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Lew Frederick

American politician

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJul 23, 2026
Entity authorityQ6535980
Source-derived summary

Lew Frederick (born December 1951) is an American Democratic politician, currently representing District 22 in the Oregon Senate.

Early life and education

Born in Pullman, Washington, Frederick grew up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Atlanta, Georgia. Frederick is the son of botanist Dr. Lafayette Frederick, Professor Emeritus Howard University, and his wife Antoinette Reed Frederick. Frederick has lived in northeast Portland since 1974.

Career

Throughout his career, he was a teacher at the Metropolitan Learning Center for two years, a radio and television reporter with KGW for seventeen years, Director of Public Information at Portland Public Schools for thirteen years, Assistant to the President at Portland Community College, and held a position on the State Board of Education. In October 2013, Frederick was awarded the Outstanding Alumni Award at Earlham College.

Frederick was sworn into the Oregon House of Representatives in October 2009 and began serving on the House Interim Human Services Committee and House Interim Sustainability & Economic Development Committee.

According to the Portland Tribune, he was Oregon's "highest-ranking black leader and the only black man serving in the Oregon Legislature" as of 2010. Commissioner Amanda Fritz and The Skanner endorsed Frederick during his campaign for District 43.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Lew Frederick” is american politician. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Frederick, American and politician, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1951, 1974, 2013, 2009—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1951-12-01. For this dossier, Frederick, American and politician is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “american politician” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6535980. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1951, 1974, 2013 and 2009.

Critical limits

Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Lew Frederick”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Lew Frederick primary sources, Lew Frederick archive and Frederick research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Lew Frederick”?
  2. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
  3. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
Subject index

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Lew Frederick” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.