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Winter 2023

Passing It On: Preserving and Sharing the History of the Yasui Brothers Store

BY BARBARA YASUI
Winter 2023, Issue 124:4

In 1990, author Barbara Yasui gathered in an old barn on her uncle’s property in Hood River, Oregon, to examine items that he had saved from the Yasui Brothers store, which her grandfather and his brother had owned before World War II. The “unearthing of the barn contents also led to an unearthing of Yasui family history and the history” and started a long collaboration with the Oregon Historical Society (OHS). In this Oregon Voices piece, Yasui shares the history of her family, her father Homer Yasui’s role as family historian, and how the family has donated over 100,000 records and over 1,100 objects to OHS’s research library and museum collections.

Fall 2023

The 1973 Hillsboro Teachers’ Strike: A Local Surprise with Statewide Implications

BY KRISTIE DUYCKINCK
Fall 2023, Issue 124:3

In the spring of 1973, members of the Hillsboro Education Association (HEA) shocked residents of their small rural town and even the Oregon Education Association (OEA) by voting overwhelmingly to authorize Oregon’s first teacher strike, which was illegal. Facing unknown consequences, including the possibility of jail, the teachers rebelled against their powerlessness in negotiations and the disrespect they felt from the school board. When staff from the OEA and even the National Education Association arrived to support the strike, the school board and many in the community attributed the strike to “outside influence.” Nevertheless, the members of the HEA mounted an extraordinary effort to mobilize community support, ultimately achieving their objectives after remaining on strike for three days. The strike demonstrated the need for a law governing conflict in the public sector and contributed to the passage of the Public Employee Collective Bargaining Act in the same year, which mandated negotiations on salary and benefits as well as “all matters concerning employment conditions.” The strike was also emblematic of a transformation of the NEA from a professional association, which had opposed collective bargaining to an activist trade union.

Summer 2023

The Valley Migrant League: Rereading the Archive and Retelling Its Story

BY MARIO JIMENEZ SIFUENTEZ WITH LAURA CRAY
Summer 2023, 124:2

The Valley Migrant League (VML) was formed in 1965 using federal Office of Equal Opportunity grant funds with the aim of improving the lives of migrant farmworkers through poverty reduction. In 2021, the Oregon Historical Society’s (OHS’s) research library staff digitized over 300 images from the Valley Migrant League photographs collection, providing increased access to the images and filling in important details about the people and activities documented in the images. In this essay, Sifuentez reflects on the importance of the digitized collection and provides historical context about the VML, situating it among local, state, and national events. Throughout the essay, OHS Photographs Librarian Laura Cray has chosen images from the Valley Migrant League photographs and provides context for those images in detailed captions. See also Cray’s article, “Provenance as Collections Care: Rebuilding Context in the Valley Migrant League Photographs,” also published in this issue. 

Summer 2023

Provenance as Collections Care: Rebuilding Context in the Valley Migrant League Photographs

BY LAURA CRAY
Summer 2023, 124:2

In 2021, the Oregon Historical Society’s (OHS’s) research library staff undertook a project to digitize over 300 negatives and prints the Valley Migrant League photographs collection to expand researcher access. Revisiting the Valley Migrant League photographs provided an opportunity to add additional details and to identify the people, places, and events represented in the images, who before this project were not included in image descriptions. The VML digitization project also coincided with ongoing internal work to improve how OHS research library staff describe the people and events represented in the collections in their care and to address the fact that archival records tend to heavily biased toward the bureaucratic institutions and affluent communities. In this Research Files piece, Cray explores this work and emphasizes how “it takes intentional and active work by archivists and cultural memory institutions to correct this imbalance in the archival record.” See also Mario Sifuentez’s article, “The Valley Migrant League: Rereading the Archive and Retelling Its Story,” also published in this issue.

Spring 2023

Our Unfinished Past: Exploring 125 Years of Institutional Viability and Relevance

BY MEGAN LALLIER-BARRON
Spring 2023, 124:1

Since its founding, the Oregon Historical Society (OHS) has served as the state’s collective memory, preserving evidence from the past and making it accessible through exhibitions, publications, and programs. To commemorate this anniversary year, OHS developed an exhibition, Our Unfinished Past: The Oregon Historical Society at 125, that explores significant moments in the organization’s history as well as ongoing work to further its mission. In this exhibit essay, Curator of Exhibitions Megan Lallier-Barron describes for readers how the exhibit explores the many people who have “shaped and re-shaped OHS,” and how that work has “has woven a thoroughly complicated history of Oregon.”

Winter 2022

Old Myths, Turned on Their Heads: Settler Agency, Federal Authority, and the Colonization of Oregon

by Julius Wilm
WINTER 2022, 123:4

In this research article, Julius Wilm explores how the modern historiography of Oregon’s settler colonization distances itself radically from the euphemistic accounts that were common into the mid-twentieth century. Wilm addresses three areas where local agency continues to be overemphasized in modern historiography at the expense of national forces or it is misunderstood in its effects. The article covers the negotiation of the “Oregon Question” in the U.S. Congress during the late 1830s and early 1840s, the passage of the Donation Land Claim Act in 1850, and the extreme violence of settler militias against Indigenous people in the war of 1855–1856. As Wilm argues, “re-introducing the U.S. government as an important agent of Oregon’s colonization…provides crucial context for the colonial push into the Pacific Northwest and the violence it unleashed.”

Winter 2022

“As Great a Nuisance as the Garbage Itself”: Race, Power, and the Question of Waste Management in Portland, Oregon, 1871–1905

by Allison Kirkpatrick
Spring 2022, 123:1

At the end of the nineteenth century, Portland, Oregon, was struggling to adequately collect and dispose of the refuse being produced by its rapidly growing population and industries. City officials sought to exert greater municipal control over Portland’s waste management system by funding the construction and operation of garbage crematories and bypassing ordinances to control the collection, movement, and disposal of waste. These measures, however, did not solve the city’s garbage problem. Examining Portland’s early history of waste management reveals a municipal government struggling to deal with the material effects of urbanization and industrialization. This study also looks at the ways that anti-Chinese racism shaped the city’s waste management system. From characterizing both Chinese residents and unincinerated garbage as legal nuisances to attempting to prohibit them from employment as street cleaners, it is evident that Portland’s anti-Chinese and urban sanitation movements overlapped and, when viewed together, reveal early examples of environmental racism.

Winter 2022

The Marcus and Narcissa Whitman Collection: Updating and Improving Collection Guides in OHS’s Research Library

BY JEFFREY A. HAYES
WINTER 2022, 123:4

The staff in the Oregon Historical Society’s research library began a project in 2021 to update and improve selected collection guides for older collections. This work began as an effort to migrate existing collection guides into a new database but also provided an opportunity to reconsider descriptive practices in collection guides that might exclude marginalized people or present information in an incomplete, inaccurate, or harmful way. In this Research Note, OHS archivist Jeffrey Hayes describes the work to update the Marcus and Narcissa Whitman collection guide, which was informed by current best practices in writing library description as well as recent scholarship that has re-examined the Whitmans’ legacy.

Fall 2022

From Asylum to Community: Mental Health Care in Oregon from the 1950s to 2000

BY DAVID CUTLER, ZEB LARSON, JASON RENAUD, AND BARRY KAST
Fall 2022, 123:3

The question of how to provide mental health services for people with severe mental illnesses predates the founding of the United States. In this research article, authors explore the history of mental health care in Oregon between the 1950s and 2000, specifically the move from providing long-stay hospital care to community care. During this time of evolving health care systems, both nationally and in Oregon, the “lessons learned from the early years of deinstitutionalization foresaw better care.” The authors argue that during the twenty-first century, with its unique challenges, “creating new solutions will certainly require awareness of the historical context and adaptations that built our current system of care.”

Summer 2022

The Indians are Quiet: White Supremacy in the First Photographs of Native Peoples in Oregon

BY MEGAN K. FRIEDEL
Summer 2022, 123:2

Can White violence toward Indigenous peoples be perpetuated in a photograph? Between 1857 and 1861, U.S. Army officer Lorenzo Lorain photographed the people and landscapes of Fort Umpqua, an isolated military outpost on the southern Oregon coast. Stationed there to enforce the removal of regional Indians to the nearby Umpqua Reserve, Lorain’s salt prints, now held by the Oregon Historical Society’s research library, include thirteen portraits of Coos, Lower Umpqua, Siuslaw, Klamath, and Modoc men and women. Today, these are the earliest known photographs of Oregon’s Indians. They are also the earliest photographs documenting the Army’s role in the genocide and erasure of Native peoples’ lifeways and communities in Oregon during the mid-nineteenth century. Viewed through Lorain’s personal letters and military records, we come to understand how the photographer’s beliefs in colonialism and White supremacy contributed to erasing the identities and histories of the people in his images.

Summer 2022

Civil Rights in Oregon: Mark O. Hatfield Lecture Series Post-Lecture Discussion

by Nkenge Harmon Johnson, Margaret Carter, Lamar Wise, Gwendolyn Trice, and Ramon Ramirez
Summer 2022, 123:2

On May 11, 2021, Jon Meacham spoke about his book, His Truth is Marching On: John Lewis and the Power of Hope, published in 2020, as part of the Oregon Historical Society’s (OHS) annual Mark O. Hatfield Lecture Series. This roundtable discussion was a special event held on Thursday, March 13, 2021, following the lecture. Nkenge Harmon Johnson, President of the Urban League of Portland, organized the panel of civil rights leaders in the fields of politics, culture, and farmworker and labor organizing. The panelists reflected on Meacham’s talk and on the ways their lives and work have been influenced by John Lewis. Through their reflections on Lewis’s work and leadership, the panelists wove together aspects of Oregon history, personal convictions, and present-day fights for justice.

Spring 2022

“The Coming of the White Man”: Onetime Oregon White Supremacist Icon

by Jeffry Uecker
Spring 2022, 123:1

Artworks depicting Native people witnessing Euro-descendent newcomers’ arrival — who are unaware of the Native peoples’ presence — were common in nineteenth-century America. As important tools for justifying settler colonist values and providing a visual grounding for White supremacy, such compositions continued into the twentieth century and were especially prevalent in northwest Oregon through the 1930s. In this research article, author Jeffry Uecker traces the development of “The Coming of the White Man,” (CWM) a unique artistic arrangement in Oregon that depicted Native people as an ineffectual population without a relevant past. He describes CWM’s key role in reflecting White people’s anxiety over social change and in supporting the state’s long tradition of racial inequity — a role that helped define Oregon’s enduring settler colonialist origin story and paved the way for the eventual profusion of settler or “pioneer” imagery.

Spring 2022

Building Solidarity for 30 Years: Portland Jobs with Justice

BY NIKKI MANDELL
Spring 2022, 123:1

This exhibit essay complements Building Solidary for 30 Years: Portland Jobs with Justice, on display at the Oregon Historical Society (OHS) from February 11 to May 15, 2022. Co-curator Nikki Mandell delves into key aspects of the organization’s history, taking a thematic rather than strictly chronological approach, to highlight how Portland Jobs with Justice (JwJ) sought to restore workers’ rights and build working-class power through worker-community alliances. As a leading chapter in the national JwJ network, the Portland JwJ story offers insight into the rise of new strategies to protect workers’ rights that engaged broad coalitions of labor, faith, and social justice groups in both traditional union campaigns and campaigns for the common good. The JwJ approach yielded some remarkable successes, but not the transformative changes to which JwJ initially aspired. This article, like the exhibit, is based on the Portland JwJ papers (recently donated to OHS), oral interviews also held by OHS’s research library, and supplementary interviews conducted as part of the exhibit development.

Spring 2022

Oral History with Margaret Butler: Advocate for Workers’ Rights and Jobs with Justice

BY LAURIE MERCIER, WITH MARGARET BUTLER
Spring 2022, 123:1

In this Oregon Voices piece, Laurie Mercier highlights the work of Margaret Butler, a labor activist who helped to build an action-based workers’ right movement in Portland, Oregon, beginning in the late 1980s. Attracted to labor-community alliances, such as those built by Jobs with Justice (JwJ), she worked with other labor activists to form a Portland JwJ chapter in 1991. Through excerpts from Butler’s oral history and personal interviews, Mercier documents the labor activist’s passion and influence in “shap[ing] what remains an important labor-community coalition in Portland.” As Mercier attests, “Margaret Butler’s reminiscences are important for understanding how she became a labor activist and leader as well as how a key social justice organization addressed the economic challenges of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Butler’s oral history interview as well as Portland JwJ records are held in the Oregon Historical Society’s research library collections.

Winter 2021 Oregon Historical Quarterly

Erasure and Reclamation: Centering Diasporic Chinese Populations in Oregon History

BY JENNIFER FANG
Winter 2021, 122:4

This essay provides an overview of early Chinese American history and introduces the key themes of the Oregon Historical Quarterly special issue on the Chinese diaspora in Oregon. It asserts that the history of Chinese people in Oregon should be centered within the state’s history because doing so compels a rethinking of Oregon’s earliest waves of colonization and economic, political, and social development. The articles in this special issue illustrate how Chinese people were transnational historical actors, navigating a social and cultural terrain that was often unwelcoming and oppressive. They humanize early Chinese settlers in ways that avoid reliance on, or reinforcement of, Orientalist stereotypes and Eurocentrist assumptions as well as a tendency to reduce Chinese immigrant experiences to either resistance or victimization. Each contribution in this special issue helps undo nearly two centuries of erasure and reclaims the place of Chinese people in the history of Oregon.

Winter 2021 Oregon Historical Quarterly

《抹杀和复原:聚焦俄勒冈史上的离散华人群体》 (Erasure and Reclamation: Centering Diasporic Chinese Populations in Oregon History)

JENNIFER FANG 著
Winter 2021, 122:4

本文纵览早期在美华人历史,简要介绍《俄勒冈州历史季刊》(Oregon Historical Quarterly) 特刊围绕俄勒冈离散华人主题收录的专题文章。特刊主张俄勒冈州华人史应当成为俄勒冈历史的聚焦中心,因为这会迫使人们反思俄勒冈最早的殖民化以及经济、政治和社会发展浪潮。特刊文章详实论述了华人群体如何一步步成为跨国历史角色,在时常充斥着冷待压迫的社会文化环境下前行。行文着意避免依赖或强化东方主义刻板印象和欧洲中心主义假设,避开误区倾向,不将华人移民际遇简单归结为抵抗或受害,从而为早期华人定居者赋予人性化色彩。本期的每篇文章均有助于消除对华人近两个世纪的抹杀,复原华人在俄勒冈历史上的地位。

Winter 2021 Oregon Historical Quarterly

“Bona Fide Merchants”: Negotiating Life, Labor, and Transnational Mobility in the Time of Chinese Exclusion

BY CHELSEA ROSE, JACQUELINE Y. CHEUNG, AND ERIC GLEASON
Winter 2021, 122:4

From 1875 until 1943, various policies increasingly circumscribed the free movement of Chinese immigrants into and within the United States. These efforts had a profound and lasting impact on the Chinese diaspora in the Pacific Northwest and divided the Chinese community into two distinct classes: laborers and a privileged class that included merchants. The authors of this research article argue that merchant businesses served a critical and multifaceted role in the formation, development, and decline of rural Chinatowns and in the lives of Chinese Oregonians who used the businesses to facilitate resistance and community persistence. Attaining officially recognized merchant status offered certainty and stability, as well as social and mobility, providing immigrants and their families with opportunities for prosperity in a largely unwelcoming land. The Wing Hong Hai Company Store (永同泰) in The Dalles (姐里阜) and the Wah Chung and Company Store (和昌) in Ashland each played important roles in the maintenance of Oregon’s Chinese diaspora communities. On the surface, they bought and sold goods and services; in reality, these transnational establishments did so much more as they navigated the waters of Chinese exclusion.

Winter 2021 Oregon Historical Quarterly

Searching for Salem’s Early Chinese Community

BY KIMBERLI FITZGERALD, KIRSTEN STRAUS, AND KYLIE PINE
Winter 2021, 122:4

Did Salem, Oregon, have a Chinatown during the late 1800s? In this research article, Kimberli Fitzgerald, Kirsten Straus, and Kylie Pine document their three-year investigation to answer to this question. The authors worked with a local advisory committee, including historians, members of Salem’s Chinese community, and representatives from the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association, the Hoy Yin Association, Friends of the Salem Pioneer Cemetery, and Willamette University. Collectively, the group learned that Salem had a thriving Chinatown for many years that included community leader George Lai Sun and several prominent families. An archaeological team also uncovered a funerary table in Salem’s Pioneer Cemetery, one of very few physical remnants of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century community. Together, the project committee and today’s Salem Chinese community reinstated the funerary table's use in the annual Qingming festival.

Winter 2021 Oregon Historical Quarterly

《探寻塞勒姆早期华人社区》(Searching for Salem’s Early Chinese Community)

KIMBERLI FITZGERALD、KIRSTEN STRAUS 和 KYLIE PINE 著
WINTER 2021, 122:4

俄勒冈州塞勒姆在十九世纪末有唐人街吗?在这篇研究文章中,Kimberli Fitzgerald、Kirsten Straus 和 Kylie Pine 记录了他们为解答这一问题而开展的三年调查。作者联合当地咨询委员会,包括历史学家、塞勒姆华人社区的成员,以及来自中华会馆 (Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association)、海宴同乡会 (Hoy Yin Association)、塞勒姆先锋公墓之友 (Friends of the Salem Pioneer Cemetery) 和威拉米特大学的代表。这一团体调研并了解到,塞勒姆曾有过繁盛多年的唐人街,社区领袖 George Lai Sun 和多个显赫家族都是唐人街的一份子。考古小组还在塞勒姆先锋公墓发现了一张祭台,这是十九世纪末至二十世纪初社区留存的为数不多的实物遗迹之一。项目委员会联合如今的塞勒姆华人社区,恢复了每年清明祭扫使用祭台的传统。

Winter 2021 Oregon Historical Quarterly

Portland’s Louie Chung (1876–1926)

BY MYRON LOUIE LEE
WINTER 2021, 122:4

Louie Chung arrived in Oregon during a time of widespread individual and institutional anti-Chinese racism in Oregon. Defying the odds against him for survival and success, he became a respected and influential Portland businessman, family man, land owner, and philanthropist who was equally at ease in both Portland’s white and Chinese societies. While redefining his own identity and meaning of home and family, he continued to be anchored by his strong Taishan (Toisan) roots of language, culture, and traditions. Drawing on family stories and primary documents, the author (Louie Chung’s grandson) traces this remarkable journey and opens a window onto the vibrant and sometimes violent life of Portland’s Old Chinatown.

