Biography

Gladys Sims McCoy was born in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1928. She grew up in Chattanooga, Tennessee, which was then part of the segregated South. She majored in sociology, with a minor in economics, at Talladega University in Alabama. After her graduation in 1949, she took a job with the YWCA in Portland, Oregon. She met Bill McCoy, who was volunteering at the YWCA at the time, and they married in 1951. She stopped pursuing a career in social work and got involved in local volunteer activities while raising seven children. She later returned to social work, pursuing a master's degree in the subject at Portland State University. After graduating in 1967, she worked for Project Head Start in Vancouver, Washington. Funding for the program was cut a few years later, and her position was eliminated. She then taught sociology at Clark College and Pacific University. She became the first black person elected to public office in Oregon in 1970, when she began serving on the Portland Public Schools board. She served on that board until 1978. She was involved with Bob Straub’s successful 1975 campaign for Oregon governor and subsequently served as an ombudsman for Straub. She resigned in 1977 and ran for Multnomah County commissioner, serving from 1979 to 1984. She then served as Multnomah County Chair from 1987 until her death in 1993.

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