Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Hidden History of Portland: A Preview


In Hidden History of Portland I have tried to tell stories from Portland’s history that have not been well told in the past.  I explore the experiences of various groups who have faced discrimination and repression. In this preview I hope to give you a little taste of what you will find in the book.

Part I: Oregon vs. Ilahee

            The area where Portland is now has been inhabited for thousands of years by a wide variety of people. In this chapter I explore the people who lived here before Euro-American settlement began in the 19th century. I also explore the native resistance to white settlement and the way early Oregon politicians used violence against Native Americans to build the state.




During the Nez Perce War of 1877 Lt. C.E.S. Wood kept an illustrated journal of his experience. He leaked several of his pictures and impressions to Harper’s Magazine in an attempt to shape public opinion about the war.
 



Before Portland
 
The area where Portland is now has been inhabited for thousands of years. A complex society based on a mixture of cultures, family ties and trade was wiped out by disease and violence when the Euro-American settlers came to the Pacific Northwest to stay.
            War Brokers
 
In the 1850s men like Gen. Joseph Lane and Gov. George Law Curry used violence and war against the Indians to create the state of Oregon. The Rogue River Wars and the 1855 Yakima War were conscious elements of the plan to create a state.
 
            C.E.S. Wood: A Rebel Formed by War
 
The Nez Perce War of 1877 was the last well-organized Native American military resistance to American settlement in the Pacific Northwest. C.E.S. Wood, who later became one of Portland’s most prominent attorneys and political radicals, was a U.S. Army lieutenant during the war and his experience had a huge influence on his later life.
Part II: Woman’s Work
Women who came to the Oregon Territory faced legal and social repression, but some of them found unique opportunities that were often not available to women in the East.

 
The high point of Abigail Scott Duniway’s career came in 1912 when Governor Oswald West asked her to write the Woman Suffrage proclamation. After forty years of tireless political activism Duniway was in her eighties and only had a couple of years left to live.

 
Walks Far Woman and Other Female Pioneers
Marie Dorion, a woman of the Iowa Nation known as Walks Far Woman by her people, was one of the first pioneer women to come to Oregon; accompanying the Wilson Price Hunt expedition to Astoria in 1811. She made the trip while pregnant and caring for two young sons. The hardship that “Walks Far Woman” faced was similar to that found by thousands of other pioneers who followed her to the new territory.
            Disorderly Praying in Stumptown
The Temperance Movement was one of the first expressions of the women’s movement in the United States. In Portland it began with the Great Temperance Crusade of 1874.  This political movement aroused great feelings in Portland and offered a vision of political action and liberation for women. The anti-alcohol movement split the women’s movement in Portland delaying the woman’s vote in Oregon until 1912.
            Abigail Scott Duniway: Remaking the World With Her Words
Abigail Scott Duniway crossed the Oregon Trail with her family at the age of 17 and grew to adulthood along with the State of Oregon. A novelist, journalist, publisher and businesswoman, Duniway became one of the most important political activists in the region.
            Susan B. Anthony: A Peaceful Warrior
Susan B. Anthony, America’s great women’s leader, visited Portland three times between 1871 and 1905. The story of her visits and activism in Oregon illustrate the course of the woman’s movement in the state.
 

Part III: Tacit Agreements
 
Portland has always had a small, but vocal African-American community. Making tacit agreements with the white community about the “place” of blacks, some African-Americans were able to achieve prosperity.
 


In 1899 Company B of the 24th Infantry, a Buffalo Soldier unit with black soldiers and white officers, was stationed at Fort Vancouver. The 24th saw combat in Cuba and the Philippines and was used to break a strike of miners in Idaho. The men of the 24th made connections with Portland’s black community and many of them set down roots in the Northwest.

            To Be Treated as Free People
 
Discouraged by Black Exclusion and Sundown Laws, African-Americans still came to Oregon at all stages of Portland’s history.  From the successful resistance to the Black Exclusion laws by Abner and Lynda Francis to the lawsuit that integrated Portland Public Schools in 1870 organized themselves to resist racist laws and attitudes, but Portland soon gained the reputation as the most racist American city outside of the South.
            George Hardin: Police and the Color Line
Once Portland’s African-American community achieved stability the fight for equal opportunity in public employment began. George Hardin, one of the first black men to be hired by the Portland Police Bureau, struggled for decades to integrate the police force.
            Beatrice Morrow Cannady: Tea and Racial Equality
Beatrice Morrow Cannady arrived in Portland in 1912 and took over editing the Advocate, Portland’s second African-American newspaper.  Over the next two decades Cannady’s gave voice to the black community and fought for equal rights; becoming Oregon’s first black woman attorney and the first African-American to run for public office in the state.
 