Winter 2021 Oregon Historical Quarterly

《波特兰的 Louie Chung(1876—1926)》[Portland’s Louie Chung (1876–1926)]

Louie Chung 来到俄勒冈时,正值州中个人和机构反华种族主义猖獗的时期。他克服了生存和成功道路上的艰险,成为受人尊敬、有影响力的波特兰商人、顾家男、土地主和慈善家,在波特兰的白人社会和华人社会中同样游刃有余。在重新定义自我身份以及家与家庭的意义的同时,他继续立身于强大的台山语言、文化和传统根基。作者(Louie Chung 的孙子)借家族故事和一手文献,追溯这段非凡历程,为读者开启一扇窗,一窥波特兰旧日唐人街蓬勃生动、时而又激烈跌宕的生活。

Winter 2021 Oregon Historical Quarterly

The Village Database: A Resource for Chinese American Genealogy Research

BY HENRY TOM
Winter 2021, 122:4

Chinese American genealogy sources exist in both America and China, but finding them in China can be challenging. In America, an unintended consequence of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was the generation of voluminous government records that now benefit research on Chinese Americans by providing and confirming the names of people, of villages written in Chinese characters and romanized in English, and sometimes, remarkable photographs. In China, such work was performed at the village level. Meticulous village genealogy books (zupus) record the men in each village and contain family lineages for the villagers spanning hundreds to thousands of years; women’s names were not included.  Many of these books are now digitized and available through the online Village Database. In this Research Files feature, Henry Tom introduces readers to the database and guides them on how to use it.

Fall 2021 Oregon Historical Quarterly

“Make the desert blossom like the rose”: Animal Acclimatization, Settler Colonialism, and the Construction of Oregon’s Nature

BY BARRIE RYNE BLATCHFORD
Fall 2021, 122:3

In 1881, Owen Denny introduced the ring-necked pheasant to Oregon as a game bird for sport hunters. The bird, originally from China, was soon adopted into American culture in Oregon and later established presence in nineteen other states. In this research article, Barrie Ryne Blatchford explores the species’ introduction as well as how “the pheasant’s importation to Oregon was a product of, and later a touchstone within, American settler-colonialism — the multi-faceted ideology that alleged Euro-American superiority, marginalized Indigenous peoples, and glorified the renovation of landscapes in accordance with Euro-American norms and imperatives.”

Fall 2021 Oregon Historical Quarterly

Oregon and Climate Change: The Age of Megafires in the American West

by William G. Robbins
Fall 2021, 122:3

In the 1960s, historian William G. Robbins worked as a crew foreman for the Eastern Lane Forest Protective Association, with the responsibility of responding to fires to quickly contain blazes. That work, Robbins attests, “marked the beginnings of a career-long intellectual and scholarly journey, learning about fire history and policy.” In this essay, he draws on historical data and decades of research and writing to highlight the “effects of global warming,” which “provide powerful evidence that fires are now burning more often and in places they seldom occurred before” due to human-caused climate change.

Fall 2021 Oregon Historical Quarterly

Homeward Bound: The Battleship Oregon Pennant and Imperialism in Oregon

BY SILVIE ANDREWS
Fall 2021, 122:3

In July 1901, a company of Oregon National Guard soldiers presented three flags — a Union Jack, a naval ensign, and a homeward bound pennant — from the battleship USS Oregon. The battleship and its crew had returned that year from engaging in pivotal battles Spanish-American War, and “brought fame and glory not only to its crew but also to the faraway state for which it had been named.” In this Object Feature, Silvie Andrews explores the rediscovery of the homeward bound pennant in the Oregon Historical Society’s museum collection and discusses the “sociopolitical forces surrounding the pennants creation, dedication, display and descent into obscurity.”

Cover of Summer 2021 issue of the Oregon Historical Quarterly

Maybe You’ve Heard of Her Husband?: Finding Louisa Weinhard

BY TIAH EDMUNSON-MORTON
Summer 2021, 122:2

In this Research Files article, author Tiah Edmunson-Morton documents her work to reconstruct the life of Luise Wagenblast, “who became Louisa Weinhard, wife of Henry.” As an archivist and educator, Edmunson-Morton spends her time among records and repositories that are filled with many voices, some of which are championed and others silenced. As she describes, “The history of nineteenth-century women’s work is often told through the story of husbands and sons,” and Louisa Weinhard’s life was no different. Through census records, newspaper accounts, and women’s group records, Edmunson-Morton “[knits] together the small bits left behind” to fill in the historical record.

Spring 2021 Oregon Historical Quarterly

The Rise and Fall of “No Special Rights”

BY WILLIAM SCHULTZ
Spring 2021, 122:1

In 1992, the Oregon Citizens Alliance (OCA) sponsored ballot Measure 9 in Oregon, which author William Schultz describes as “one of the most comprehensive — and harshest — antigay measures put to voters in American history.” OCA’s “No Special Rights” slogan implied that homosexuals sought “special” rights rather than protection against discrimination. In this article, Schultz examines Oregon’s anti–LGBTQ rights measures during the late 1980s and early 1990s and a similar campaign, Amendment 2, in Colorado and how they illuminate “a transitional moment in the history of the Christian Right.” Shultz argues that the story of these campaigns is ultimately a failure, “albeit an instructive failure….in examining how and why a certain concept — such as ‘No Special Rights’ — might take hold in one community and not another.

Winter 2020 Oregon Historical Quarterly

A Matriarch’s Picture Postcards: Capturing Life on Eastern Oregon’s “Dead Ox Flat,” 1910–1920

BY DAMIAN KOSHNICK
Winter 2020, 121:4

In August 2019, Damian Koshnick and his father, William Koshnick, traveled to visit a landscape near Ontario, Oregon, formerly known as “Dead Ox Flat” — a 200-acre homestead claim once owned by his great-grandparents, Stella and Otto Koshnick. There, Stella “diligently choreographed, wrote, and sent hundreds of picture-postcards between 1910 and 1918 to her family in Minnesota.” In this Oregon Places article, Koshnick provides a unique glimpse of early-twentieth-century life in eastern Oregon through his great-grandmother’s postcards, which document her family life and dry-farming conditions many migrants to the region experienced during that time.

Winter 2020 Oregon Historical Quarterly

“A Proper Attitude of Resistance”: The Oregon Letters of A.H. Francis to Frederick Douglass, 1851–1860

BY KENNETH HAWKINS
Winter 2020, 121:4

A.H. Francis and his brother I.B. Francis immigrated from New York to Oregon in September 1851, a time when the state’s Black exclusion laws barred them from residence and most civil rights. The brothers petitioned the territorial legislature to exempt them from exclusion — it took no action — and they stayed in Oregon to operate a prosperous mercantile store until 1864. Between 1851 and 1861, A.H. wrote letters to his friend Frederick Douglass, who published them in his newspapers in New York. In this Primary Document article, Kenneth Hawkins reproduces nine of those letters and provides context for A.H. Francis’s first-hand documentation of what life was like as a free Black person living in the region.

Summer 2020

Pioneer Problems: “Wanton Murder,” Indian War Veterans, and Oregon’s Violent History

BY MARC JAMES CARPENTER
Summer 2020, 121:2

In this research article, Marc James Carpenter examines the Indian War Veterans of the North Pacific Coast (IWV-NPC), an organization founded by former volunteer soldiers in Oregon and Washington, and how their efforts to reshape historical memory fit within the larger pioneer narrative of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries — a narrative that often skewed Euro-American violence against Native people. Pioneer societies and historians during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries distorted these historical narratives through omission, ignoring settlers’ violence toward Native people and condemning their retribution. As Carpenter suggests, “a true history of the Pacific Northwest must reckon with the legions of Euro-American pioneers who, during the 1840s, the 1850s, and beyond, pursued pogroms and inflicted acts of workaday racial violence in pursuit of a White ethno-state.”

Summer 2020

From Stories to Salt Cairns: Uncovering Indigenous Influence in the Formative Years of the Oregon Historical Society, 1898–1905

BY SARAH KEYES
Summer 2020, 121:2

Established in December 1898, the Oregon Historical Society (OHS) was founded to “collect and preserve a library of historical material related to the history of the state,” and Sarah Keyes notes that its mission also included “the gathering and preservation of Indians’ traditions.” In this research article, Keyes examines how “through their participation in the formative years of OHS, Native Americans shaped the archival and material collections as well as interpretive documents that continue to serve as the primary organs of preserving and disseminating Oregon history.” Keyes focuses on the first seven years of OHS’s existence shedding “light on early cross-racial and cross-cultural conflict and collaboration within OHS.” Building on scholarship on historical societies in the West and extensive research in OHS’s institutional archives, Keyes examines the close connections between Native and non-Natives in OHS’s formative years, which “contributes to our understanding of OHS and settler-colonialism in Oregon.”

Summer 2020

Native Belongings and Institutional Values at the Oregon Historical Society, Then and Now

BY NICOLE YASUHARA
Summer 2020, 121:2

Oregon Historical Society (OHS) Deputy Museum Director Nicole Yasuhara reflects on Sarah Keyes’s Summer 2020 article titled “From Stories to Salt Cairns: Uncovering Indigenous Influence in the Formative Years of the Oregon Historical Society, 1898–1905.” Yasuhara’s primary role of “safeguarding the institution’s three-dimensional cultural resources” at OHS also involves “delineating and safeguarding the information we have about each object” — a task that is often extremely difficult. There are approximately 5,200 Native belongings in the OHS Museum collections, most collected during OHS’s formative years, and as Yasuhara attests, those objects “were stripped of their history,” no doubt due to “power structures between pioneer collectors and their Native sources.” Yasuhara also discusses current institutional practices and goals that guide confront this history and “begin to address the inherently colonial practices of early collecting institutions, including OHS.” That change, she urges, must grow from deeply personal ideological shifts in which practitioners recognize our own privilege and utilize an inclusion and equity lens in our everyday lives.”

Spring 2020

Clara Bewick Colby and the Oregon Woman Suffrage Campaign of 1905–1906

by Kristin Mapel Bloomberg
Spring 2020, 121:1

Clara Bewick Colby arrived in Oregon in 1904 and became a key figure and among one of Oregon’s primary fieldworkers during the state’s 1905 to 1906 woman suffrage campaign. In this research article, Kristin Mapel Bloomberg analyzes Colby’s detailed campaign fieldwork records to reveal how “activists conducted their work, building on prior movement strategies by systematizing a professional class of suffrage workers into a centrally organized campaign.” Colby spent her early years as a footsoldier of the movement in Beatrice, Nebraska, where she “wielded her political acumen on the speaker’s platform and as publisher of the influential The Woman’s Tribune (1883–1909), the second-longest-running woman’s rights journal in the United States.” By the time she arrived in Oregon in 1904, she had “ascended to and fallen from the heights of suffrage influence,” but as Bloomberg describes, Oregon held promise and Colby worked tirelessly to collect signatures to put a state constitutional change on the ballot. While the 1905–1906 campaign was imperfect and ultimately failed, it helped establish strategies that would be used successfully in future campaigns.

Spring 2020

The Case of Cheryl D. James and Police Violence Against Black Women in Portland, Oregon (1968–1974)

BY JANE CIGARRAN
Spring 2020, 121:1

On January 4, 1971, two plain-clothed FBI agents who did not identify themselves entered the James family home in North Portland, Oregon, to arrest Charles James, Jr., who had been declared AWOL from the Navy. Cheryl D. James, then seventeen years old, witnessed one of the agents putting her younger brother in a chokehold and he was unable to breathe. Cheryl hit the agent over the head with a rolling pin and was violently arrested later that day in her home by about a dozen armed agents. Cheryl, a minor, was convicted of assault, resisting arrest, and opposing FBI agents with a dangerous weapon (a rolling pin) in April 1971 and sentenced to eighteen months at Terminal Island prison in San Pedro, California. In this research article, Jane Cigarran documents the case of Cheryl D. James “as a microcosm of what was happening across the country at the time,” and how it revealed the racial politics in Portland during the 1960s and 1970s. Her case, Cigarran argues, “offers a glimpse into how a system of “law and order” that is supposed to protect and serve proved fundamentally set up to fail Black women in Portland.”

Oregon Historical Quarterly, Winter 2019

Expectation and Exclusion: An Introduction to Whiteness, White Supremacy, and Resistance in Oregon

BY CARMEN P. THOMPSON
Winter 2019, 120:4

In this introduction to the Oregon Historical Quarterly’s Winter 2019 special issue on the history of White supremacy and resistance in Oregon, Dr. Carmen P. Thompson discusses the concept of Whiteness ­— “an expectation (sometimes an unconscious expectation) that the government will maintain laws and policies generally benefitting White people.” Through the interdisciplinary field of Critical Whiteness Studies, scholars, including Thompson, have explored the concept of Whiteness and “exposed a racialized system that overall, has been detrimental to the masses.” Thompson provides an analysis of critical scholarship in the field and makes connections between the articles in this issue and “two core characteristics of Whiteness that are present in Oregon’s White supremacist history — expectation and exclusion.”

Oregon Historical Quarterly, Winter 2019

“We were at our journey’s end”: Settler Sovereignty Formation in Oregon

BY KATRINE BARBER
Winter 2019, 120:4

When Esther Bell Hanna migrated to Oregon Territory in September 1852 and documented in her diary her first glimpse of the Columbia River, “she looked out over a landscape that contained relationships both legible and illegible to her.” In this research article, Barber explores those relationships through the lens of settler colonialism and White supremacy that “alienated Indigenous people from their lands through ordinary acts of fencing and plowing fields” and “disorganized terror and calculated war.” Barber also discusses acts of disruption and resistance to White supremacy, and argues that “to grapple with the foundations, legacies, and persistent characteristics of settler colonialism and its twin — White supremacy — is to grapple with the inequities that shape Oregon’s history, present, and future in ways both symbolic and material.”

Oregon Historical Quarterly, Winter 2019

“We’ll all Start at Even”: White Egalitarianism and the Oregon Donation Land Claim Act

BY KENNETH R. COLEMAN
Winter 2019, 120:4

Kenneth R. Coleman examines the 1850 Oregon Donation Land Claim Act, a bill unprecedented in its generous land distribution and unique in that it was the only federal land-distribution act that specifically limited land grants by race. Oregon’s early political leaders “repeatedly invoked a Jacksonian vision of egalitarianism rooted in White supremacy to justify their actions” and successfully lobbied Congress to allow White settlers to seize Indigenous lands before they were ceded through federal treaties. The DCLA allowed privatization of over 2.5 million acres of Oregon land and influenced future land-distribution legislation, such as the 1863 Homestead Act. In using land as a tool of racial exclusion, Coleman argues that “Oregon’s early political leaders initiated a pattern that continued well into the twentieth century,” and “any serious attempt to challenge White supremacy in Oregon must engage with the economic legacy of institutionalized racism limiting access to real estate and, as such, wealth and social power.”

Oregon Historical Quarterly, Winter 2019

White Right and Labor Organizing in Oregon’s “Hindu City”

BY JOHANNA OGDEN
Winter 2019, 120:4

In March 1910, anti-Indian violence erupted in St. John’s, then a city just outside Portland, Oregon, perpetrated by a crowd of two hundred White laborers joined by the mayor, police chief, and two police officers. While the 1910 St. Johns riot is not well known, Johanna Ogden situates it within a growing anti-Asian movement along the West coast that “rocked towns from California to British Columbia and targeted Indian, Japanese, and Chinese shopkeepers and laborers.” The Indians fought back the night of the riot and, with the backing of the Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office and the British Consulate, demanded prosecution of the rioters. Ogden provides an account of the riot and how the Indian community in the region “became a center of anti-colonial organizing” in forming Ghadar, a global movement to free India from British rule.

Oregon Historical Quarterly, Winter 2019

Liberty Ships and Jim Crow Shipyards: Racial Discrimination in Kaiser’s Portland Shipyards, 1940–1945

by John Linder
Winter 2019, 120:4

During World War II, the Black population Portland-Vancouver region in Oregon grew tenfold. New arrivals sought work in war industries, particularly in the three large Kaiser Company shipyards where a majority of skilled jobs were under the jurisdiction of the Local 72 of the Boilermakers Union, which refused to admit Black members. John Linder describes how during a time when shipyards needed skilled workers, “qualified Black workers were consigned to laboring jobs or forced to join a segregated and powerless ‘auxiliary local’.” Linder’s article sheds light on some of that systemic discrimination reinforced by corporations and ignored by the federal government that has had lasting effects into the present. It also highlights that “significant victories were won by Black workers and organizers who relied on mass action rather than the promises and proclamations of government and company officials.

Fall 2019

The History of Cricket in Oregon, 1870s­–1920s

BY CRAIG OWEN JONES
Fall 2019, 120:3

Author Craig Owen Jones  writes “the failure of American Cricket to flourish in the late nineteenth and  early twentieth centuries is the Rorschach inkblot test for sports historians —  each sees in the failure whatever they wish to see.” In this research article,  explores the history of cricket in Oregon, and especially the Portland Cricket  Club, “with an emphasis on cricket clubs’ sociological and demographic makeup.”  The earliest reference of cricket in Oregon are in newspaper reports on cricket  games being played in Portland in 1873. By the late 1870s, cricket had expanded  beyond Portland to areas as far apart as Albany, Astoria, and Corvallis. Jones  ultimately concludes that cricket’s failure to establish in Oregon was due to  major cricket clubs taking on an exclusionary membership of mainly upper-class  players, and failed to establish a broader appeal. Although cricket never took  off in Oregon, Jones emphasizes that “it nonetheless played a persistent, if  small, role in sporting life for almost three quarters of a century.”

Summer 2019

“What’s in a name?”: The University of Oregon, De-Naming Controversies, and the Ethics of Public Memory

BY MATTHEW DENNIS AND SAMUEL REIS-DENNIS
Summer 2019, 120:2

In this essay, Matthew Dennis and Samuel Reis-Dennis explore the significance of honorific building naming on college campuses. According to Dennis and Reis-Denis, “questions about honorific naming opportunities…are not just academic — they are edifying. In 2015, African American students at the University of Oregon presented university president Michael Schill with a list of demands to address racism on campus, including removing the names of Matthew Deady and Frederic Dunn from campus buildings. Deady, a prominent lawyer, judge, and president of the 1857 Constitutional Convention, held pro-slavery views and advocated for black exclusion but also protected Chinese who faced discrimination and violence. Dunn, a classics professor at the university from 1898 to 1937, helped lead Eugene’s chapter of the KKK as its Exalted Cyclops. Ultimately, Schill decided to rename the Dunn building but not Deady Hall, a move the authors suggest “excused the inexcusable,” and elevated Deady’s efforts on behalf of Chinese inhabitants over his racist views.

