Wasn't Portland a sundown town?
--
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929
I am sure that Michael Yates will have more to say on this, but when I was
in Powell's bookstore in Portland some years ago while visiting some old
friends, I spent about 15 minutes browsing through an old book on Portland
that documented its racist past. The KKK was very strong in the city in the
1920s and the mayor actually allowed himself to be photographed in his
offices with Klan leaders.
---
The Sunday Oregonian
January 5, 2003 Sunday SUNRISE EDITION
UNCOVERING OREGON'S TARNISHED PAST
OREGONIANS HAVE FEW reasons to gloat over Mississippian Trent Lott's serial
apologies and self-induced miseries. Our state practiced forms of racial
segregation for years after Strom Thurmond's failed 1948 bid for president.
Forget the romantic notions of a glorious pioneer past and a virtuous
present. Oregon is certainly not a Mississippi or a South Carolina, but our
state's history is scarred with racial prejudices, social conflict and
violence: German backlash. The Ku Klux Klan. Red Squads. Japanese American
relocation. Skinheads. Gangs.
Most Oregonians know little about their flawed history. Typical history
lessons tend to emphasize the brawny, brave pioneers, and the state's many
newcomers and a younger population carry no memory of Oregon's dark side.
As the new year opens to the prospect of a war with Iraq, heightened
tensions with North Korea, new terror alerts, constraints on our civil
liberties and a sluggish economy, could Oregon's history predict its future?
WAR TYPICALLY HOLDS CIVIL liberties hostage to national security and
unleashes violence against perceived enemies. The stage is set for a new
wave of social conflict at home.
Reports of hate crimes in Oregon against Muslims and those of Arab ancestry
increased from none to 29 between Sept. 11 and December 2001, according to
the FBI. If we're not careful, the Patriot Act and newly established
Department of Homeland Security could create an atmosphere of tolerating
hate crimes.
Oregon's history offers many examples of the powerful trying to extinguish
the powerless. During the 1800s, the exploration and acquisition of the
Oregon Country, as it was known, by the United States renewed the national
promise of democracy and economic opportunity. Oregon was viewed as a
pristine place far from the corrupting influences of slavery, immigration,
Catholicism and the factory.
In 1843, the Scottish Edinburgh Review newspaper said Oregon was "the last
corner on Earth left free for the occupation of a civilized race." Just a
straightforward expression of an English and American imperative: Dominate
Oregon and the West with a mostly Protestant -- any very white -- culture.
That year began the mass movement along the Oregon Trail.
This racial unity and cultural identity between white Britons and Americans
proved a cautionary tale about violence, delivered with guns, axes, rocks
and hands. Anglo-Saxonism merged with the biblical idea of God's chosen
people, somehow justifying the triumph of white settlers over native peoples.
Perhaps this assumption of Manifest Destiny explains part of what happened
in Oregon to Native Americans, Chinese and Japanese during the 19th and
20th centuries. That attitude might also partly explain why Oregon's laws
and constitution initially banned not only slavery but free blacks.
DURING WORLD WAR I, Oregon's pacifists, political radicals and German
immigrants were the victims of stereotyping, verbal assaults and violence.
Even before Congress passed the Espionage and Sedition acts, local police
and social organizations enforced "proper patriotism."
Historian Gordon Dodds cites numerous instances of silly and serious
responses to war on the homefront: "In Portland, the City Council changed
the name of Frankfurt Street to Lafayette, Frederick to Pershing and
Bismarck to Bush." In Tillamook, locals tarred and feathered a Swiss
immigrant with a German-sounding name.
And during World War II, Japanese Americans were forced to live in
relocation centers in inland states. There they suffered the additional
indignities of racism and economic loss. In the Hood River Valley, Portland
area truck farms and other places with small pockets of Japanese Americans,
the war disrupted and destroyed old friendships and livelihoods. Race was
the calling card.
Early in the 1900s, fears of espionage, subversion and terrorism spawned
movements attacking radicals, foreigners and labor organizers. These early
anti-radical activities evolved into the Red Scare of 1919, with its
deportations and detainees, and set the stage for McCarthyism and more Red
Scares in the 1960s and 1970s.
During these times, the Portland Police Department and other local law
enforcement agencies used "Red Squads" to monitor the activities of alleged
radicals and political activists, often collecting information
indiscriminately and sometimes illegally.