Part IV: The Most Alien of Aliens
            Asian-Americans have always made up one of the largest racial groups in Portland’s population. The history of Portland’s Chinese and Japanese settlers is well documented, but little told. Both groups faced intense racial discrimination and even violence, but they persevered and made large contributions to Portland culture and prosperity.
Chinese and Japanese workers were vital to the development of Portland as the transportation hub for the region. Competition for jobs made Chinese Labor an important issue in the growing labor union movement.
 
The Celestial Kingdom in Portland
In the 1870s large parts of Portland were destroyed by fires. In both instances anti-Chinese feeling was prominent. In addition to the large number of Asian workers who built railroads and other elements of infrastructure a class of Chinese merchants became active in Portland and made common cause with the city’s establishment. By the end of the 1870s the city was split over the issue of the Chinese: working people violently agitated for outright expulsion; property owners and the wealthy supported and protected the Chinese community.
            The Chinese Question
In 1880s anti-Chinese feeling reached a high point. Chinese workers were physically expelled from communities all over California, Oregon and Washington. When the Chinese communities were expelled from Tacoma and Seattle, most of them came to Portland. During that time Portland’s Chinatown swelled until it made up more than 25% of the city’s population. 
            Jack Yoshihara: Interrupted Lives
 After Chinese immigration to the U.S. was restricted in 1882, Japanese workers took their places in railroad construction. By the twentieth century most of the Nissei, first generation Japanese immigrants, and their children, the Issei, identified as Americans. World War II caused a huge crisis among Portland’s Japanese citizens, most of whom were interned in Idaho for the duration of the war. Jack Yoshihara, a college football player for the Beavers, encountered huge consequences for his life when he was not allowed to travel with his teammates to the Beaver’s first Rose Bowl appearance.
 
Part V: The Problems of Self Government
            Self government was the main motivation that pioneers had when coming to Oregon. Portland was founded as a city by a public meeting in 1851. City politics was soon dominated by a small group of wealthy merchants who ran the city to suit their own interests.
 


Harry Lane was elected mayor of Portland in 1905. A Democrat, he received support from the Progressive wing of the Republican Party and William S. U’Ren’s People’s Power League. In 1913 he became the first U.S. Senator elected by popular vote.
 
Political Warfare
The first several decades of Portland history were dominated by a struggle for political power between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. The focus of the struggle was control of the city’s Police Bureau. After 1880 the Republican Party had undisputed control of both city and state government and its members, such as James Lotan, took advantage of their power to enrich themselves.
                        The Oregon System
In the 1890s disgust over the abuses of the Republican Party led to a powerful populist movement, first in the People’s Party and later with the Progressive Party. The movement, under the leadership of William S. U’Ren, brought in a revolution in “direct democracy” that led to the Oregon System, which included direct election of Senators, the Initiative and Referendum and the Recall election among other reforms.
                        Lola Baldwin: The Day of the Girl
The Lewis and Clark Exposition of 1905 brought national attention and renewed emigration to Portland. The new wave of emigration included thousands of young women looking for a better life. Women such as Lola Baldwin, Portland’s first woman police officer, and Louise Bryant, a reporter for the Oregonian, found new opportunities in careers that had been previously dominated by men.
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Part VI: To the Brink of Revolution
            Labor unions had been active in Portland since the beginning of the city in 1851, but racist and sexist policies on the part of the unions limited their scope and power. In the twentieth century the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) began to organize migratory workers and other workers without regard to their race or gender.  Before the Great War the IWW gained great power in Portland, but the war and the Red Scare that followed broke the power of the union.
            No Outward Sign
The period 1880-1930 has been called the Golden Age of the Migratory Worker. In the Pacific Northwest, where the economy was dominated by agriculture, lumber and mining, migratory workers made up a large part of the labor force. Migrants developed a complex culture that used expressive language to convey their iconoclastic view of the world. Homosexuality was an accepted part of the migrant worker culture and their presence in Portland contributed to the city’s first gay community.
            Sulphuric Eloquence: Dr. Marie Equi and the Wobblies
Dr. Marie Equi, an open lesbian, became one of the most important radicals in Portland. Her experience with the Oregon Packing Company strike and IWW Free Speech Fight in 1913 radicalized her and led to her life-long advocacy of women’s and workers’ rights.
            Stewart Holbrook: Inventing Working People’s History
The Great War and the Red Scare that followed saw the repression of the IWW in the Pacific Northwest. Cultural and technological changes transformed the experience and culture of workers, but the Great Depression of 1929 brought a revival of organizing and political activism. During this time Stewart Holbrook, a freelance writer, pioneered a new type of history that sought to tell the story of working people and others who had been ignored by standard histories.