Spring 2019

Breadwinning, Equity, and Solidarity: Labor Feminism in Oregon, 1945–1970

BY LAURIE MERCIER
Spring 2019, 120:1

Laurie Mercier documents influential women in Oregon’s labor movement between 1945 and 1970 and how their work at the state level intersected with national movements. According to Mercier, “union leaderships’ fixed belief in labor hierarchy reflected the stubborn ideology of the white male breadwinner,” and unions in the Pacific Northwest “emphasized physical strength and masculine solidarity in their defense of sex-segregated work.” As a result, little has been written about working-class women’s grassroot efforts following World War II to employ multi-pronged strategies for workplace reforms. In this research article, Mercier sheds light on some of those women and how their efforts helped shape a growing feminist movement that “accelerated the rate of change in working women’s lives.”

Spring 2019

“Out of order”: Pasting Together the Slavery Debate in the Oregon Constitution

BY AMY E. PLATT WITH LAURA CRAY
SPRING 2019, 120:1

Amy E. Platt’s and Laura Cray’s recent research on the Oregon State Constitution for Oregon Historical Society (OHS) exhibits and digital collections prompted this reflection essay to commemorate OHS’ 160th anniversary and the opening of its new permanent exhibit, Experience Oregon. Platt guides readers through Oregon’s slavery debate by examining accounts of the Constitutional Convention proceedings and select readings from the final document and draft copies held at OHS. Cray describes how those draft pages were digitized and how they reveal the physical work of cutting and pasting changes that were required to produce this guiding document. Platt describes those changes as “remnants of issues that newly arrived mid nineteenth-century Oregonians had been wringing their hands over since the 1840s: who could live and work in Oregon; who could own property; would Oregon be a slave state; and how was the government going to control it all?” That process of changing a word and pasting a sentence “helped create one of the most racially exclusionary states in the country.”

Spring 2019

The Oregon Skyline Trail: Evolving Attitudes Toward Nature Tourism

BY STUART BARKER
Spring 2019, 120:1

In this research article, Stuart Barker documents the development of the Oregon Skyline Trail from a scenic highway to an eventual hiking trail as a “glimpse into Americans’ recreational demands during the 1920s and 1930s,” and a case study in outdoor recreational planning during the early twentieth century. In 1920, Frederick W. Cleator of the U.S. Forest Service organized the Skyline Party to explore a potential route for a scenic highway from Mount Hood to Crater Lake. Prompted by the bourgeoning auto-tourism industry and a push to preempt the National Park Service from claiming a similar rout of its own, Cleator and promoters championed this road as a way to “open the scenic wonders of the Cascades.” The scenic roadway ultimately went unbuilt and the eventual hiking trail became part of the Pacific Crest Trail, demonstrating changing attitudes toward nature tourism in the United States.

Winter 2018

Growing Up African American in Wallowa County, Oregon

BY PEARL ALICE MARSH
Winter 2018, 119:4

In this Oregon Voices article, Pearl Alice Marsh reflects on growing up African American in eastern Oregon — recalling childhood memories she describes as “warm and delicious,” but also included “hurtful encounters with racism.” Marsh’s parents moved to Wallowa County in 1939 when her father sought work cutting timber for one of the region’s lumber companies. Many of her childhood remembrances told in this essay include her experience in a lumber town and the interactions between white and African American families. Marsh attributes her strength and character to her mother and father “who challenged racial barriers that might have impeded [her] way.” Her story is an important part of Oregon’s history as well as part of a “national story of growing up African American outside the Jim Crow South.”

Winter 2018

Voices of the River: The Confluence Story Gathering Interview Collection

BY LILY HART
Winter 2018, 119:4

The Confluence Story Gathering Collection, a non-profit organization that conducts interviews with Indigenous people of the Columbia River, aims to broaden the history of the Pacific Northwest, which is often centered on the Lewis and Clark Expedition and migrants who came to the region by way of the Oregon Trail. In this Research Files essay, Lily Hart describes the Confluence Project, its partners, and highlights some of the stories it has collected since 2011.

Fall 2018

Invisible Walls: Mapping Residential Segregation in Portland

BY KATRINE BARBER, LILY HART, CURTIS JEWELL, MADELYN MILLER, AND GRETA SMITH
Fall 2018, 119:3

This Local History Spotlight documents Portland State University students’ research on how  barriers to homeownership in communities of color have influenced the  concentration of wealth and inequality in Portland, Oregon. The students  conducted research by using crowdsourcing efforts to obtain property deed  information, and partnered with other university students and local  organizations to disseminate their initial findings. The authors concluded that  “by documenting racially  restrictive covenants, we revealed the many ways that people of color have been  denied access to property in Portland, how they navigated restrictions to  purchasing homes, and the ongoing legacies of housing inequality in our  community.”

Fall 2018

“A place under the sun”: African American Resistance to Housing Exclusion

BY MELISSA CORNELIUS LANG
Fall 2018, 119:3

Melissa Lang was one of three  panelists at a public history roundtable at the Oregon Historical Society commemorating  the fiftieth anniversary of the 1968 Fair Housing Act. In this record of her  presentation, Lang documents African American resistance to housing exclusion  by highlighting stories of those Portlanders who “fought back and uplifted their community from within.”  Three ways that resistance manifested included Black realtors and investors who  helped circumnavigate the system of exclusionary practices and redlining;  Black-owned banks and credit unions that provided loans for property upkeep;  and Black activist organizations beginning in the 1940s that advocated for  better housing policies. Lang argues that by “capitalizing on their  industriousness,” these resisters “developed a network of realtors and  investment opportunities when they were otherwise excluded, and they founded  and utilized community organizations to keep the work of the city and the state  in check.”

Fall 2018

“Congenial Neighbors”: Restrictive Covenants and Residential Segregation  in Portland, Oregon

BY GRETA SMITH
Fall 2018, 119:3

Greta Smith, one of three  presenters at a public history roundtable at the Oregon Historical Society commemorating  the fiftieth anniversary of the 1968 Fair Housing Act, describes her research  on restrictive covenants used as early tools in Portland, Oregon, to segregate  neighborhoods. In this record of her talk, Smith describes how restrictive  covenants written into property title deeds were designed to protect “neighborhoods  from the encroachment of  economically undesirable features,” such as types and locations of buildings on  a property and, in the early twentieth century, the kinds of people who could  inhabit a property. Enforcement of these covenants “took the work of private  citizens with state support,” citing quality of life concerns to maintain  homogenous neighborhoods through “redlining.” Smith concludes by discussing how  covenants and redlining may have protected white and wealthier homeowners’  property values, but they affected generations of African Americans through  disinvestment and exclusion.

Fall 2018

Housing Segregation and Resistance: An Introduction

BY CARMEN P. THOMPSON
Fall 2018, 119:3

On Sunday, April 8, 2018, local researchers  gathered for a roundtable discussion at the Oregon Historical Society to  present research they had uncovered about housing segregation and resistance in  Portland, Oregon. Carmen P. Thompson moderated that discussion and presented to  attendees an introduction to housing segregation. In this record of her  presentation, Thompson documents how housing segregation in Portland, Oregon,  stems from policies and practices rooted in the enslavement of people of  African descent. These policies, she attests, “instituted a national racial  hierarchy of white supremacy and Black inferiority.” Thompson also reflects on  each of the presenters’ research and draws connections to “institutional  racism, Black resistance, and private citizens’ silence,” during this  commemoration the fiftieth anniversary of the 1968 Fair Housing Act.

Fall 2018

Small Steps on the Long Journey to Equality: A Timeline of Post-Legislation Civil Rights Struggles in Portland

by Leanne Serbulo
Fall 2018, 119:3

Leanne Serbulo presented a timeline of civil rights struggles in Portland, Oregon, at a public history roundtable at the Oregon Historical Society commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the 1968 Fair Housing Act. In this record of her presentation, Serbulo documents milestones in dismantling racial discrimination between 1949 and 1990. For this timeline, Serbulo researched Metropolitan Human Relations Commission (MHRC) records held at the Portland City Archives and traces how the commission navigated the process of improving race relations in the city and Multnomah County. As Serbulo argues, “civil rights legislation was simply the first step in a long and unfinished journey toward equality.” As the timeline shows, dismantling racial discrimination occurred primarily in public agencies during that time period, as “MHRC and other civil rights organizations had little influence over the myriad of diffuse transactions in the housing market, and the public agencies that were empowered to regulate those markets were reluctant to aggressively police the private housing industry.”

Summer 2018

Oregon’s Manilla Galleon

BY CAMERON LA FOLLETTE, DOUGLAS DEUR, DENNIS GRIFFIN, AND SCOTT S. WILLIAMS
Summer 2018, 119:2

For two centuries, physical evidence of a vast shipwreck, including beeswax and Chinese porcelain, has washed ashore in the Nehalem Spit area on the north coast of Oregon. The story of the wreck has been “shrouded by time, speculation, and surprisingly rich and often contradictory Euro-American folklore.” In this introduction to the Oregon Historical Quarterly’s special issue, “Oregon’s Manila Galleon,” authors Cameron La Follette, Douglas Deur, Dennis Griffin, and Scott S. Williams summarize the rich archival findings and archaeological evidence that points to the Santo Cristo de Burgos, a Manila galleon owned by the kingdom of Spain and bringing Asian trade goods to the Americas, as the ship that came to be known as the “Beeswax Wreck.” 

Summer 2018

Views Across the Pacific: The Galleon Trade and Its Traces in Oregon

BY CAMERON LA FOLLETTE AND DOUGLAS DEUR
Summer 2018, 119:2

From 1565 to 1815, Manila galleons such as the Santo Cristo de Burgos — the ship now thought to be the seventeenth century “Beeswax Wreck” that sank or ran aground near Nehalem Spit in Oregon — followed a 12,000-mile route from the Philippines through the stormy North Pacific, sometimes passing parallel to what is now the north Oregon coast, before reaching their destination in Acapulco, Mexico. The galleons were a central part of Spain’s complex international commerce system, transporting people and Asian goods around the world. In this article, Cameron La Follette and Douglas Deur discuss the Spanish empire and the Manila galleon trade; tempestuous seas and hazardous weather conditions that likely led to the ship’s demise; oral traditions of the Native peoples who encountered the shipwreck and its survivors; and the Euro-American interpretations of that oral tradition that fueled treasure-hunters’ speculations in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Summer 2018

The Beeswax Wreck of Nehalem: A Lost Manila Galleon

BY SCOTT S. WILLIAMS, CURT D. PETERSON, MITCH MARKEN, AND RICHARD ROGERS
Summer 2018, 119:2

A volunteer group of archaeologists, historians, geologists, and community members began working in 2006 on a project aimed at identifying the identity of Oregon’s “Beeswax Wreck.” The authors are involved in the group’s Beeswax Wreck Project and discuss here their research process and findings that support the hypothesis that the Santo Cristo de Burgos, a Manila galleon, was the ship that wrecked near Nehalem Spit. Along with systematic archaeological documentation, the team used beeswax stamped with Spanish shippers’ marks to determine the ship’s country of origin and radiocarbon dating of Chinese porcelain sherds coupled with geological research to determine when the ship wrecked. According to the authors, “for those of us researching the Beeswax Wreck, the goal has never been to recover artifacts or ‘treasure.’ Instead, we are most interested in solving the mysteries of the what ship wrecked off the north coast of Oregon three hundred years ago.”

Summer 2018

The Galleon’s Final Journey: Accounts of Ship, Crew, and Passengers in the Colonial Archives

BY CAMERON LA FOLLETTE AND DOUGLAS DEUR, WITH ARCHIVAL RESEARCHER ESTHER GONZÁLEZ
Summer 2018, 119:2

Through archival research, Cameron La Follette and Douglas Deur document the history of the Santo Cristo de Burgos — the ship thought to be the Beeswax Wreck of Oregon — and its crew and passengers. The Santo Cristo “drew together a multiethnic crew of Spanish, Spanish Basque, Philippine, Mexican, and possibly African men in the most sprawling global trade network of their day.” Research conducted in the Archives of the Indies in Seville, Spain, the National Archives of the Philippines in Manila and the Archivo General de la Nación of Mexico in Mexico City shows that the galleon left the Philippines in the summer of 1693 without some necessary crew and supplies. The lack of skilled men and critical supplies, along with winter storms, likely contributed to the ship’s fate. Based on Native oral tradition, there were survivors of the shipwreck. According to La Follette and Deur, those survivors “were key participants in arguably the first Native-European contact on what is now the northern coast of Oregon, before disappearing into the state’s cultural lore with few traces.” 

Summer 2018

The Galleon Cargo: Accounts in the Colonial Archives

BY CAMERON LA FOLLETTE AND DOUGLAS DEUR, WITH ARCHIVAL RESEARCHER ESTHER GONZÁLEZ
Summer 2018, 119:2

Much of the debris that has washed up on the shores of the northern Oregon coast for centuries were mainstays of Spanish trade carried as cargo across the world on Manila galleons. Both Native people and Euro-Americans have recovered large beeswax chunks, lending to the lore of the “Beeswax Wreck,” as well as Chinese blue-and-white porcelain fragments. In this article, Cameron La Follette and Douglas Deur describe research findings about cargo on the Santo Cristo de Burgos and similar Manila galleons, including the San Francisco Xavier of 1705, the previous favored candidate for the Oregon wreck.  La Follette and Deur located probable matches for the shippers’ identities of four shipper’s marks found on Oregon beeswax chunks. According to La Follette and Deur, “in addition to trade goods, the Santo Cristo de Burgos carried a cargo of liquid mercury,” which was essential for refining silver ore from South American mines used to make coins that fueled the Spanish empire and the Manila trade itself. The article contains a partial cargo list for the 1693 Santo Cristo de Burgos voyage and a special digital appendix with the full cargo manifest for the 1701 San Francisco Xavier. 

Summer 2018

The Mountain of a Thousand Holes: Shipwreck Traditions and Treasure Hunting on Oregon’s North Coast

BY CAMERON LA FOLLETTE, DENNIS GRIFFIN, AND DOUGLAS DEUR
Summer 2018, 119:2

“Euro-Americans in coastal communities conflated and amplified Native American oral traditions of shipwrecks in Tillamook County, increasingly focusing on buried treasure,” write authors Cameron La Follette, Dennis Griffin and Douglas Deur. In this article, the authors trace the Euro-American blending of Native oral tradition with romances and adventure tales that helped create the “legends contributing to Neahkahnie [Mountain]’s reputation as Oregon’s treasure-seeking haven.” They also examine the history of treasure-seeking in the area and describe the escalating conflict between Oregon’s treasure-hunting statute and cultural resources protection laws, which led finally to statutory repeal that ended all treasure-hunting on state lands. While treasure hunting is no longer allowed in Oswald West State Park where Neahkahnie Mountain is located, the “Beeswax Wreck” lore continues to fascinate visitors to the north Oregon coast.

Summer 2018

Complete Cargo List for the 1701 San Francisco Xavier

This detailed cargo manifest shows all properly registered cargo, including the names of the shippers and their identification marks, carried on the San Francisco Xavier galleon voyage from Manila to Acapulco in 1701. The manifest was deposited in the Archivo General de Indias (General Archive of the Indies) in Seville, Spain. This is the official archive for documents of Spain’s empire in the Philippines and the Americas. Any smuggled cargo, which was commonplace in the Manila trade, is not listed on the manifest.

Spring 2018

The Black Studies Controversy at Reed College, 1968–1970

BY MARTIN WHITE
Spring 2018, 119:1

In this research article, Martin White documents Black students' attempt to implement a Black Studies program at Reed College in Portland, Oregon — a struggle that ultimately "failed to take root." In 1968, Black students at the college, many of whom had been actively recruited through a scholarship program, formed a Black Student Union (BSU) that advocated for expanding Reed's curriculum beyond its Eurocentric focus. During the next two years, Black students demanded, and ultimately established, a Black Studies Center on campus; however, lack of funding and institutional commitment undermined the program. In 2018, "the echoes of past conflicts are again being heard on the Reed campus," as students are renewing that debate. As White points out, "racial justice remains a central issue in American life," and "Reed College will decide the role it will play."

Spring 2018

Finding Finley: Reuniting the Works of Naturalist William L. Finley through Digital Collaboration

BY LAURA CRAY
Spring 2018, 119:1

William Lovell Finley spent his career advocating for the protection of birds and wildlife and was a leading figure in the early-twentieth-century conservation movement. While Finley was prominent during that time, his work has fallen into obscurity due to the scattered nature of his archival materials.  In this heavily illustrated Research Files essay, Laura Cray — digital services librarian at the Oregon Historical Society — documents Finley's career and the year-long digitization to make available online nearly all of his archival materials held at the Oregon Historical Society and Oregon State University. Included in the project are nearly 7,000 images and over 8,000 pages of manuscript materials that are available at digitalcollections.ohs.org and oregondigital.org/sets/finley-bohlman.

Spring 2018

Rejection, Reception, and Rejection Again: Women in Oregon's World War II Shipyards

BY DIANE SIMMONS
Spring 2018, 119:1

In this Reflection Essay, Diane Simmons describes the research she conducted for her book, The Courtship of Eva Eldridge, a biographical narrative of a young woman during World War II. Eldridge worked at a cafeteria in the Kaiser Swan Island shipyard beginning in 1944. During her research, Simmons looked at runs of Kaiser's company newsletter, The Bo's'n's Whistle, to give her insight into Eldrige's experience. Through that research, Simmons found that women first faced a cold reception, but by 1944 when Eldridge arrived, the company's efforts to make the environment more appealing to women was evident. After being integrated into the workforce, many women then encountered propaganda urging them back into the domestic sphere.

Winter 2017

Guatemalan Immigration to Oregon: Indigenous Transborder Communities

BY LYNN STEPHEN
Winter 2017, 118:4

In this research article, Lynn Stephen documents Mam Indigenous people immigrating to Oregon from Guatemala seeking refuge from violence and harsh economic and social inequities. "For many Guatemalans...who fled violence in their home communities, seeking asylum in the United States is one of the only routes to safety." Since the 1980s, Mam have brought to Oregon a diversity of languages and cultures, relying on transborder social connections to create new lives and communities. As Stephen argues, "like Germans, Swedish, Irish, English, and other immigrants who have settled in Oregon, Guatemalan immigrants are adapting to the state and integrating their families into local communities, bringing with them unique skills and knowledge."

Winter 2017

Oregon Roma (Gypsies): A Hidden History

by Carol Silverman
Winter 2017, 118:4

Roma have resided in Oregon since the early twentieth century, however, many Oregonians know little about the community beyond “gypsy” stereotypes. Although Romani people arrived in the state from Europe, most Oregonians treated them as non-White outsiders. In this research article, Carol Silverman describes the history of Roma in Oregon — immigrants that are often ignored by scholars — and “highlight[s] the tension between continuous discrimination and the challenge of keeping Romani language and culture vibrant.” Through strong family and community ties and selective integration, Romani remain resilient.