AT TIMES, THESE UNDERCURRENTS of fear contributed to the growth of social
movements intended to purge un-American elements from the population and
culture. A revived Ku Klux Klan gained astonishing strength and political
influence nationally and in Oregon for a brief time in the early 1920s.
Why Oregon?
It seemed an unlikely place for the KKK. In a state with a population of
slightly more than 700,000, there were only about 2,000 African Americans,
5,000 Chinese and 5,000 Japanese. There were few Jews or members of other
minority faiths, and the state's population was only 8 percent Roman Catholic.
But the terrible legacy of World War I, severe economic problems in farming
and logging and concerns about moral issues and rapid urbanization prompted
a political realignment in the state. Klan organizers took advantage of
this, rapidly turning the Oregon KKK into an effective force in local and
state politics.
The Oregon Klan, which attracted an estimated 25,000 to 40,000 members,
acted as if it was a chamber of commerce on steroids. The Klan sponsored
the Women of the Klan, the Junior Order of Klansmen and the Royal Riders of
the Red Robe, an organization for foreign-born Protestants. Oregon Klansmen
defended conservative moral values in a decade popularly known as "the
Roaring Twenties."
They paraded and burned crosses in Portland and communities throughout
Oregon. The Klan loudly proclaimed the virtues of public schools,
Protestantism, racial purity and One-Hundred Percent Americanism -- the
Klan's version of true patriotism.
THE PAST IS NOT THE ONLY tarnished part of Oregon life; just look around
you. The state's growing diversity and huge influx of new residents have
broadened our understanding. But the past few decades also have brought
some political baggage packed with negative ideas. Remember Lon Mabon and
Bill Sizemore and their versions of cultural conservatism and anti-tax issues?
There's also a newer wave of self-consciously liberal and sophisticated
urban elites crashing against the marble entryways and faux facades of tony
neighborhoods such as Portland's Pearl District. Residents of the
Eugene-to-Portland metropolitan corridor often express stereotypical
attitudes toward loggers, ranchers and others who work the land as
exploiters of natural resources. And what might they say to the "culturally
challenged" residents of Eastern and Southern Oregon?
In its own way, this new Oregon can be as cruel and insensitive as the old
one. The state is still divided in many ways by geography, politics,
economics, class and race. It's not simply a rural/urban or
Eastside/Westside dichotomy. Our experiences since 9/11 have added other
significant factors.
Oregon's major urban areas are home to most of the state's Muslims and
centers for racist skinhead groups and gang violence. The potential for
social conflict and personal violence is obvious.
The arrest of Mohamed Abdirahman Kariye, imam of The Islamic Center of
Portland and the false finding of suspected TNT residue in family luggage
just magnified the difficulty of protecting civil liberties in a time of
crisis. Another widely publicized example of Oregon's place in the war on
terrorism was the October arrest of six members from local mosques for
allegedly aiding the Taliban. Newsweek labeled them "The Portland Six," and
the Rose City was said to be the site of at least one and maybe more terror
cells.
There was a news frenzy until later stories described the suspects as
better suited for the Keystone Kops than the Taliban. Amateurs or
terrorists? asked one story from The Oregonian. Experts said they could be
either. Meanwhile, friends mostly described five of the six as devout
Muslims and U.S. citizens. Guilty or innocent, the resulting headlines
upended a minority community already on edge.
THESE OREGON ARRESTS, necessary as they might be, and the FBI's questioning
of other Muslims have revived memories of the relocation of Japanese
Americans and the Red Scares. History can provide us with examples of
behavior, but it does not dictate standards of behavior. Those are ours to
choose; future generations will judge us for how we act.
Consider that a full-scale war with Iraq will feature a correspondingly
greater casualty rate, heightened social tensions, and increased fear of
terrorist attacks. Oregon is no longer protected from harm by distance from
battlefronts, but we are not the first generation to face the challenge of
change. As our state becomes more racially and culturally diverse, we need
to revive that often forgotten Oregon promise of freedom, opportunity and
equality -- a promise that has so often eluded us.
Rather than stand in line with future apologies of our own, the greatest
challenge will be to avoid them and keep Oregon's tarnished past just that
-- a part of history.
