran to LAX, and was one of the last people on a flight to Portland that night. 

I remember the logistical nightmare and the fear of getting sick when I got on the plane. I also remember buying groceries when I got home. By the time I got to Fred Meyer, it was cleaned out. So I went grocery shopping at CVS and bought what I could. I also remember watching the capital markets going crazy. At the time, I was Chief Investment Officer at Meyer Memorial Trust.

JUMA: It seems like this was a moment of both personal and professional rupture?

RUKAIYAH: Yeah, it was striking to see how public health literally shut down global markets. I probably realized how serious it was when New York had those refrigerated trucks holding bodies. That was like, “Oh, no, this is a bad situation.”

JUMA: That summer was a transformational moment—not just in Portland history, but national history: the murder of Mr. Floyd; before that, Breonna Taylor; before that, Ahmaud Arbery. 

RUKAIYAH: Yeah, I was often on the street, and my husband volunteered to feed protesters. I was very sensitive to the discussion about property at that time. I was thinking deeply about “what is property” and “who has authority to express outrage at the destruction of it?” My other thought at that time was, “how do we even talk to each other?” 

A lot of our downtown business owners didn't understand why people were not more sympathetic to the destruction of physical property downtown. What they couldn't hear from protesters was, “Why aren't you more upset with the destruction of humans who were once considered property?” 

JUMA: I've heard you talk about the Rodney King moment and what that meant for you growing up. I wonder if you see any throughline between what you felt then and what you were feeling in 2020?

RUKAIYAH: So I was your age when Rodney King was murdered. I definitely see a throughline between then and 2020. But there’s a third crossroads for me too: the great financial crisis and Occupy movement. It felt like the people in those encampments were trying to communicate with people like me. 

JUMA: Were you on Wall Street at the time? 

RUKAIYAH: No, I was here in Portland. I was running the investment division at The Standard. At that time, I needed to map some of the ideas I’d heard from protesters to my investing practice. [For example], if people in the camps are saying “the rent is too damn high,” then I need to look at my portfolio and ask, “Do I care if I'm a part of the reason why the rent is so damn high? Are my demands of 15% and 17% returns from multi-family housing causing a social problem that's worse than the value of the return that I get from it?” 

It took me the better part of a decade to become the kind of investor who could hear the social criticism of the Occupy movement and respond to that with capital. But it’s that call and response that helped me see my life's work: to take the communication of these protests and translate that into our capitalist model. In the case of the 1803 Fund, it took time, maturity, networks, and success. I had power. 

JUMA: So when did you write the business plan for 1803? 

RUKAIYAH: I've been thinking about the need for this fund forever, but I finally had the time in 2020. I started writing in April, but I was stalled. Then George Floyd happened and it gave me fire. 

JUMA: When I started this role, you told me to look back at that business plan to inform how I tell the story of this fund. You wrote, “The time has come to be bold, ambitious and optimistic.” Where do you find your boldness, ambition, and optimism?

RUKAIYAH: That's almost a message for this moment as well. Philanthropy and so much of society at that time retracted in fear–that didn't feel right to me. I also felt optimistic about our democracy. I felt like it was worth fighting for. 

The day of the die-in on the bridge, I also had this sense that your generation was the first that had actually ever lived [as full Americans]. Before that moment, we'd just been talking about being Americans–aspiring to be Americans. But we've known that we were hypocrites about it. We knew we were not actually living up to the ideals that we set out. 

Fast forward to 2020, we're in a multiracial democracy, having a conversation, not just about what America would become, but what America really is. To me, it was exciting. 

JUMA: Because these larger conversations were on the table more than ever before?

RUKAIYAH: Because we had the power to put them on the table. 

JUMA: It's hard for me to reconcile that kind of power with the fact that a police officer knelt on someone's neck for over nine minutes, you know? I think there's like some kind of Sisyphus quality to where we're at. 

RUKAIYAH: Well, I’m optimistic, but I want to be sharp: I was optimistic because I thought that we were making progress into becoming the America that we envisioned when we declared independence. In the years since, I've been less optimistic. We are experiencing a second post-Reconstruction right now. And we will be rebuilding for the next few generations. 

But I want to go back to a question you had earlier about power. This is a big deal: it felt, to me, like I had been building influence and respect my whole life. I was hoarding and banking it, thinking that to amass influence and respect is power. It’s not. Using it is power. 

In using it and trying to raise 1803, I've learned a lot: everybody likes a woman with potential—not that many people like it when she actually uses her power. 

JUMA: Something I've appreciated most about coming to 1803 is how you’ve challenged me to write from a powerful, optimistic, and abundant perspective–one that presumes we have enough. Why did that feel so important to bake into an organization like this?

RUKAIYAH: The defining feature of our species is language. In order to make progress, we have to make the language of progress. 

Much of Black social justice lexicon is petitioning–it's pleading, responding. I wanted us to stop asking for regard for our humanity, and instead, step into the power that we have and assert ourselves in a language and tone that we define. 

We often think power is bad and that aspiring to it is greedy and self-interested. But the reality is that in order for things to improve for all of us, some of us have to get it, and some of us have to use it. Getting comfortable using power for our collective benefit was my journey of 2020. 

JUMA: It’s beautiful to see how that idea has materialized as a fund that's now directing money into community. 

I’m going to ask a 30,000 foot question: When I moved home to start at 1803, I drove cross-country from Atlanta. It was spiritual to follow the Great Migration trail–and with it–the history of Black folks that made it out to Oregon. 

You've talked about how Black folks that migrated to Portland are the wild ones—who travelled as far as they could to seek opportunity. That was part of my personal motivation to come home. I'm interested in how you see yourself in that history of wild ones, and what you think will be possible for our fund in the future.

RUKAIYAH: For a long time, Black folks have been on the move. We've been migrating geographically and physically, running away from something. In 2020 I think we were able to make this psychological journey, not away from something, but towards something. It's not un-migration, but I think it's realization, and that psychographic move to realizing Americanness was visualized on that bridge to us. It's also visualized in the formation of 1803. 

I think we are on a journey. It's not a physical journey anymore–we've dead-ended into the ocean. Now, the journey for us is to understand what it means to be an American, and what power we have to define our economy and our democracy. That is a mental leap: from being an object in this system that can be vulnerable, on a street in Minneapolis, to being a subject in control of capital and the direction of the country. 

That leap is the understanding that we don't need to run anymore
 and I think we're making that jump as a people. And it's exciting–it's exciting that 500 years of social justice work has led to this moment, and we're the ones who get to make the jump. It's unfortunate that violence is what catalyzed it, but I don't think we should just watch and feel shame about Mr. Floyd’s murder. 

I think we have to be transformed. 

For more information about 1803 Fund and how to get involved with its work visit 1803fund.com.

Rukaiyah Adams is the CEO of the 1803 Fund—an organization that invests in and for Black Portland, seeking both social and financial return. The work is often described as investing for the people. She is a long time investor, thought leader, and a champion of the city of Portland.

Juma Sei grew up across the United States, Sierra Leone, and China. But Portland is home. He returned in the fall of 2024 to run communications for 1803 Fund, pulling from his experience reporting for NPR and member stations across the country.