Winter 2017

Tribes of the Oregon Country: Cultural Plant Harvests and Indigenous Relationships with Ancestral Lands in the Twenty-first Century

BY REBECCA DOBKINS, SUSAN STEVENS HUMMEL, CEARA LEWIS, GRACE POCHIS, AND EMILY DICKEY
Winter 2017, 118:4

Documented human presence in Oregon dates to at least 12,000 to 14,500 years ago, and Oregon Tribes "have ongoing legal, ecological, and cultural relationships with their ancestral lands even when they have been forcibly removed from them." In this article, the authors discuss research they conducted to document the importance of understanding Native cultural plant harvesting and access rights on U.S. government land. The authors argue that "to sustain the Pacific Northwest's ecosystems and all the people who now call the region home, then there is a role for management that includes traditional knowledge….because Indigenous systems for tending plants and animals have been influencing forests and sustaining humans for millennia."

Oregon Historical Quarterly | Fall 2017, 118:3

“I wanted Oregon to have something”: Governor Victor G. Atiyeh and Oregon-Japan Relations

BY CHRISTOPHER FOSS
Fall 2017, 118:3

Victor G. Atiyeh served as Republican governor of Oregon from 1979 to 1987, during which time he expanded Oregon and Japan’s international trade relationship. Christopher Foss documents some of Atiyeh’s efforts to “make personal connections and use political power to generate new exports,” in Oregon’s post-World War II economy. A struggling economy prompted Atiyeh to seek new opportunities to sell more goods beyond agricultural and timber to Japan and increase Japanese investment in state. “While hardly the economic savior contemporary accounts make him out to be,” Foss argues that Aityeh should be given credit for “recognizing that Oregon needed to diversify its economic portfolio, even if such diversification yielded variable benefits.” 

Oregon Historical Quarterly | Fall 2017, 118:3

Yamhill County Crop History Project: Community-Involved Historical Discovery

BY RUSS KAROW AND GLORIA LUTZ
Fall 2017, 118:3

In this Local History Spotlight, Russ Karow and Gloria Lutz document a collaborative project to gather historical information about the crops produced in Yamhill County, Oregon. They compiled data from historical agricultural and farm records at Oregon State University and the Oregon Historical Society that resulted in a set of spreadsheets documenting the earliest pioneer-introduced crops through 2012. The spreadsheets were then circulated among community members to fill in the historical gaps based on family records and oral histories. Their documentation also included “first plants” used by Native Americans in the region based on research by Native scholars.

Oregon Historical Quarterly | Summer 2017, 118:2

Special Section: World War One Centennial Roundtable

Summer 2017, 118:2

This special section contains reflections on the centennial anniversary of World War One, and includes articles by Kimberly Jensen, Christopher Nichols, Michael Kazin, Michael Helquist, Steven Beda, Adriane Lentz-Smith, Steven Sabol, and Candice Bredbenner.

Oregon Historical Quarterly | Summer 2017, 118:2

The Earliest American Map of the Northwest Coast: John Hoskins’s A Chart of the Northwest Coast of America Sketched on board the Ship Columbia Rediviva . . . 1791 & 1792

by James V. Walker and William L. Lang
Summer 2017, 118:2

Between 1790 and 1793, John Hoskins created a map of the Northwest Coast of North America that included ninety-one place names documenting Native communities. The map is the earliest example of such detailed documentation by an American and was rediscovered in 1852 at the Cartographic Archives Division of the National Archives and Records Administration. In this research article, James Walker and William Lang provide a historical context for the map, including comparative charts that break down the Native names that Hoskins documented into seven cultural groups. According to Walker and Lang, the map “opens a window to what American traders knew, what they perceived about the region, and what they may have understood about the Native landscape.”

Oregon Historical Quarterly | Summer 2017, 118:2

Women’s ‘Positive Patriotic Duty’ to Participate: The Practice of Female Citizenship in Oregon and the Expanding Surveillance State during the First World War

by Kimberly Jensen
Summer 2017, 118:2

Kimberly Jensen explores the practice of visible female citizenship in America during and after the First World War. During that time, thousands of women in Oregon participated in “visible civic pageantry” associated with national Liberty Loan drives and “an emerging surveillance state that included new strategies for scrutiny.” Jensen documents local and national forces “on women to conform to wartime norms,” and highlights ways in which women resisted wartime surveillance that challenged their civil liberties.

Oregon Historical Quarterly | Spring 2017, 118:1

Jim Rock Historic Can Collection: Southern Oregon University’s Digital Collection Celebrating Jim Rock’s Contributions to Tin Can Archaeology

BY SHANA SANDOR AND CHELSEA ROSE
Spring 2017, 118:1

Archaeologist Jim Rock pioneered the study of tin cans in the United States, traveling around the country with a suitcase containing his collections wrapped in wool socks. His collection is now housed at Southern Oregon University (SOU), and a digital exhibit of Rock’s publications and collection is available online at the Southern Oregon University Digital Archives (SODA). Shana Sandor and Chelsea Rose discuss a brief history of the tin can, Rock’s contributions to archaeological research, and document the extensive digitization process required to present the tin can collection online. As Sandor and Rose emphasize, “at first glance, the digital collection is an archive of many examples of historic tin cans,” but “on closer inspection… researchers see beyond the rust to a deeper meaning,” that “tells a stunningly complex story of the American experience.”

Oregon Historical Quarterly | Spring 2017, 118:1

The State of Jefferson Historical Group

BY TRUDY VAUGHAN
SPRING 2017, 118:1

Trudy Vaughan has attended the annual State of Jefferson Historical Group (SOJHG) meetings since 1983. Since that time she has maintained an attendee mailing list, sending out information to the non-political group’s members that include archaeologists, museum professionals, historians, librarians, Native Americans, and community members interested in the State of Jefferson. The Forty-first annual meeting was held in February 2017 in Redding, California, and over one hundred people attended to discuss a wide range of topics involving the history of the State of Jefferson, a region that encompasses northern California and Southwest Oregon. “This is an informal group where all are welcome,” and according to Vaughan, “the SOJHG…offers a unique opportunity to share research and knowledge from this cross-state region.”

Oregon Historical Quarterly | Spring 2017, 118:1

“The State of Jefferson” A Disaffected Region’s 160-Year Search for Identity

BY JEFF LALANDE
SPRING 2017, 118:1

Residents of northern California and southwestern Oregon organized a series of highly-publicized events in 1941 in support of a secession movement to form a new state called the State of Jefferson. In his essay, Jeff LaLande describes the history of the movement’s identity that can be summarized as: “Let us depart from California and from Oregon; we shall throw in our lot together, make common cause, and decide our own destiny as a single, new state.” The movement evolved in three phases – the search for political identity during the mid to late 1850s; garnering political attention in the in the early to mid twentieth century; and finally, from the 1970s to present the search for a true political identity. As LaLande attests, the “desire for increased self-determination is indeed a theme common to all three phases of the Jefferson story.”

Oregon Historical Quarterly | Spring 2017, 118:1

The Carolina Company: Identity and Isolation in a Southwestern Oregon Mountain Refuge

BY CHELSEA ROSE AND MARK AXEL TVESKOV
Spring 2017, 118:1

In the spring of 1872, members of the Carolina Company migrated from North Carolina to Oregon and formed the town of Powers, which is one of the most isolated areas in western Oregon.  According to Chelsea Rose and Mark Tveskov,” the homesteaders, like the Native Americans, made a life along the South Fork [Coquille River] that considered the region on its own terms,” and “they chose the place for its inherent qualities.” In 2010, the Coquille Indian Tribe and archaeologists from the Southern Oregon University Laboratory of Anthropology conducted work at sites associated with the Carolina Company – the Hayes family home site, and Mill Creek site that was home to the Rural post office. The archaeological work revealed remnants of the nineteenth-century settlement, which provides valuable information on Euro-American life along the South Fork.

Oregon Historical Quarterly | Spring 2017, 118:1

A “Most Disastrous Affair”: The Battle of Hungry Hill, Historical Memory, and the Rogue River War

BY MARK AXEL TVESKOV
Spring 2017, 118:1

The Battle of Hungry Hill, fought on October 31 and November 1, 1855, ended in a “humiliating defeat for a fragile coalition of U.S. Army dragoons and several companies of citizen volunteers” against the Takelma. In this research article, Mark Tveskov describes how Euro-American accounts of the battle “overlooked the American defeat,” “veterans of the battle minimized the defeat and desertion in their memoirs, sometimes mythologizing the battle to the point of turning it into a victory,” and “the battle was lost to the larger historical narrative of the American West.” In September 2012, a team of archaeologists and scholars discovered the battle site, and their research points to a history that is sometimes at odds with long-standing portrayals of the Battle of Hungry Hill.

Winter 2016 Oregon Historical Quarterly Cover

A Conversation with Geoff Wexler: Photography and the Davies Family Research Library Collections

By Jennifer Strayer
Winter 2016, 117:4

Jennifer Strayer interviewed the Oregon Historical Society’s former Library Director Geoff Wexler about his work to “provide greater visibility for archival collections, not only through the traditional venues of library reading rooms but also through innovative exhibits that ease the tension between art and duration, history and imagination.” In this Oregon Voices piece, Wexler discusses the Oregon Historical Society’s photograph collection, which “is estimated to be around six to seven million images” in collections ranging from studio portraits to landscape photography to newer acquisitions of two large African American collections. OHS is currently working on a new digital infrastructure that will greatly expand online access to its archival images, a collection that has been built by “many years of labor of previous staff members,” and “without their work, OHS would not hold one of the premier photography collections in the United States.”

Winter 2016 Oregon Historical Quarterly Cover

The Unwanted Sailor: Exclusions of Black Sailors in the Pacific Northwest and the Atlantic Southeast

BY JACKI HEDLUND TYLER
Winter 2016, 117:4

Jacki Hedlund Tyler, a recipient of the 2014 Donald J. Sterling, Jr., Graduate Research Fellowship in Pacific Northwest History, documents little-known Pacific Northwest sailor laws and their role in racial oppression in Oregon. Tyler compares Oregon’s early black sailor laws, beginning prior to the Civil War and continuing past statehood in 1859, with Negro Seaman Acts of slave-holding states in the Atlantic Southeast. On both coasts the laws helped “legitimize claims of authority and ownership made by white inhabitants over non-white populations” and were “linked to debates over the institution of slavery; the desire to regulate maritime trade; and efforts to prohibit the spread of ‘contagion’ in the form of racial hostilities.” This research article is an important addition to the history of black American sailors during the nineteenth century.

Winter 2016 Oregon Historical Quarterly Cover

The Making of Seaside’s “Indian Place”: Contested and Enduring Native Spaces on the Nineteenth Century Oregon Coast

BY DOUGLAS DEUR
WINTER 2016, 117:4

During the mid nineteenth century, non-Native settlement and activities disrupted and changed historic Chinook and Clatsop communities at the mouth of the Columbia River. Indian Place in what would be Seaside, Oregon, became home to a number of displaced peoples and an enclave where “the living gathered with the remains of the dead,” for “modest protection from the apocalyptic changes that so radically disrupted tribal lands, lives, and worldviews.” Douglas Deur documents tribal migration to the Indian Place during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and calls attention to many of its significant early residents. Transitional communities such as Indian Place, Deur attests, “defined the nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Native experience in northwestern Oregon and beyond.” While the Indian Place no longer exists, it remains an “important [conduit] for tribal cultural knowledge, values, and practices that endure today.”

Winter 2016 Oregon Historical Quarterly Cover

The Malheur Occupation and the Problem with History

BY WILLIAM G. ROBBINS
WINTER 2016, 117:4

In this essay, William G. Robbins reflects on the 2016 armed occupation of the Malheur Wildlife Refuge in Harney County through the lens of land ownership history in Oregon. The occupiers, Robbins argues, “raised timeworn historical issues regarding the federal estate in the American West: access to and use of land, the legal boundaries between public and private ownership, and the constitutional questions involved.” Oregon is one of twelve public-land states, with 52.9 percent of its land is under federal jurisdiction, and “many residents feel excluded from decision-making.” Robbins asserts, however, that “states have been intimately associated with federal initiatives from the beginning,” and the Malheur occupiers’ motivations for privatization of public land in Oregon based on a “misconstrued history.”

OHQ 117:3 Fall 2016

The National Historic Preservation Act at Fifty: How a Wide-Ranging Federal-State Partnership Made its Mark on Oregon

BY ELISABETH WALTON POTTER
Fall 2016, 117:3

Since the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) was signed into law in 1966, its “benefit to the nation has been far-reaching.” In this introductory essay to a special section celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the NHPA, Elisabeth Potter explores how historic preservation incentives were adopted and advanced in Oregon. The NHPA established a nationwide framework for cultural resource management that is used by individual states to set preservation priorities. Oregon, for example, is notable for Goal 5 of Senate Bill 100, an early land-use law requiring comprehensive planning to include provisions for protecting historic resources. That law greatly expanded state inventories of historic resources until it was amended in 1995. Although Oregon’s early historic preservation programs under the NHPA were productive, Potter suggests that “some of the most apparent challenges ahead for Oregon preservationists boil down to counteracting erosion of protective measures… and expanding state and local incentives for investment.”

OHQ 117:3 Fall 2016

Big Red: The Crane Shed, Community Identity, and Historic Preservation in Bend

BY KELLY CANNON-MILLER
Fall 2016, 117:3

Kelly Cannon-Miller, Executive Director of the Deschutes County Historical Society, examines the fate of “Big Red,” or the Brooks-Scanlon Crane Shed building (demolished in 2004), and historic preservation in Bend, Oregon. Constructed in 1937, the crane shed stood prominently in Bend’s mill district, representing the city’s origins as a lumber town. Beginning in 1993, a confluence of events jeopardized Big Red’s existence — the mill closed, Bend became a popular destination for retirement and outdoor enthusiasts, and the district was rezoned and purchased for redevelopment. Even though the crane shed was a significant remnant of Bend’s past, denying a demolition permit was seen by some as a government intrusion on private property rights. As Cannon-Miller describes, “the story of how the community debated the shed’s value reveals the complexities and pitfalls that exist in balancing the goals of the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) with owners’ rights and with local and state land-use regulations.”

OHQ 117:3 Fall 2016

A Look Back at Oregon’s Future with Style, Space and Structure

BY CHRISTINE CURRAN
Fall 2016, 117:3

In this review essay, Oregon’s Deputy State Historic Preservation Officer Christine Curran describes the importance of Space, Style and Structure: Building in Northwest America, a bicentennial commemorative study published by the Oregon Historical Society. Containing over one thousand images of the built environment in the Pacific Northwest, the two-volume book of essays is extensive in scope, providing analysis of both past and then-contemporary projects — some of which had yet to be constructed. While “Style, Space and Structure was conceived as a dispassionate planning tool, it is unapologetic about its preservation bias....without resorting to self-indulgent nostalgia.” Curran credits the book with providing contexts for conserving the region’s built environment, including resources of the recent past, while helping us all “understand that the past is a moving target.”

OHQ 117:3 Fall 2016

Significant Events in the Historic Preservation Movement in Oregon

COMPILED BY ELISABETH POTTER
Fall 2016, 117:3

In this extensive timeline, Elisabeth Potter documents significant historic preservation events in Oregon, which range from the founding of the Oregon Historical Society in 1898 through recent historic preservation court rulings in 2016. Potter was an original staff member of the Oregon State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO) and served the program until she retired in 1998. Her breadth of knowledge and experience is reflected in this detailed account of national, state, and local historic preservation initiatives and provisions that have impacted Oregon’s landscape.

OHQ 117:3 Fall 2016

The Persistence and Characteristics of Chinook Salmon Migrations to the Upper Klamath River Prior to Exclusion by Dams

By John B. Hamilton, Dennis W. Rondorf, William R. Tinniswood, Ryan J. Leary, Tim Mayer, Charleen Gavette, and Lynne A. Casal
Fall 2016, 117:3

In this research article, John Hamilton and his co-authors present extensive new research and information gathered since a 2005 publication on the historical evidence of anadromomous fish distribution in the Upper Klamath River watershed. Using historical accounts from early explorers and ethnographers to early-twentieth-century photographs, newspaper accounts, and government reports, the authors provide a more complete record of past salmon migrations. The updated record “substantiate[s] the historical persistence of salmon, their migration characteristics, and the broad population baseline that will be key to future commercial, recreational, and Tribal fisheries in the Klamath River and beyond.” During a time when salmon restoration plans are being considered in the region, the historical record can serve as guidance to once again establish diverse and thriving populations.

Summer 2016 Oregon Historical Quarterly Cover

Changing the Debate: A Twentieth-Century History of People with Disabilities, Their Families, and Genetic Counseling

BY ADAM TURNER
Summer 2016, 117:2

The first People First convention, held in Oregon in 1974, was a key moment in the beginning of the self advocacy movement of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (ID/D) in the United States. The self advocacy movement grew in part out of the parent advocacy movement, which had been lobbying for better residential, educational, and training programs for people I/DD since the 1940s. The parent advocacy movement gained momentum at the same that a new field, genetic counseling, began to expand in labs and medical centers. Although the parent advocacy movement had only occasional interaction with the fields of genetics and genetic counseling until after the 1980s, both groups addressed similar questions around disability and, in their early decades, shared an interest in prevention.

Summer 2016 Oregon Historical Quarterly Cover

Health and Well-being: Federal Indian Policy, Klamath Women, and Childbirth

by Christin Hancock
Summer 2016, 117:2

Klamath women's health and experiences of pregnancy and childbirth have been dramatically transformed by shifting federal Indian policies that have structured their lives form the nineteenth-century institution of the reservation through the mid-twentieth-century period of termination. Federal policies that may initially appear disconnected from health and health care have devastated the Klamath people’s overall “well-being” in two ways. Federal policies, beginning with the reservation system but also including the later policy of termination, disrupted traditional Klamath birth practices, replacing them with the western medical model of care. After disrupting those traditions, the federal government repeatedly failed to provide both funding for and access to any adequate level of western health care. These continuous failures reflect the ongoing nature of settler colonialism and its impact on Klamath women's birthing experiences.

Summer 2016 Oregon Historical Quarterly Cover

Adventures in Family Limitation

WRITTEN BY KHRIS SODEN AND MICHAEL HELQUIST
DRAWN BY KHRIS SODEN
Summer 2016, 117:2

This graphic short story uses visual narrative to depict events that occurred during the 1916 visit to Portland, Oregon by birth control advocate Margaret Sanger. It relies on evidence and imagination to portray the lectures, arrests, and rally supporting Sanger. Graphic nonfiction can enhance historical events and engage readers with visual information that is more evocative and nuanced than narrative text alone.

