Looking Back, 1910-1920 in Portland, Oregon at Anti-Semitism, Racial Discrimination of Blacks and Chinese

 Nadene Goldfoot                                       

People used one-horse wagons in Portland to carry boxes of good from the Port to the City

Between 1910 and 1920, organized or violent anti-Semitic activity was relatively rare in Portland, Oregon. While ethnic prejudices existed, the city's dominant racial anxieties at the time focused primarily on Native Americans and Asian immigrants rather than European Jews.                               

                   Nochim (Nathan) Ahraham Goldfoot (1893-1912)

My Zayda (grandpa) came from Lithuania to Oregon in 1893 but was killed by his horse and buggy accident in 1912 when he horse was startled in the center of Portland.  His job was as expessman delivering packages in Portland from the Port to the SE area.  . He had no I.D. on the wagon or himself, but was taken to the hospital his grandson would one day be working in, though a different building by then.  His wife was not notified till he could be identified.  It all happened on  Shabbat, too.  Only a Yiddish speaker, she had a hard time after that.                       

          Jewish grandmother on Ellis Island, maybe from Poland

Immigrant Influx: The Jewish population in Portland grew significantly during the 1910s, with thousands of Eastern European Jewish immigrants settling primarily in the South Portland neighborhood. Civic Acceptance: Because they were of European descent, like Engish Jews and German Jews,  and often spoke English, Jewish pioneers and merchants were generally viewed as white and integrated into mainstream civic, business, and fraternal organizations like the Masons. 

Civic Leadership: Prominent Jewish leaders, such as merchant Ben Selling, achieved high-ranking political office, serving as speaker of the Oregon House and president of the Oregon Senate during the 1910s. 

Isolated Prejudices and the Post-WWI Shift

Local Incidents: Overt systemic barriers were minimal compared to later decades, though isolated social discrimination and bigoted remarks—such as a 1910 court controversy involving a prejudiced judicial candidate successfully opposed by community leaders—did occasionally surface. 






 AI must be wrong.  We had Ben Selling:  He served on the Port of Portland Commission, then on the Portland Dock Commission. After being elected to the Oregon State Senate in 1910, he served as President of the Senate for one session in 1911. He was also Speaker of the Oregon House of Representatives for one session, 1915. He ran for the United States Senate in 1912, losing by a few hundred votes to Harry Lane. Harry Lane narrowly defeated conservative Republican merchant Ben Selling in a multi-candidate, split-field race. Lane won with about 30% of the popular advisory vote, edging out Selling by roughly one percentage point. Could be because he was Jewish???

Such a man!!!

Selling was known for his philanthropy. He organized kitchens for the unemployed during the Panic of 1893 and Panic of 1907, serving over 450,000 meals. In 1914, he founded the Working Men's Club, which sold meals for five cents apiece to homeless and unemployed men. The club also provided some meals at no cost.^[15] The Working Men's Club included an employment bureau, which, according to the Oregon Daily Journal, helped 600 to 700 men find work within a year of opening. Selling closed the club in 1916 due to the improved economy. The Oregonian stated that it had served nearly 400,000 meals.

In January 1916, Selling became treasurer of a committee to raise funds for Jews in Eastern Europe displaced by World War I. He asked Portlanders of all religions to donate to the cause, saying that "for the first time in 50 years I am asking non-Jews to help my people." The committee raised more than $14,000 within two months.

Selling heavily supported the Armenian Relief Society, bought $400,000 in Liberty Bonds during World War I, and supported the Waverly Baby Home and Jewish Neighborhood House, both in Portland. MacColl also stated "Suffice it to say, Ben Selling probably gave away more money in proportion to his income than any Oregon citizen since the state was founded."



Just around the bend in Washington State: Klu Klux Klan

Precursor to the 1920s Klan: The 1910–1920 window was a relatively quiet transitional period. However, it immediately preceded the major post-World War I resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan in Oregon, which brought widespread nativist and anti-Catholic/anti-Semitic ideologies to the state in the early-to-mid 1920s. 

    The Flowers family 1910 in Portland with a horse-drawn wagon.  
Between 1910 and 1920, systemic racism in Portland, Oregon, intensified through formal housing segregation, discriminatory business practices, and labor limitations. Although a small Black community grew around railroad and service jobs, institutional policies actively worked to marginalize African Americans and restrict their civil rights and geographic mobility.
                                        

                Chinese Americans in Oregon 
Between 1910 and 1920, Portland’s Chinese community faced persistent federal exclusion, localized housing discrimination, and deep-rooted economic marginalization. While overt mass physical expulsions peaked in the late 19th century, systemic and legal racism remained a daily reality for Chinese immigrants during this decade.
Chinese Exclusion Laws: The federal Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and subsequent tightening measures strictly banned laborer immigration and prevented Chinese individuals from obtaining U.S. citizenship.   The 1910s saw intense scrutiny at ports, with immigration authorities aggressively enforcing documentation rules, leading to continuous detentions and deportations.  Family Separation: Laws restricted merchant and laborer families from bringing wives or children over, causing the Chinese population in Portland to remain heavily male and socially isolated. Property Restrictions: Racially restrictive covenants and local real estate boards actively barred non-white groups from purchasing or renting homes outside designated zones. 
Neighborhood Segregation: Landlords in white neighborhoods routinely refused to rent to Chinese tenants, forcing the community to concentrate tightly around Portland’s early Chinatown districts near downtown and the Skidmore/Old Town areas. Benevolent Associations: Organizations like the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association stepped in to offer legal aid, social support, and mediation against hostile external pressures. Tongs and Mutual Aid: Secret societies or tongs provided internal security, economic survival networks, and alternative community structures when mainstream legal protections excluded Asian residents. Three identifiable Cantonese-Chinese ethnic communities developed in downtown Portland, on the west bank of the Willamette River. The initial Chinese community was bounded by Front and Second Streets and Market and Jefferson Streets. It later expanded to include several square blocks bordered by Front and Third Streets and stretching from Clay to the south and to Ash to the north. A second community, consisting of Cantonese farmers working their vegetable gardens, grew up in the heights overlooking the first area of settlement. This atypical rural community, set within Portland’s increasingly crowded downtown, thrived from 1879 until 1910. It lay west of Fourteenth Street and north of Market. By 1900-1901, the first Cantonese community had expanded north and extended to the other side of Burnside Street. This extension included portions of Second, Third, and Fourth Streets to the north, which became the nucleus for Portland's third Chinatown, which still exists. (In the twenty-first century, a fourth Cantonese Chinese community, which includes ethnic Chinese from Southeast Asia, developed on the east side of the river along the corridor of 82nd Avenue.)