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.
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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.
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.
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