Summer 2016 Oregon Historical Quarterly Cover

"Lewd, Obscene and Indecent": The 1916 Portland Edition of Family Limitation

BY MICHAEL HELQUIST
Summer 2016, 117:2

Margaret Sanger's birth control pamphlet Family Limitation significantly shaped American thought, values, and behavior. In the early decades of the twentieth century, the content and distribution of Family Limitation roiled communities throughout the United States. Public officials of Portland, Oregon, first engaged in the controversy when Margaret Sanger visited the city in June 1916. Other accounts have detailed Sanger's troubles in Portland — the only city on her tour to place her behind bars. But the 1916 local edition of Family Limitation (revised by Marie Equi) has not previously been analyzed or compared with editions that preceded or followed it. The Portland version was distinctive for a strong marketing appeal to union members that reflected the intersection of labor organizing and advocacy for reproductive rights. The pamphlet also directed specific advice to men, deleted specific mention of abortion, and criticized local authorities and the medical profession.

Oregon Historical Quarterly | Spring 2016, 117:1

The Pictorial Maps of Fred A. Routledge

BY CRAIG CLINTON
Spring 2016, 117:1

In this heavily illustrated research article, Craig Clinton documents Fred A. Routledge's career as a commercial artist through a series of pictorial maps from the 1890s through 1930s. Although "personal details relating to Routledge's life and career are quite scarce," Clinton examines a range of illustrations to tell a story of his career from early street-level illustrations for the West Shore magazine to later birds-eye views of the Pacific Northwest. Routledge's maps not only documented existing landscapes, but also his "enduring engagement with the natural world and his belief in the transformative potential of humankind." The "quality of his pictorial map," explains Clinton, "was to become a significant feature of commercial travel cartography in the 1930s and beyond."

Oregon Historical Quarterly | Winter 2015, 116:4

Assembling a Life: James L. Wasson and Old Portland Hardware

by Greta Smith
Winter 2015, 116:4

The contents of an old steamer trunk found in the basement of a Portland home were on display in a summer 2015 exhibit at the Old Portland Hardware (OPH). “What, at first glance appeared to be a ‘random collection of vintage ephemera from the 20s and 30s’,” told the story of James L. Wasson’s life in Portland’s Albina area from the 1920s through 1980. Wasson was a soldier during the Mexican Revolution and World War I and worked as a mechanic and automobile electrician. His passion for photography is well documented throughout the trunk’s collection, including self-portraits, negatives of portraits of Portland’s African American community members, a receipt for professional photography equipment, and numerous photographs of his wife Marcelita. OPH donated the collection to Portland State University Library Special Collections, where it is open to the public for research.

Oregon Historical Quarterly | Winter 2015, 116:4

Comrade Johns: Oregon's Socialist Presidential Candidate

BY NATE PEDERSEN AND JEFFREY JOHNSON
Winter 2015, 116:4

In 1924, Frank T. Johns was nominated as the Socialist Labor Party's (SLP) candidate for president of the United States. Known as "Comrade Johns" by fellow SLP party members, Johns became interested in socialist industrial unionism as a young mail carrier and became an outspoken proponent of SLP principles. During his 1924 presidential run, Johns won only 0.1 percent of the national popular vote, but the SLP was thrilled by his sincere "dedication to his party's principles." Johns became the party's candidate for president again in 1928, but died during a campaign speech while attempting to rescue a drowning boy from the Descutes River. "Socialism in the century's first two decades was viable political philosophy," the authors explain, and Johns's short political career "offers documentation of the brief but important SLP moment both nationally and in Oregon."

Oregon Historical Quarterly | Winter 2015, 116:4

Revisiting Rajneeshpuram: Oregon's Largest Utopian Community as Western History

BY CARL ABBOTT
WINTER 2015, 116:4

Between 1981 and 1985, the intentional community of Rajneeshpuram near Antelope, Oregon, hosted up to 15,000 followers of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, a spiritual leader from Pune, India. In this essay, Carl Abbott examines the rise and fall of Rajneeshpuram within the context of western history, which "centers on the processes of migration, settlement, displacement, and rearrangement." Drawing parallels to earlier religious closed communities, such nineteenth century Mormon settlements, Abbott describes how Rajneeshees fit into the "overarching storylines of frontier utopias and the…narrative of settler colonialism." Unlike Mormon communities, however, Abbott concludes that Rajneeshpuram ultimately failed because its leaders were not willing to compromise community goals when faced with larger state regulatory systems.

Oregon Historical Quarterly Fall 2015

Promoting Tourism and Development at Crater Lake: The Art of Grace Russell Fountain and Mabel Russell Lowther

BY GAIL E. EVANS
Fall 2015, 116:3

Grace Russell Fountain and Mabel Russell Lowther were among a handful of women artists in the Pacific Northwest who moved into the professional sphere at the turn of the twentieth century, and whose work contributed to the promotion and protection of Crater Lake. Fountain and Russell both sought opportunities with Southern Pacific Railroad, which promoted tourist destinations along their new rail corridors with landscape art of the American West. "During their lifetimes, the artwork of Grace Russell Fountain and Mable Russell Lowther made their names almost synonymous with Crater Lake." Their artistry "shaped public perceptions of Crater Lake and played an important visual role in promoting [its] scenic beauty…and designation as a national park."

Oregon Historical Quarterly Fall 2015

"This is where we want to stay": Tejanos and Latino Community Building in Washington County

by Luke Sprunger
Fall 2015, 116:3

by Luke Sprunger During the mid 1960s, Latino families seeking better working conditions and financial prospects began settling in Washington County, Oregon. Many early Tejano (Texas ethnic Mexicans) families abandoned seasonal migrant work to settle permanently in the area and established a strong network of community support systems that helped new arrivals seek healthcare, combat discrimination, and retain cultural identity. Luke Sprunger documents those early community-building efforts through excerpted interviews with five narrators who moved to Washington County during the 1960s. "Their stories give voice to various phases of community growth, activism, and intra-ethnic relations that developed among county Latinos," and "their efforts and initiatives have aided newly arriving Latinos to Washington County and encouraged respect for and among the county's Latino residents."

Summer 2015 OHQ Cover

Hitting the Trail: Live Displays of Native American, Filipino, and Japanese People at the Portland World's Fair

BY EMILY TRAFFORD
Summer 2015, 116:2

The Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition—held in Portland, Oregon, between June 1 and October 15, 1905—garnered over one and a half million visits, paying tribute to the nation's westward expansion and new commercial and immigration ties to Asia. At the world's fair, visitors experienced a series of live-display concessions that included Native Americans, Filipino, and Japanese performers dressed in costume and participating in "sensational ceremonies." Emily Trafford explores those live displays and argues that they "were important cultural arenas for the perpetuation and rehearsal of racism." She explains: "Rather than providing an object and definitive lesson on a particular nation or populace, the concessions worked together to create a site at which white supremacy could be exercised in its various and changeable forms."

Summer 2015 OHQ Cover

“To the World!!”: The Story Behind the Vitriol

BY STAFFORD HAZELETT
Summer 2015, 116:2

Featuring a broadside recently acquired by the Oregon Historical Society, Stafford Hazelett documents an eight-month discussion —held primarily in the editorial pages of the Oregon Spectator —on the controversial 1846 emigration by way of the Southern Route (Applegate Trail). The increasingly rancorous discussion migrated from the paper to private letters between Jesse Quinn Thornton and James Nesmith, both early emigrants to Oregon, and finally ended with a challenge to a duel. Although shots were never fired, “debates over the route have continued in published histories since 1847… about what actually happened and who or what was to blame.” Hazelett explains that this primary document “reminds us that returning to the past with fresh eyes is always a worthwhile endeavor.”

Summer 2015 OHQ Cover

“We were nothing but rust”: Beatrice Green Marshall’s Wartime Experience

BY MELISSA CORNELIUS LANG
Summer 2015, 116:2

Beatrice Green Marshall arrived in Portland, Oregon, in 1942 to work in the Kaiser Shipyards. Prior to arriving in Oregon, Marshall trained at the National Youth Administration to become a skilled machinist. Instead of finding work in Portland for which she was trained, Marshall was assigned to unskilled, dirty labor in the hull of boats scraping rust. Marshall explained: “There were just certain jobs Negroes were not allowed to hold, and the machine shop was one of them.” In this Oregon Voices piece, Melissa Lang introduces Marshall’s story as one “full of frustration, disappointment, and confusion.” Her World War II experience “offers a better understanding of the complexities of experiences along stories of triumph.”

Summer 2015 OHQ Cover

“Go into the yard as a worker, not as a woman”: Oregon Women During World War II, a Digital Exhibit on the Oregon History Project

BY AMY E. PLATT
Summer 2015, 116:2

“World War II blurred the distinction between women who had to work and women who wanted to work,” and over one hundred thousand joined the Oregon workforce in shipyards, chemical depots, as pilots, and even as spies. In this Exhibit Feature, Amy Platt highlights those stories featured in a digital exhibit, Oregon, WWII, Women, and Work, curated by the Oregon Historical Society (OHS) Research Library. The exhibit draws from over 200 records, including letters, photographs, and scrapbooks, documenting women's roles during the war. Each historical record is linked to scholarship published on The Oregon Encyclopedia. Readers can access the full digital exhibit online at the Oregon History Project.

Oregon Historical Quarterly | Spring 2015, 116:1

"Criminal Operations": The First Fifty Years of Abortion Trials in Portland, Oregon

BY BY MICHAEL HELQUIST
SPRING 2015, 116:1

Winner of the 2016 Joel Palmer Award. Although Oregon adopted its first anti-abortion law in 1854, Portland's first prosecution of a "criminal operation" (abortion) did not occur for nearly twenty years. The Oregonian coverage of abortion trials from 1870 to 1920 reveals many obstacles prosecutors faced during that time, including lack of sufficient evidence and ambiguities in the state's anti- abortion law. Through case studies and data collected from Oregonian articles during that time period, Michael Helquist explores Portland's early abortion trials that highlight "the nuanced and disparate reactions of physicians who found themselves on the front lines of abortion services, policies, and enforcement." Helquist argues that "an understanding of the conflicts over reproductive policy [is] as important to women's and the nation's history as the struggle to achieve woman suffrage and other rights of citizenship."

Oregon Historical Quarterly | Spring 2015, 116:1

“The Job was Big, but the Man Doing it was Bigger”: The Forgotten Role of Thomas B. Watters in Klamath Termination, 1953 – 1958

BY MATTHEW VILLENEUVE
Spring 2015, 116:1

Matthew Villeneuve argues that “much of the history of Klamath termination can be understood as a story that hinged on whose voices were the loudest, whose voices decision makers believed spoke on behalf of others, and whose voices were silenced entirely.” In 1955, Thomas B. Watters became a Management Specialist charged with overseeing the Tribes’ separation from the federal government and, as such, his voice was disproportionately loud. Rather than use his position to silence Klamath concerns, however, he joined calls to Congress to revise the terms of the Tribes’ separation. Studying Watters’s role “offers compelling support for the understanding of termination as a program not of emancipation but of abandonment.”

Oregon Historical Quarterly | Spring 2015, 116:1

Western Landscape Photography: Then and Now

by Rachel McLean Sailor
Spring 2015, 116:1

Rachel McLean Sailor explores the history of photography and its role in place-making in the West, while engaging examples of contemporary photography that "can respond anew to a singular moment, and a singular place, while simultaneously encompassing the deep history of its subject matter . . . medium, and the cultural history of all who have attempted such representations in the past." Readers are guided through a number of photographs from the past as well as contemporary examples from the Oregon Historical Society's exhibit, Place: Framing the Oregon Landscape. This exhibit essay touches "on the many ways that the artists in this exhibit are responding not only to place, but also to the histories of landscape . . . and how photographic styles and conceptual approaches have rapidly transformed in America from the 1840s to today."

Oregon Historical Quarterly | Winter 2014, 115:4

Planning for a Productive Paradise: Tom McCall and the Conservationist Tale of Oregon Land-Use Policy

by Laura Jane Gifford
Winter 2014, 115:4

Governor Thomas Lawson McCall is remembered by many as a larger-than-life figure who made a mark on the Oregon landscape with his strong land-use planning legislation. Laura Jane Gifford explores that legacy from a new angle through an argument that McCall's vision was tied "to the Republican Party politics of the Progressive Era…. emphasiz[ing] wise use and careful planning to generate progress in place of mere growth." Gifford documents how McCall successfully implement land-use policies in Oregon that ultimately failed nationally.

Oregon Historical Quarterly | Winter 2014, 115:4

Klamath Armory and Auditorium: Klamath County Museum's "Biggest and Most Important Artifact"

By Judith Hassen
Winter 2014, 115:4

Since 1935, the building that now houses the Klamath County Museum (formerly the Klamath County Armory and Auditorium) has served as a gathering space in Klamath Falls, Oregon. Originally constructed with Public Works Administration (PWA) as a drill and storage space for Oregon National Guard's Battery D of the 249th Coast Artillery, the Klamath County Armory and Auditorium also provided a large space for public gatherings, such as sporting events, circuses, auto shows, and concerts. In 2011, the building was listed in the National Register of Historic Places, recognizing it as Klamath Museum's "biggest and most important artifact."

Oregon Historical Quarterly | Winter 2014, 115:4

“Union for the Sake of the Union:” The Selection of Joseph Lane as Acting President of the United States

BY SI SHEPPARD
Winter 2014; 115:4

The 1860 presidential election was held during a time of turmoil, with the nation divided over the issue of slavery. "The conflicted loyalties of the American citizen body were reflected in the fractured partisan rivalries of the presidential election of 1860," dividing the Democratic Party into two factions. Si Sheppard explores the Democratic Party's "deliberate attempt to spike the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860 by denying him the Electoral College votes" and argues that its attempt was the closest chance Oregon has had to see one of its own —Sen. Joseph Lane, a southern sympathizer —as President of the United States.

Fall 2014 OHQ Cover

Natives and Pioneers: Death and the Settling and Unsettling of Oregon

BY MATTHEW DENNIS
Fall 2014, 115:3

Organizers of the Oregon Historical Society's November 2013 symposium, "Death and the Settling and Unsettling of Oregon," sought to assess the role of death Oregon's history. "Death is a serious subject," co-editor Matthew Dennis explains, and "for Native Oregonians, as well as for newcomers, the American settlement of Oregon proved profoundly unsettling." Focusing on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the symposium and articles in this special issue of the Oregon Historical Quarterly explore the "so-called settlement of the Oregon Territory by white pioneers" and the devastating unsettlement" of Natives. Dennis also suggests opportunities to examine history beyond the scope of the symposium.

Fall 2014 OHQ Cover

Stealing from the Dead: Scientists, Settlers, and Indian Burial Sites in Early-Nineteenth-Century Oregon

by Wendi A. Lindquist
Fall 2014, 115:3

In 1835, Hudson’s Bay Company physician Meredith Gairdner sent his most valued specimen to physician and naturalist John Richardson — Chinook leader Chief Comcomly’s skull. As the early nineteenth century practice of phrenology emerged, scientists sought skulls to measure and examine for common traits that might lead to an eventual cultural hierarchy. Many were intrigued by Native head shaping practices and were emboldened to rob gravesites in the name of science and research. Lindquist concludes that, “among other things… [their] research demonstrated that Natives lacked the innate ability to assimilate into American society, providing many nineteenth-century whites with the justification they needed to mistreat Indians.” Euro-Americans eventually saw Native burial sites as places to experience remnants of what they considered a dying race.

Fall 2014 OHQ Cover

Death and Oregon’s Settler Generation: Connecting Parricide, Agricultural Decline, and Dying Pioneers at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

by Peter Boag
Fall 2014, 115:3

Loyd Montgomery murdered his parents and a visiting neighbor in 1895 during a rural depression that greatly impacted Linn County’s local economy and marked a shift from agrarian ways of life. The Montgomerys belonged to a branch of the region’s most notable pioneers, and their death coincided with the reality that a generation of early Oregon pioneers that was quickly passing. Memorializing pioneers became increasingly popular in the late nineteenth century, with statewide and local organizations hosting annual reunions that focused on celebrating hardship overcome by perseverance. In this article, Boag “connects parricide, depression, and celebration,” with the common theme of death “in a triangulation of cause, effect, and remembrance that provided meaning to how a large number of Oregonians experienced the complicated transition to the twentieth century.”

Fall 2014 OHQ Cover

Four Deaths: The Near Destruction of Western Oregon Tribes and Native Lifeways, Removal to the Reservation, and Erasure from History

BY DAVID G. LEWIS
Fall 2014, 115:3

Whether physical, cultural, legal, or in scholarship, death has been part Western Oregon tribes' lives since contact with newcomers. Yet, Native people have survived. This shared tribal legacy, however, is still unknown to many people throughout the state, and according to Lewis, "such historical ignorance is another kind of death - one marked by both myth and silence." He shares stories of his ancestors' death experiences through removal, assimilation, and termination. As tribal historian for the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, Lewis works to ensure that Native voices are heard in order to "produce and interpret history that continue[s] to develop and will result in a better history for all Oregonians."

Summer 2014 OHQ Cover

The Allure of Lincoln: Using Material Culture to Complicate Shared Memories

by Brian J. Carter with Amy E. Platt
Summer 2014, 115:2

The Oregon Historical Society's exhibit 2 Years, 1 Month: Lincoln's Legacy brings together rare documents and artifacts that utilize the allure of Abraham Lincoln while situating the national figure within a rich regional history. Museum Director Brian J. Carter explains that the exhibit creates "a space for exploration of stories surfaced by Lincoln's wake" and provides "an interpretive path that allows exhibit viewers to move from the evidence of history . . . through the monumental dilemmas of the era — war, slavery, families, and communities who coexisted with Lincoln." The exhibit essay includes images of OHS-owned artifacts and manuscript material displayed in the exhibit as well as contextual notes prepared by Amy Platt, Project Manager for the Oregon Encyclopedia and Oregon History Project,, all of which can also be accessed through the Civil War in Oregon page of the Oregon Encyclopedia (www.oregonencyclopedia.org).

Summer 2014 OHQ Cover

Oregon's Civil War: The Troubled Legacy of Emancipation in the Pacific Northwest

by Stacey L. Smith
Summer 2014, 115:2

When working with the Oregon Historical Society to create the exhibit 2 Years, 1 Month: Lincoln's Legacy, project historian Stacey Smith sought to answer a number of questions about Oregon's place in the Civil War. Drawing on themes from the exhibit and new scholarship on the Civil War in the American West, Smith reveals the Pacific Northwest's critical role in shaping Reconstruction policy and challenges "the myth that Civil War Oregonians were disengaged from the national struggle over slavery and civil rights." Smith describes Oregon as a multiracial society led exclusively by white men, noting that Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation forced the state's leaders to consider citizenship rights beyond just the black-white politics emphasized in most histories of the Civil War. Drawing the story into the 1870s, Smith shows how congressional representatives from Oregon played a prominent role in ensuring that African American enfranchisement did not extend to others, particularly Chinese-born immigrants.

Summer 2014 OHQ Cover

Extant Outdoor Garments in Oregon, 1880 to 1920: Historic Research Using Objects from Oregon's Historical Institutions

BY JENNIFER M. MOWER AND ELAINE L. PEDERSEN
Summer 2014, 115:2

From the 1880s to 1920s, increasing development in Oregon defined the lives of both rural and urban residents. Jennifer Mower and Elaine Pedersen examined that history through close study of ninety-eight garments from historical institutions across the state and consultation with numerous historical records, contemporary publications from the time period, and secondary sources. They suggest that garments, while often overlooked by historians as a resource for information about personal and social history, reveal the ways in which women in Oregon adapted to their changing environments, including new consumer-driven behaviors, modes of transportation, and means of commerce. Clothing and textiles are valuable resources that, when used with written and visual historic documents, can shed new light on local and regional history.

Spring 2014 OHQ Cover

“The Road that Won an Empire”: Commemoration, Commercialization, and the Promise of Auto Tourism at the “Top o’ Blue Mountains”

BY CHELSEA K. VAUGHN
Spring 2014, 115:1

On July 3, 1923, over 30,000 people — including President Warren G. Harding and First Lady Florence Harding — gathered in Meacham, Oregon, for a two-day celebration orchestrated by Walter E. Meacham, president of the Old Oregon Trail Association (OOTA). The purpose of the events was twofold: commemorating the eightieth anniversary of the first immigrant train to the Pacific Northwest and dedicating the Old Oregon Trail Highway. Over 5,000 cars arrived with the first day’s onlookers who travelled on a roadway that had once served wagon trains into the West. The first couple was symbolically adopted by the Cayuse, who presented the first lady with a blanket designed for the ceremony by the Pendleton Woolen Mills. Historian Chelsea Vaughn argues that the celebration combined commemoration with commercialization, signifying a shift in trends around historical memory of the settlement period. She further notes the importance of Native participation and outspokenness within what was essentially a celebration of their colonization.

Spring 2014 OHQ Cover

Women’s Lands in Southern Oregon: Jean Mountaingrove and Bethroot Gwynn Tell Their Stories

BY HEATHER BURMEISTER
Spring 2014, 115:1

Young women of the 1960s and 1970s countercultural revolution era were not only active in a wide range of social justice movements but also began organizing and advocating for women. A number of women during that time emerged as lesbians, finding a place for themselves in the back-to-the-land movement, another emerging subculture. Separating themselves from mainstream society, Jean Mountaingrove and Bethroot Gwynn created safe spaces for women to interact. Historian Heather Burmeister argues that the women’s experiences on their own lands and creation of published material helped create regional, national, and even global networks through which women could re-create themselves and construct and express their new identities through art, spirituality, and other forms of creative culture. Burmeister’s introduction is followed by edited selections from oral histories she conducted with Mountaingrove and Gwynn.

Spring 2014 OHQ Cover

Enforcing Oregon's State Alcohol Monopoly: Recollections from the 1950s

By Warren Niete, introduction by Rob Donnelly
Spring 2014, 115:1

Oregon was an early adopter of prohibition laws, banning alcohol four years before the 1920 Constitutional amendment. When prohibition ended in 1933, Oregon legislators passed the Liquor Control Act and the Oregon Liquor Control Commission (OLCC) to retain control over alcohol consumption, which generated much-needed revenue for the state. Despite state control over alcohol, bootleggers made sizeable profits and OLCC agents, such as Warren Niete, were tasked with stopping bootleg alcohol consumption with very few resources available. Niete's captivating recollection provides insight on OLCC law enforcement agents' challenges as they worked to regulate the sale and consumption of alcohol during the 1950s.

Spring 2014 OHQ Cover

Thompson’s Mills and the Lost Town of Boston: Oregon’s Newest State Heritage Site Celebrates Its Ten-Year Anniversary

BY KRISTINE DEACON
Spring 2014, 115:1

Thompson’s Mills, Oregon’s oldest water-powered grist mill, is located just east of Shedd in Linn County on the Calapooia River. The mill operated commercially for 146 years, and its owners adapted the mills to evolve with changing regional and national events. Milling began on the site in 1858, and through a dam system, the Calapooia River generated power for the mills until 1986. The Thompson’s Mills State Park is a unique resource for Oregon historians, containing artifacts that document the state’s technological, political, and social past. Journalist and park staff person Kristine Deacon traces the mills’ complete history, drawing out the significance of the historical record in the buildings and collections and narrating the personal, political, and economic impacts on the story with particular attention to the importance of water rights.

Winter 2013 OHQ Cover

“Our Vanishing Glaciers”: One Hundred Years of Glacier Retreat in the Three Sisters Area, Oregon Cascade Range

BY JIM E. O’CONNOR
Winter 2013, 114:4

In August 1910, thirty-nine members of the Mazamas Mountaineering Club ascended the peaks of the Three Sisters in central Oregon. While climbing, geologist Ira A. Williams photographed the surrounding scenery, including images of Collier Glacier. One hundred years later, U.S. Geological Survey research hydrologist Jim E. O’Connor matched those documented photographs with present day images — the result of which is a stunning lapse of glacial change in the Three Sister region. O’Connor asserts that “glaciers exist by the grace of climate,” and through a close examination of the history of the region’s glaciers, he provides an intriguing glimpse into the history of geological surveys and glacial studies in the Pacific Northwest, including their connection to significant scientific advances of the nineteenth century. The work of scientists and mountaineers who have monitored and recorded glacier changes for over a century allows us to see dramatic changes in a landscape that is especially sensitive to ongoing climate change.

Winter 2013 OHQ Cover

Special Section: “Summer of Citizenship”

By Eliza E. Canty-Jones, Marcela Mendoza, Andrew H. Fisher, and Kimberly Jensen
Winter 2013, 114:4

The Oregon Historical Society's 2013 “Summer of Citizenship” lecture series brought together ten of the region's top scholars and civic leaders to speak on various aspects of citizenship, seeking to inform public understanding and debate over citizenship rights and responsibilities with a wide variety of historical and contemporary perspectives. The three talks published in this issue of the Oregon Historical Quarterly are a sampling of that series, offered as both record of the public lectures and documentation of research in progress.

Fall 2013

Curiosity or Cure?: Chinese Medicine and American Orientalism in Progressive Era California and Oregon

BY TAMARA VENIT SHELTON
Fall 2013, Issue 114:3

Despite improved medicine and surgery techniques used by traditional doctors during the Progressive Era, many patients — particularly women —were drawn to “irregular” doctors. During the late 1890s, the American Medical Association launched an aggressive campaign against non-traditional doctors, finding in Chinese doctors and herbalists useful targets due to American Orientalist presumptions of racial inferiority. Drawing on advertisements, business cards, and promotional material produced by irregular doctors in California and Oregon, historian Tamara Venit Shelton argues that Chinese doctors and herbalists capitalized on their perceived exoticism and appropriated anti-Chinese stereotypes to forge ties with Euro-American and non-Chinese neighbors and patients — a devil’s bargain, as Chinese doctors limited themselves to the margins of American medicine.

Fall 2013

Project Dayshoot30: An Oregon Self-Portrait for the Digital Age

BY BRIAN BURK
Fall 2013, Issue 114:3

On July 15, 1983, ninety-two photographers captured images of Oregon between midnight and midnight for a venture named Project Dayshoot. The Oregon Historical Society invited the organizers of Project Dayshoot to create an exhibition for the society’s gallery, which evolved into a book titled One Average Day. Thirty years later, on the anniversary of the original Project Dayshoot, aspiring documentarian and graduate student Brian Burk organized Project Dayshoot30. This photo essay is a small slice of over 3,000 images gathered from 153 invited participants — including 33 of the original photographers — illustrating the vast diverseness of the state and that there is no single story of a day in Oregon life.

Summer 2013

Trudy Rice’s Story Nursing and Race in Oregon History

by Christin Hancock
Summer 2013, 114:2

After becoming a Registered Nurse (RN) in 1968, Trudy Rice joined the ranks of thousands of professional African American women whose jobs required not only knowledge and technical skill in their chosen areas but also the ability to effectively respond to racism and prejudice in the workplace. In an interview conducted and introduced by historian Christin Hancock, Rice tells the story of her family coming to Oregon during World War II; studying at Portland Community College and becoming an RN; working in schools, hospitals, and as an inspector for the State of Oregon; and being faced with racism and responding to it with education. Hancock’s introduction places the story in the context of national and state history, arguing for its significance in a variety of fields.

Summer 2013

What Would You Do?: If Heroes Were Not Welcome Home

BY LINDA TAMURA AND MARSHA TAKAYANAGI MATTHEWS
Summer 2013, 114:2

Japanese American units were heavily decorated during World War II and recently recognized with a Congressional Gold Medal, offering military service as their families and friends were incarcerated in camps by the federal government. After the war, many residents of Hood River, Oregon, discouraged Japanese American families and veterans from returning home. Historian Linda Tamura, who grew up in Hood River, and former Oregon Historical Society (OHS) Director of Museum Services Marsha Takayanagi Matthews are crafting an exhibit about that history to accompany a display of the Congressional Gold Medal at OHS in August and September 2013. The exhibit will ask visitors to consider how they would act in a similar situation.

Summer 2013

“well and favorably known”: Deciphering Chinese Merchant Status in the Immigration Office of Astoria, Oregon, 1900–1924

BY AARON COE
SUMMER 2013, 114:2

Chinese were restricted from coming to, working in, and traveling to and from the United States by a series of federal exclusion laws that began in 1862 and peaked in 1924. Historian Aaron Coe examines how federal officials enforced those laws in Astoria, Oregon, from 1900 to 1924 through careful review of the immigration files. He finds that the reputations of individual Chinese people and firms significantly affected how their applications to travel and return, or to bring family members, would be received by agents. Coe concludes that immigration agents implicitly categorized Chinese as in good, poor, or ambiguous standing, concluding that exploring the individual reputations of Chinese and their relationships with immigration officers is crucial to understanding the history of Chinese exclusion laws in the United States.

Spring 2013

Black and Blue: Police-Community Relations in Portland’s Albina District, 1964–1985

by Leanne C. Serbulo & Karen J. Gibson
Spring 2013, 114:1

As in many cities across America, the relationship between African Americans in Portland, Oregon, and the city police force was fraught with tension through the late twentieth century. Scholars Leanne Serbulo and Karen Gibson argue that Portland’s African Americans, who collectively made up less than ten percent of Portland residents and were segregated into neighborhoods including the Albina district, experienced police as figures of colonial oppression. The authors chronicle how, over two decades bordered by African Americans’ deaths at the hands of police, neighborhood activists attempted to reform the police department and met resistance. The authors conclude that transformation of the relationship between police and the black community could have been accomplished only through strong action by elected officials.

Spring 2013

Architecture of the Oregon State Capitol

BY WILLIAM F. WILLINGHAM
Spring 2013, 114:1

In 2013, the Oregon State Capitol celebrates its seventy-fifth anniversary as Oregon's seat of government. That building, the third incarnation of the Capitol, is unique due to architect Francis Keally's conscious decision to make it distinct among all other capitols. In a time when state seats of government were made to resemble the United States Capitol, Keally incorporated elements of what he called "Greek Moderne" but now is referred to as Art Deco into his blueprints. Architectural historian William F. Willingham reviews the building's key features - such as the flat-topped lantern in place of a traditional dome and the situating of Legislative chambers on the flanks to allow for natural lighting - that make the structure so exceptional.

Winter 2012

Bringing “good Jargon” to Light

by Henry Zenk
Winter 2012, 113:4

Drawing on the proficiency of native speakers of Chinuk Wawa, educators, and regional linguists, the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde published a Chinuk Wawa dictionary that both preserves the language and provides insight into the generational significance of its endurance. Linguist Henry Zenk relates his experience contributing to The New Chinuk Wawa Dictionary and describes the important familial relationships within the Grand Ronde community — past and present — that made the project possible.

Fall 2012

“What Shall Be Done with Her?”: Frances Fuller Victor Analyzes “The Woman Question” in Oregon

BY SHERI BARTLETT BROWNE
Fall 2012, 113:3

Sheri Bartlett Browne examines Frances Fuller Victor’s multifaceted contributions to the Oregon equal rights movement in the nineteenth century. Victor provided an intellectual foundation for women’s economic and political activism through her fiction and prose essays during the 1870s. She often wrote for Abigail Scott Duniway’s weekly newspaper, TheNew Northwest. Critiquing American gender norms, Victor argued forcefully that a deeply unequal social system condemned women to a subjugated status, eroding their socioeconomic and political opportunities and distorting their relationships with one another. Victor urged women to develop self-awareness and greater knowledge — to “investigate for themselves” — the intertwining roots of oppression in order to promote and achieve equal rights.

Fall 2012

Asian Women: Immigration and Citizenship in Oregon

BY PEGGY NAGAE
Fall 2012, 113:3

The influx of male Asian immigrants to Oregon beginning in the 1850s was encouraged by railroad, mining, and land developers looking for cheap labor. As immigrants settled more permanently in the region, however, anti-Asian sentiment took the form of exclusionary legislation and bureaucratic oppression, effectively denying first- and second-generation Asian residents the basic rights of citizenship. The effects of this repression were particularly devastating for Asian women, who were forced to negotiate the sexual bias and discrimination of their adopted home. Peggy Nagae examines how first- and second-generation Asian women in Oregon endured the stigma of sexual immorality during the anti-prostitution campaign by the state, the extraordinary lengths they went to in order to establish legitimacy in their marriages and residency statuses, and the legal battles they fought to gain rights as citizens of the United States..

Fall 2012

From Coverture to Supreme Court Justice: Women Lawyers and Judges in Oregon History

by Janice Dilg
Fall 2012, 113:3

In this detailed description of the U.S. District Court of Oregon Historical Society Oral History Collection, Janice Dilg offers a glimpse into the remarkable professional achievements in law by Oregon women. By outlining the decades of legal inequities directed toward women — and the organized activism they employed to dismantle those inequities — Dilg places women’s personal stories preserved in the collection within their historical context. Excerpts from interviews with women such as Norma Paulus, Mercedes Deiz, Helen Frye, and Kristine Olson not only provide insight into the particular obstacles women have faced in the male-dominated legal profession but also reveal the value of the oral history collection to further our understanding of the effect women have had on Oregon’s legal and legislative landscape.

Fall 2012

The Straight State of Oregon: Notes Toward Queering the History of the Past Century

BY JACQUELINE DIRKS
Fall 2012, 113:3

Jacqueline Dirks’s review of Margot Canady’s The Straight State: Sexuality and Citizenship in Twentieth Century America describes the comprehensive institutional manipulation by state and federal governments to control or “contain” the country’s homosexual populations. The bureaucratic effort to define and reward sexual conformity, among other methods, took the form of restrictive immigration policy, intrusive regulation of military enlistment and benefits distribution, and extreme punitive measures, including forced sterilization and castration. By privileging marriage and children within its bureaucratic functions and policies, the government effectively marginalized the rights of gays and lesbians into “anti-citizens,” denying them basic citizenship — a practice that continues today. Dirks expands on Canady’s premise and describes ways Oregon state laws and practices have both enforced and countered the national “straight state.”

Summer 2012

Ghadar, Historical Silences, and Notions of Belonging

by Johanna Ogden
Summer 2012, 113:2

Historian Johanna Ogden explores the often overlooked but critical role of Punjabi laborers of Oregon in forming the radical Indian nationalist Ghadar Party in 1913. She addresses the international, national, and local forces behind the Punjabis’ migration to the state and the particular conditions they encountered once there. Framed by a series of post-9/11 concerns about the targeting of Arabs, Muslims, and South Asians, this article explores not only historical and social constructions of “us” and “them,” citizen and non-citizen, but the experience of Punjabi migrant laborers in remote Astoria, Oregon, where hardened racial and national lines were seemingly loosened.

Summer 2012

Maxville Heritage Interpretive Center: Telling the Story of African Americans in Wallowa, Oregon

By Gwendolyn Trice
SUMMER 2012, 113:2

The town of Maxville was once a logging town in Wallowa County, Oregon. Many African American families came from the South and Midwest to work in the Bowman-Hicks logging industry in Maxville in the 1920s. When the logging operation collapsed in the 1930s, the town was dismantled and the town disappeared. In 2008, Gwendolyn Trice—the daughter of an African American Maxville logger, Lucky Trice—founded the Maxville Heritage Interpretive Center (MHIC) in Wallowa, Oregon, to recover the history of the logging community in Maxville. Today the MHIC is highly active in community life. The center hosts the Annual Maxville Gathering, maintains partnerships with regional universities, is developing a musical play about Maxville with Marv Ross, and continues to invigorate the tourism industry in Wallowa County.

Winter 2011

“Hop Fever” in the Willamette Valley: The Local and Global Roots of a Regional Specialty Crop

BY PETER A. KOPP
Winter 2011, 112:4

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, hops — a central ingredient in beer-making — were the most important specialty crop in the Willamette Valley. Farmers began planting the crop just after the Civil War, and success resulted from ideal environmental conditions, an established agricultural infrastructure that dated to the 1820s, new technologies including railroads, and unending cultural desires for beer. Oregon hops offered small farmers cash income and brewers near and far the spice of their beer. Historian Peter A. Kopp examines the environmental and cultural origins of the Willamette Valley hop industry, arguing that the specialty crop offered economic diversity and a strong sense of community for the region’s residents while at the same time connecting local agriculture to urban beer production as well as people and materials across the world.

Fall 2011

Building an Alternative: People’s Food Cooperative in Southeast Portland

by Marc D. Brown
Fall 2011, 112:3

People’s Food Store, now known as People’s Food Cooperative, opened in 1970 in a small southeast Portland building that had housed feed and grocery stores since 1911. Its business model — a collectively managed, cooperatively owned, natural-food store — reflected the anti-corporate attitude of its founding era. When People’s began, Portland hosted many cooperatively owned businesses, and some visionaries imagined a landscape filled with cooperatively owned businesses of all types. Although that vision has thus far failed to emerge, People’s continues working under the same business model, in the same neighborhood, forty-one years later. Marc D. Brown explores the history of People’s to provide a better understanding of the vision of those who advocated for community based businesses and of how People’s managed to survive where many other cooperatives founded at the same time did not.

Fall 2011

The Trouble with Cross-Dressers: Researching and Writing the History of Sexual and Gender Transgressiveness in the Nineteenth-Century American West

BY PETER BOAG
Fall 2011, 112:3

Historian Peter Boag reflects on the methodological, linguistic, and historiographical difficulties, limitations, and breakthroughs he experienced while researching and writing his bookRe-Dressing America’s Frontier Past(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011). He also describes the ways journalists and dime novel authors, as well as historians and scientists, expunged from the story of the Old West the troubling gender and sexual identities associated with cross-dressing, as those story-tellers went about creating a myth of a wholly heterosexual American frontier at the turn of the twentieth century.

Summer 2011

Soccer in the Seventies: Chris Dangerfield and the Original Portland Timbers

by Michael Orr and Morgen Young
Summer 2011, 112:2

In the spring of 1975, fourteen British soccer players moved to Oregon and joined the Portland Timbers in the North American Soccer League. Among them was Chris Dangerfield, a nineteen-year-old forward from the Birmingham area. During his two seasons with the Timbers, Dangerfield was an important players on the field and a wide-eyed observer of American and Oregonian life off it. In September 2010, he spoke with FC Media about his experiences at the infancy of professional soccer in Portland and the impact of those two years on his career and life.

Summer 2011

On the Road with Rutherford B. Hayes: Oregon’s First Presidential Visit, 1880

BY KRISTINE DEACON
Summer 2011, 112:2

In this city-by-city retracing of Hayes’s visit, from Ashland to Astoria, author Kristine Deacon examines the symbolic power and prestige of the presidency, which Hayes used as a tool for restoring national harmony to a country still shattered after the end of the Civil War. Deacon describes Hayes’s redirection of the federal government’s Indian policy, examines the metamorphosis of presidential travel, and details how Hayes, who was accompanied by Commander of the Army General William T. Sherman, used the trip as a basis for reorganizing the U.S. Army and for advocating for greater federal involvement in stabilizing the Columbia River bar.

Spring 2011

A Lovely but Unpredictable River: Frances Fuller Victor's Early Life and Writing

by Sheri Bartlett Browne
SPRING 2011, 112:1

Frances Fuller Victor (1826–1902) was a significant historian of Oregon and the Far West in the late nineteenth century. She already was a successful author before making her home in Oregon in 1864. Examining Victor’s poetry, essays, and travel accounts written as a young woman, historian Sheri Bartlett Browne makes two compelling claims: Victor’s life and writing must be placed within a larger cultural and historical context of American women’s literary contributions; and Victor’s early works form an important intellectual bridge to her later perceptive analyses of Oregon and the West.

Spring 2011

Read You Mutt! The Life and Times of Tom Burns, The Most Arrested Man in Portland

BY PETER SLEETH
Spring 2011, 112:1

Tom Burns trooped into Portland in 1905 with a chip on his shoulder and a pile-driving desire to right social wrongs. Whether you called him a socialist, anarchist, or Roosevelt Democrat, Burns believed he had one mission in life: To ensure that everyone had enough before anyone had too much. Portland writer and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Peter Sleeth provides the most complete biography of Burns, who has made appearances in numerous historians’ works. Drawing on extensive newspaper and archival research, as well as personal memory and interviews, Sleeth demonstrates connections between Burns’s childhood in the Dickensian tenements of Liverpool, England, and his intellectual integrity and free speech fights and illustrates how Burns evolved from street-fighting activist into the type of middle-class radical that helped shape the city’s politics and mores from 1905 to 1957.

Spring 2011

The Old Wasco County Courthouse: Still Making History after 152 Years

by Karl Vercouteren
Spring 2011, 112:1

History-minded citizens of The Dalles rescued the 1859 Original Wasco County Courthouse in the mid 1970s. Karl Vercouteren tells how the courthouse preservation group saved a building that played a major role in Eastern Oregon’s history and how they generate and preserve history through an annual forum that features local and regional historians. The collection of recordings of those speakers over a thirty-year period constitutes a treasury of resources that the Original Courthouse is making available to the public.

Spring 2011

Silver Falls State Park and the Early Environmental Movement

BY Zeb Larson
Spring 2011, 112:1

Environmentalism in the early twentieth century began with two movements: conservation and preservation. Conservation stressed the wise use of limited resources, while preservationists tried to protect wilderness areas from commercial developments. At the turn of the century, these two movements seemed to be in direct opposition to each other. Nevertheless, historian Zeb Larson argues, the values from both movements are evident in the creation of Silver Falls State Park, much of which was constructed as make-work projects during the Great Depression. Through restoring landscapes damaged by fire and logging, creating structures that blend with the landscape, and building youth camps, the park’s designers and managers drew on beliefs from both environmental ideologies as well as the aesthetics of the Arts and Crafts movement. Today, Silver Falls is the largest state park in Oregon.

Oregon Historical Quarterly | Fall 2010, 111:3

“We’re going to defend ourselves” The Portland Chapter of the Black Panther Party and the Local Media Response

by Jules Boykoff and Martha Gies
Fall 2010, 111:3

The Portland chapter of the Black Panthers began in 1969, shortly after the organization was founded in Oakland, California, and proceeded to utilize the methods and tenants of the growing Black Panther movement to facilitate the advancement and protection of Portland’s African-American community. Martha Gies and Jules Boykoff analyze how the Portland chapter and its leaders were portrayed by the major local newspapers, the Oregonian and the Oregon Journal. They draw on detailed emerging media theory, primary media sources from the era (1969–1979), and interviews with prominent members of the Portland chapter (Kent Ford and Percy Hampton) to document and examine the Portland chapter’s community survival programs, confrontations between officials and activists, and the media response to both.

Oregon Historical Quarterly | Summer 2010, 111:2

Betwixt and Between the Official Story: Tracing the History and Memory of a Family of French-Indian Ancestry in the Pacific Northwest

by Melinda Marie Jetté
Summer 2010, 111:2

Historian Melinda Marie Jetté utilizes multiple approaches — genealogical research, oral history, and investigation of archival collections — to discuss the assimilation of her French-Indian ancestry into the larger American experience. She reveals a pioneering Oregon family whose narrative overlaps with the more widely known public narratives of emigrant arrival, the inter-cultural fur trade, and the eventual non-Native dominance of society in the Pacific Northwest. Jette's discussion offers insights into the ways family histories may provide counter narratives that can broaden our understanding of the historical Oregon experience and its continuing impact today and makes suggestions about the interrelationship among history, memory, and identity.

Oregon Historical Quarterly | Spring 2010, 111:1

Desegregation and Multiculturalism in the Portland Public Schools

by Ethan Johnson and Felicia Williams
Spring 2010, 111:1

Ethan Johnson and Felicia Williams trace the history of desegregation in Portland Public Schools from William Brown’s 1867 attempt to enroll his African-American children into elementary school to the Portland school closings and mandatory busing programs of the late twentieth century. They tell a complex story that often mirrors and is influenced by the trends of desegregation and multiculturalism in American society at large but also illustrates Oregon’s unique and complex history in regard to race relations. Johnson and William rely on exhaustive research at the archives of the Oregon Historical Society, Portland Public Schools, and the City of Portland as well as contemporary newspaper accounts to unearth an important history told only sporadically before.

Oregon Historical Quarterly | Spring 2010, 111:1

She Flies with her Own Wings: Women in the 1973 Oregon Legislative Session

BY TARA WATSON AND MELODY ROSE
Spring 2010, 111:1

Tara Watson and Melody Rose analyze the significant outpouring of feminist legislation passed by the 1973 Oregon Legislature, arguing that the work of talented and motivated female legislatures who spearheaded much of the legislation is only part of the explanation for their unique success.  Utilizing many secondary sources on political history and theory and drawing on oral histories collected from members of the 1973 session, the authors re-evaluate this “second wave” of Oregon feminism.  They conclude that preconceived notions of 1970s identity politics do not allow for a proper understanding of the complex way this particular group of women realized their objectives.

Oregon Historical Quarterly | Winter 2009, 110:4

Moralistic Direct Democracy: Political Insurgents, Religion, and the State in Twentieth-Century Oregon

by Lawrence M. Lipin and William Lunch
Winter 2009, 110:4

Historian Lawrence Lipin and political scientist William Lunch discuss Oregon’s use of the initiative and referendum process, noting that direct democracy was used most often in Oregon in two distinct periods — at the beginning of the twentieth century and in the century’s final decades. The authors argue that the two periods were host to similar political grass-roots movements, characterized by a “populist moralism” in which Oregonians reacted against the perceived hegemony of an elite and moved to re-establish traditional values. Lipin and Lunch further note the ways populist political movements in both periods reignited long-standing political disagreements over the role of morality in Oregon public life.

Oregon Historical Quarterly | Summer 2009, 110:2

Novel Views of the Aurora Colony: The Literary Interpretations of Cobie de Lespinasse and Jane Kirkpatrick

by James J. Kopp
Summer 2009, 110:2

Historian James J. Kopp discusses major works of historical fiction of Jane Kirkptrick and Cobie de Lespinasse, books that take place in the Aurora Colony in Oregon.  He particularly notes the detailed research done by these authors, challenging a view that historical fiction cannot supplement the historical record.  Kopp retraces the trail of the authors’ research through the archives of the Aurora Colony Historical Society and outlines the nuanced characterizations expressed by the authors of day to day life in the utopian community, noting the tendency of both to address areas of discourse not yet analyzed by historians, particularly having to do with women’s experience, thereby challenging readers and researchers to consider new understandings about life in the Aurora colony.

Oregon Historical Quarterly | Spring 2009, 110:1

“For Working Women in Oregon”: Caroline Gleason/Sister Miriam Theresa and Oregon’s Minimum Wage Law

BY JANICE DILG
Spring 2009, 110:1

During the great labor disputes of the early twentieth century’s Progressive Era, Oregon became the seat for the first minimum wage law for women workers, due largely to the tireless championing of the cause by Caroline Glisan/Sister Miriam Theresa and organizations like the National Consumer League and the Catholic Women’s League.  Historian Janice Dilg draws on Gleason’s own papers (including the Social Survey of Oregon labor that Gleason administered) and scholarly secondary sources to discuss the theoretical debates behind women’s protective legislation and the implications of that legislation as activists and courts pushed for and against equality among the sexes.

Oregon Historical Quarterly | Fall 2008, 109:3

Picturing Progress: Carleton Watkins’s 1867 Stereoviews of the Columbia River Gorge

BY MEGAN K. FRIEDEL AND TERRY TOEDTEMEIER
Fall 2008, 109:3

In 1867, California photographer Carleton Watkins traveled throughout the Columbia River Gorge, creating now famous mammoth-plate photographs, as well as lesser known stereoviews, of the surrounding landscape. Those stereoview photographs, according to Friedel and Toedtemeier, tell a rich story of a landscape in flux, caught between Euro-American settlement of the pioneer era and an emerging modern era. Given the dynamism that has characterized interaction between humans, particularly Euro-Americans, and the Columbia River, Watkins’s prints show the river in a moment of perceived calm, yet on the brink of irrevocable change. The prints also tell the story of their creator’s personal relationships along the river.

Oregon Historical Quarterly | Fall 2008, 109:3

Master of the Columbia: Photography by Carleton E. Watkins at the Oregon Historical Society

BY MEGAN K. FRIEDEL
Fall 2008, 109:3

Megan K. Friedel details the Oregon Historical Society’s collection of photographs by Carleton Watkins. Although comprised principally of Watkins’s prints of Oregon and the Columbia River Gorge, OHS also houses many of Watkins’s portraits as well as work from California and other Western states. OHS’s collection shows the changing face of Oregon’s landscape and Watkins’s skilled artistry in capturing such a dynamic environment. Ultimately, OHS’s collection is evidence of the influence of Charles Beebe Turrill, the first person to substantially document Watkins’s accomplishments as a photographer.

Oregon Historical Quarterly | Fall 2008, 109:3

“The Importance of Memory and Place: A Narrative of Oregon Geographic Names with Lewis L. McArthur”

BY ERIN MCCULLUGH PENEVA
Fall 2008, 109:3

A mainstay of Oregon history since 1928, Oregon Geographic Names now documents the stories behind over six thousand of the state’s place-names. Lewis A. “Tam” McArthur published the book’s first edition, and his son, Lewis L. McArthur, told stories in a 2006 interview about how his father researched, talked, and wrote letters to determine where the names originated. Historian Erin McCullugh Peneva introduces the narrative she created from that interview and gives context about why place-names are important embodiments of a community’s shared memory.

Oregon Historical Quarterly | Summer 2008, 109:2

Fair Connections: Women’s Separatism and the Lewis and Clark Exposition of 1905

by Deborah M. Olsen
Summer 2008, 109:2

In the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, women used the platform of world’s fairs to bring publicity to their work and to advance their interests. Women had traditionally worked separately from the men who organized and ran the fairs, but the 1904 St. Louis Exposition marked a shift toward integration. Men who led Portland’s 1905 world’s fair claimed they had embraced the new, integrationist model, but Deborah M. Olsen’s close study of newspaper articles, correspondence, and fair records reveals that Oregon’s women actually embraced the separatist model to achieve success on two projects — the annual convention of the National American Woman Suffrage Association and the commissioning and prominent display of a statue of Sacajawea. Olsen’s research also highlights the contributions of Sarah Evans, a journalist whose work on the two projects helped lay the foundation for the successful 1912 Oregon woman suffrage campaign.

Oregon Historical Quarterly | Summer 2008, 109:2

Oregon State Hospital During the 1960s: A Patient’s Memories and Recent Interview of her Doctor

As a young patient at the Oregon State Hospital, in Salem, Oregon, C.L. Brown saw in action many dramatic changes that characterized the mental health industry, and particularly Oregon’s system, during the 1960s.  Her vivid descriptions of the buildings and grounds at the hospital and her memories of taking part in new kinds of group therapies serve as an introduction to selections from interviews she conducted with her former doctor, Joseph H. Treleaven, in 2007.  Treleaven describes his training, his influences, how he worked to change attitudes and systems at the hospital, and the impact of politicians and government agencies on Oregon’s mental health system.

Oregon Historical Quarterly | Summer 2008, 109:2

Reflections on the New Deal in Oregon: Essays in Honor of an OHS Exhibit

SUMMER 2008, 109:2

These three essays — published as a compliment to the Oregon Historical Society Exhibit, Oregon’s Legacy: The New Deal at 75 — consider the effect of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal programs on Oregon.  The authors describe the political and social context of the Great Depression in Oregon, the tangible results of New Deal programs in Oregon — such as roads, bridges, trails and accommodations in National Forests and State Parks, Bonneville Dam, and Timberline Lodge — and the shifts in outlook program administrators hoped to achieve. They all conclude that the citizens employed by such agencies as the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Works Progress Administration, and the Federal Arts Project left a significant mark on Oregon.

Oregon Historical Quarterly | Spring 2008, 109:1

Making ‘Good Music’: The Oregon Symphony and Music Director Jacques Singer, 1962–1971

BY GENEVIEVE J. LONG
Spring 2008, 109:1

With a focus on the leadership of conductor Jacques Singer, writer Genevieve J. Long documents the major changes that the Oregon Symphony underwent during the 1960s. Drawing on newspaper articles, interviews with musicians, and surveys conducted by the symphony organization, Long argues that Singer aided the organization’s fundraising and publicity goals but also aggravated musicians and colleagues who found him “difficult, even abusive.” Long concludes that the controversy surrounding Singer’s eventual departure is a significant incidence of public dialogue about music and cultural institutions.

Oregon Historical Quarterly | Winter 2007, 108:4

Wakanish Naknoowee Thluma: ‘Keepers of the Salmon’

BY CHARLES F. SAMS III
Winter 2007, 108:4

Through a story about the creation of humans, told by Native river people of N'Chi Wana or Columbia River, and remembrances of fishing with his grandfather on the Columbia River, Charles F. Sams highlights the importance Native people keeping their "promise to preserve, protect, enhance, and sustain the return of salmon to the Columbia River."

Oregon Historical Quarterly | Fall 2007, 108:3

“Neither Head nor Tail to the Campaign” Esther Pohl Lovejoy and the Oregon Woman Suffrage Victory of 1912

by Kimberly Jensen
Fall 2007, 108:3

In February 1913, Oregon suffragist, physician, and public health activist Esther Clayson Pohl Lovejoy summed up Oregon’s 1912 woman suffrage victory for the Woman’s Progressive Weekly: “It was pre-eminently a campaign of young women, impatient of leadership, and they worked just about as they liked — and that is how they will vote. There was certainly neither head nor tail to the campaign.”

Summer 2007

Special Section—Great Cascadia Earthquakes and Tsunamis

Special Section
Summer 2007, 108:2

From the Summer 2007 issue, this special section includes four articles: Tectonic History and Cultural Memory Catastrophe and Restoration on the Oregon Coast by R. Scott Byram, Tsunamis and Floods in Coos Bay Mythology by Patricia Whereat Phillips, Weaving Long Ropes: Oral Tradition and Understanding the Great Tide by Jason T. Younker, and Native American Vulnerability and Resiliency to Great Cascadia Earthquakes by Robert J. Losey

Summer 2007

Music on the Cusp: From Folk to Acid Rock in Portland Coffeehouses, 1967–1970

By VALERIE BROWN
Summer 2007, 108:2

From the sidewalk, it looks like nothing — just a door with a little sign above it. You go down some stairs and pay somebody fifty cents to let you into a low-ceilinged, murky room filled with about a dozen wooden wire-spool tables slathered with varathane. A homemade ceramic ashtray sits on each table. You go to the counter and get a bottomless cup of coffee for fifteen cents, then commandeer a table six feet away from the ten-bytwelve- foot stage. The room fills up with people and cigarette smoke blended with an occasional whiff of marijuana, incense, and burnt cheese. You hear the first notes on the guitar, the first unpolished, good-natured singing and the sweet harmonies, and you forget the funkiness of your surroundings. The music is playing, and you are right up close.

Oregon Historical Quarterly | Spring 2007, 108:1

Memories of the 1948 Vanport Flood

By Dale Skovgaard
Spring 2007, 108:1

On Memorial Day, May 30, 1948, Vanport — a city of 18,000 people — was destroyed in the matter of a few hours by floodwaters from Smith Lake and the Columbia River, which broke through the SP&S north-south railroad line landfill. As I began to write this article, the memories and images of that day came back to me so clearly that it seemed like it happened only yesterday.

Oregon Historical Quarterly | Spring 2007, 108:1

Eyes of the Earth: Lily White, Sarah Ladd, and the Oregon Camera Club

BY BY CAROLE GLAUBER
Spring 2007, 108:1

In this research article, Carole Glauber documents Lily E. White and Sarah Hall Ladd’s legacy as photographers and friends. During the early twentieth century they were involved with “the Oregon Camera Club and the nascent photographic movement,” where they “cultivated opportunities for personal promotion that intersected with Portland's rise in regional and national status.”

Oregon Historical Quarterly | Fall 2006, 107:3

“As Citizens of Portland We Must Protest”: Beatrice Morrow Cannady and the African American Response to D.W. Griffith’s “Masterpiece”

BY KIMBERLEY MANGUN
Fall 2006, 107:3

The Birth of a Nation, a film about the Civil War, reconstruction, and the rise of the Ku Klux Klan, became a focal point for debate about race relations in Portland each time in played in the city, in 1915, 1918, and 1922. Beatrice Morrow Cannady was editor of the African American newspaper, the Advocate, and vehemently opposed the showing of the film. Historian Kimberley Mangun uses Cannady’s public contempt for the film’s portrayal of African Americans to illustrate the broader goal of Cannady, and countless others, to promote respect between whites and African Americans.

Oregon Historical Quarterly | Fall 2006, 107:3

“A Most Daring Outrage”: Murders at Chinese Massacre Cove, 1887

BY R. GREGORY NOKES
Fall 2006, 107:3

R. Gregory Nokes tells the story of the murder of as many as thirty-four Chinese miners by a gang of seven horse thieves at a place in Hells Canyon, which has been designated “Chinese Massacre Cove” by the Oregon Geographic Names Board. Drawing on recently uncovered primary material, Nokes patches together the tale of the crime and the acquittal of three gang members who were arrested and charged with murder and places the events in the global context of relationships between American and Chinese citizens and governments.

Oregon Historical Quarterly | Fall 2006, 107:3

The U.S. Steel Corporation in Portland, 1901-1941

BY LEWIS L. MCARTHUR
FALL 2006, 107:3

In 1938, Lewis L. McArthur, a recent graduate of the University of California, went to work as a salesman for the Columbia Steel Company, a subsidiary of the United States Steel Corporation in Portland. His memories of the three years he spent working there depict the buildings, systems, and people that were involved with selling steel for some of the largest construction projects in the Pacific Northwest.

Oregon Historical Quarterly | Fall 2006, 107:3

Tears and Rain: One Artist’s View from Sea Level

by Rebecca J. Dobkins
Fall 2006, 107:3

Drawing from conversations with the artist about his life and work, Rebecca J. Dobkins gives readers insight into the foundations and purposes of Rick Bartow’s stunning drawing and sculpture. “Accepting his invitation to see more carefully and to feel connections more deeply,” she writes, “brings us a greater understanding of this place we now call Oregon.”

Oregon Historical Quarterly | Summer 2006, 107:2

“Cast Aside the Automobile Enthusiast” Class Conflict, Tax Policy, and the Preservation of Nature in Progressive-Era Oregon

by Lawrence M. Lipin
Summer 2006, 107:2

Lawrence Lipin examines the role that socio-economic considerations and progressive politics played in early twentieth-century debates over land use, taxation, and the construction of the Columbia River Highway. In his analysis of the Oregon single-tax movement, Lipin details the concerted efforts of political radicals and labor activists, such as William S. U’ren, Otto Hartwig, and George Henry, to encourage the productive development of land and to challenge the privileged status of corporate landholdings. The author also examines the ways in which producerist and progressive groups reorganized in the wake of several unsuccessful single-tax initiatives to oppose the construction of the scenic Columbia River Highway.

Oregon Historical Quarterly | Spring 2006, 107:1

“Trophies” for God: Native Mortality, Racial Ideology, and the Methodist Mission of Lower Oregon, 1834-1844

By GRAY H. WHALEY
Spring 2006, 107:1

In 1834, Rev. Jason Lee established the Oregon Mission in the Willamette Valley, sent by the Methodist Mission Society with the hope of converting Native people to Christianity. Lee arrived to find a population in significant decline from malaria epidemics. While some Native people welcomed the missionaries initially, the missionaries’ limited understanding of disease, influenced by racialism, often hurt more than helped Native people. This article examines the enduring influence of race and racialization and how they shaped the fate of the Oregon Mission and served as rationale legitimizing the dispossession and marginalization of the Native Oregon population throughout the nineteenth century.

Oregon Historical Quarterly | Spring 2006, 107:1

Comin' and Goin': Memories of Jazzman Jim Pepper

Spring 2006, Issue 107:1

By Jack Berry

Oregon Historical Quarterly | Spring 2006, 107:1

Mutual Respect and Equality: An Advocate for Indian Students in Oregon

Spring 2006, Issue 107:1

By Floy Pepper and Eliza Elkins Jones

Oregon Historical Quarterly | Winter 2005, 106:4
Oregon Historical Quarterly | Fall 2005, 106:3

The Stevens Treaties of 1854-1855: An Introduction

Fall 2005, 106:3

By Kent Richards

Oregon Historical Quarterly | Fall 2005, 106:3

The Isaac I. Stevens and Joel Palmer Treaties, 1855-2005 Treaty and Tribal Reference

Fall 2005, 106:3

The Isaac I. Stevens and Joel Palmer Treaties, 1855-2005 Treaty and Tribal Reference

Oregon Historical Quarterly | Fall 2005, 106:3

The Legacy of the Walla Walla Council, 1855

Fall 2005, 106:3

By Cilfford E. Trafzer

Oregon Historical Quarterly | Fall 2005, 106:3

Picturing Food and Power at the Treaty Councils

Fall 2005, 106:3

By Jacqueline B. Williams

Oregon Historical Quarterly | Fall 2005, 106:3

Indian Perspectives on Food and Culture

Fall 2005, 106:3

By Et-twaii-lish, Marjorie Waheneka

Oregon Historical Quarterly | Fall 2005, 106:3

American Indian Treaty Glossary

Fall 2005, 106:3

By Robert J. Miller

Oregon Historical Quarterly | Summer 2005, 106:2

Telling the History of a Shattered Culture: An Interview with George W. Aguilar, Sr.

By Eliza Elkins Jones
Summer 2005, 106:2

In this Oregon Voices piece, Eliza Elkins Jones shares an interview she conducted with George W. Aguilar, Sr., a Warm Springs tribal elder, about the research, writing, and editing that went into his book, When the River Ran Wild! Indian Traditions on the Mid-Columbia and the Warm Springs Reservation (published in June 2005 by the Oregon Historical Society press. As Jones describes, the “book is an exceptionally personal work of historical scholarship” and the article includes stories Aguilar shares with the hope that they will “provide the next generations a continuity with the past, giving them a historically grounded identity like what he was able to develop growing up in Wolford Canyon on the Warm Springs Reservation.”   

Oregon Historical Quarterly | Summer 2005, 106:2

Completing Lewis and  Clark’s Westward March: Exhibiting a History of Empire at the 1905 Portland World’s Fair

by Lisa Blee
Summer 2005, 106:2

Lisa Blee explicates the complexities and conundrums of American culture and the legacy of American expansionism set in motion with Lewis and Clark’s expeditionary westward march. The Lewis and Clark Exposition — Portland’s 1905 World’s Fair — functioned both as a celebration of America’s historical progress and as tacit justification for further colonial and economic ambitions. The subject matter and peoples on display at the fair, reflective of the romantic historicism of Frederick Jackson Turner, provided tangible links to an acceptable past and emotional testaments to the supremacy of the American way of life in the face of an ever-expanding world marketplace.

Summer 2004

Oregon, the Beautiful

by Ives Goddard and Thomas Love
Summer 2004, 105:2

Linguist Ives Goddard and anthropologist Thomas Love combined efforts in the latest attempt to determine the meaning of the name Oregon. They argue that “The evidence we have uncovered for the origin of Oregon in the Algonquian languages of New England supplies the missing link between [Robert] Rogers and a plausible linguistic source.” Using seventeenth- and eighteenth-century maps, Rogers’s journals, and detailed study of Algonquian languages, the scholars make an argument for the Northeastern origins of the name of this far western state.

Spring 2004

Does Portland Need a Homophile Society? Gay Culture and Activism in the Rose City between World War II and Stonewall

by Peter Boag
Spring 2004, 105:1

Gays and lesbians in Portland lagged behind their counterparts in other areas of the United States in efforts to organize politically around civil rights issues. Historian Peter Boag considers why this was the case, comparing gay activism in Portland with activities in Seattle and, to a lesser extent, Tacoma, Denver, and San Francisco. Concentrating on the period between World War II and 1969, Boag addresses the influx of young people into cities such as Portland and into the military during World War II, bar culture, political and media concerns about gays and lesbians as “sexual deviants,” and the establishment of homophile organizations such as the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis.

Spring 2004

Master of the Seas? Herbert Hoover and the Western Fisheries

by Joseph E. Taylor III
Spring 2004, 105:1

Herbert Hoover is too often portrayed simplistically as an exemplar of Republican policies during the 1920s. Examining Hoover's management of the western fisheries during his tenure as secretary of the Department of Commerce during the 1920s, Joseph Taylor argues that Hoover's actions and his legacy are more complex than they are often presented. Taylor presents four examples of Hoover's management style: his reorganization of the industry and the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries, the reorientation of scientific studies undertaken by the bureau, the management of salmon fisheries in Alaska, and the negotiation of fishery treaties.

Winter 2003 Oregon Historical Quarterly Cover

Using Artifacts to Study the Past—Early Evidence for John Day Exploration

By Michael McKenzie
Winter 2003, 104:4

Artifacts have the potential to inform historians about the past in ways that written records cannot. Recently, the Oregon Historical Society acquired a basalt rock inscribed with the date 1811 and a cross, originally found near the headwaters of the Middle Fork of the John Day River. Michael McKenzie uses historical data, primary documents, and technological techniques to hypothesize that members of the expedition sponsored by John Jacob Astor and led by Wilson Price Hunt in 1811-1812 may have inscribed the rock. Through his detailed explanation of the process by which artifacts are interpreted, McKenzie makes an argument for the contribution of artifact study to historians’ understanding of a sense of place.

Oregon Historical Quarterly | Fall 2003, 104:3

York of the Corps of Discovery: Interpretations of York’s Character and His Role in the Lewis and Clark Expedition

by Darrell M. Millner
Fall 2003, 104:3

The celebration of the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial has stimulated much academic and public discussion about the Corps of Discovery and its exploration of the West. During the past two hundred years, much has been written about expedition members’ scientific observations, the political implications of their explorations, and the cultural consequences of contact between the Corps members and the indigenous populations they encountered. Considerably less attention has been paid to the sole black member of the Corp—York, the slave of William Clark. Professor Darrell Millner adds to the sparse literature on York by documenting his contributions to the expedition, examining the “racial realities and dynamics of American life” at the time, and scrutinizing “how York is portrayed in the scholarly and popular writing that has been published in the two hundred years since 1805–1806.” Millner incorporates recent documentation that challenges long-standing ideas regarding the status of York as a slave and his relationship with Clark in the post-expedition period.

Oregon Historical Quarterly | Winter 2002, 103:4

Picturing the Corps of Discovery: The Lewis and Clark Expedition in Oregon Art

By Jeffry Uecker
Winter 2002, 103:4

At its most basic level, the Lewis and Clark Expedition is an account of nearly three dozen adventurers — a “Corps of Discovery” — who traversed a continent, from Missouri to Oregon, to gather information for a curious and ambitious president and public in the East. More deeply, it is a mythic tale, a story that provides meaning and relevance to experiences and life. This tale has helped shape the identity of Oregonians and Americans for almost two hundred years.

OHQ Summer 2002

Twenty-five Years of Professional Oral History at the Oregon Historical Society

by Donna Sinclair and Peter Kopp
Summer 2002, Issue 103:2

In this Voices of Oregon piece, oral historians Donna Sinclair and Peter Kopp reflect on twenty-five years of the oral history program at the Oregon Historical Society (OHS). As Sinclair and Kopp describe, “the OHS oral history program stands firmly among the many state and university oral history programs that have developed in the United States and other countries,” and “it guards the voices of Oregon, maintaining their archival integrity and preserving them for the future.”

Summer 2001

Ourigan: Wealth of the Nortwest Coast

By Scott Byram and David G. Lewis
Summer 2001, 102:2

In this research article, authors Scott Byram and David G. Lewis explore the origins of the name Oregon, a name that for years had been elusive to many historians. In “addressing the source of the place name” and exploring “the extent of indigenous geographic knowledge and cultural interaction across the North American continent during the eighteenth century,” Byram and Lewis uncover “new aspects of the history of pre-colonial indigenous cultures in the North American West” through research that contributes “to a redefinition of indigenous history, which has so often been dismally portrayed.”

Summer 2001

“A Menace to the Neighborhood”: Housing and African Americans in Portland 1941–1945

by Rudy Pearson
Summer 2001, 102:2

As the United States geared up for war production in the early 1940s, African Americans joined a stream of workers flooding into northern industrial cities such as Portland, Oregon. The prejudice they encountered in Portland surprised many of the newcomers, who could not hide their astonishment at Portland's segregated facilities and the hostile attitudes of many white people.

Winter 2000

The Broken Crucible of Assimilation: Forest Grove Indian School and the Origins of Off-Reservation Boarding-School Education in the West

by Cary C. Collins
Winter 2000, 101:4

On February 25, 1880, with a student body of fourteen Native boys and four Native girls, the Forest Grove Indian School officially opened on Pacific University’s campus. It was the first off-reservation boarding school for Indians west of the Mississippi River. In this article, Cary C. Collins explores the “human drama that unfolded as federal officials imposed assimilative education in the Pacific Northwest” through select correspondence from 1880 through 1884. The letters, she explains, “offer a glimpse into the contact that existed among students, parents, and school personnel as the government carried out its efforts to remake Indians in the dominant Euroamerican image.”

Fall 2000

The Underestimated Oregon Presidential Primary of 1960

by Monroe Sweetland
Fall 2000, 101:3

Monroe Sweetland, an Oregon journalist and legislator, wrote this article about the significance of the 1960 Oregon Primary for presidential hopeful John F. Kennedy. Sweetland begins: “Friday May 20, 1960, was a judgment day which could bring impetus or disaster for the Kennedy-for-President campaign — the Democratic Primary in Oregon.” Although Kennedy had political backers in many states, Oregon wasn’t one of them. After an early start to the state campaign and recruiting key supporters, Kennedy “convinced lingering doubters,” by winning the last significant primary before the national convention.

Summer 1998

Vanport Conspiracy Rumors and Social Relations in Portland, 1940-1950

by Stuart McElderry
Summer 1998, 99:2

Stuart McElderry reveals an underside of Vanport nostalgia and the social significance of rumors through the prism of Vanport’s famous flood.

Summer 1994

Flax and Linen: An Uncertain Oregon Industry

By Steve M. Wyatt
Summer 1994, 95:2

Steve M. Wyatt follows the circuitous ninety-year history of an ultimately unsuccessful agricultural and manufacturing industry, based on a crop ideally suited to the Willamette Valley's climate and geography. The course and fate of the  state's flax and linen industry offer key lessons in Oregon's twentieth-century economic history.

Summer 1994

Family and Community on the Eastern Oregon Frontier

by William F. Willingham
Summer 1994, 95:2

By the 1870s, much of the fertile land in the Willamette Valley had been claimed, and a second wave of migrants to eastern Oregon sought a future in the recently opened bunchgrass rangeland. Who were these settlers? What were their cultural, ethnic, and demographic characteristics? What role did women play in the process? Did family structure in these communities change over time? William F. Willingham discusses how some of these questions can be found in the federal decennial census schedules.

OHQ Spring 1994 cover

The Pacific Northwest Measles Epidemic of 1847–1848

By Robert Boyd
Spring 1994; 95:1

Measles in the Pacific Northwest was first recorded on July 23, 1847, at Fort Nez Perces. It was likely brought there by Indians traveling back from California, where an outbreak had just started, and spread to Oregon by way of overland migrants to Fort Vancouver and south through the Willamette Valley. In “The Pacific Northwest Measles Epidemic of 1847–1848,” published in the Spring 1994 issue of the Oregon Historical Quarterly, anthropologist Robert Boyd documents the epidemic and its spread. The measles epidemic contributed to significant losses in Native communities, up to forty percent of some Tribes died. These losses contributed to fear and suspicion among Native communities toward whites, and is recognized as a catalyst for violence during that time period.

Spring 1981 cover

“Something Desperate in His Face”: Woodrow Wilson in Portland at the “Very Crisis of His Career”

by Clifford W. Trow
Spring 1981, Issue 82:1

During his September 1919 visit to Portland, Oregon, President Woodrow Wilson appeared exhilarated by the cheering crowds and warm reception, although he was at what had been described as the “crisis of his career.” In this article, author Clifford W. Trow examines the president’s trip to Portland within the context of his work to form the League of Nations and the opposition he experienced in the U.S. Congress. The author’s aim of examining the visit is for readers to gain “a better understanding…of the difficulties he faced, both in Oregon and the nation, as he struggled to win support for the League of Nations.”

Oregon Historical Quarterly Fall 1976

Portland Italians, 1880–1920

By Charles F. Gould
Fall 1976, 77:3

The greatest influx of Italians to the United States occurred between 1800 and World War I. In this article, author Charles F. Gould documents the lives of Portland's Italian residents and answers questions these questions: "From what specific region in Italy did they emigrate? Why did they choose Portland? And what did they do when they got here?

Summer 1976

OHS Photo Files: Oregon Celebrates!

Summer 1976, 77:2

To mark the U.S. Bicentennial in 1976, the Oregon Historical Quarterly presented a set of photos commemorating national, state, and local celebrations held in the OHS collections. During time periods when “professional entertainers were scarce, and there were no radios or TV sets,” lodges, churches, schools, and more celebrated with parades, footraces, nighttime illumination, and boat races.

OHQ Fall 1974 cover

Work Horses in Oregon

By Lewis E. Judson
Fall 1974, 75:3

In his introduction, Willamette Valley historian Lewis E. Judson describes: “There are today young people in our midst who have not seen a horse at work.” In this OHQ article, Judson “records for future generations” the history of work horses in Oregon and their “usefulness to man.”

Fall 1963

The 1918 'Spanish Infulenza' Pandemic in Oregon

By Ivan M. Wolley
Fall 1963, 64:3

Ivan M. Woolley documents the virus's progression and Oregon's response. In it are striking parallels to current events, including school closures, public gathering bans, and even debates about the effectiveness of masks to contain the spread.