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.)

China and Israel These Days

 Nadene Goldfoot                                      

China has erased the name of Israel off their maps.  That's a terrible sign.  

I was brought up in Ladds Addition, Portland, Oregon where many of my neighbors were Chinese. Ladd's Addition was an experiment of housing mixed nationalistic people together of a medium financial household.  We had Greeks, Italians, Chinese, Jewish, many others who showed up at school smorgasbord dinners that were great.   My son's best friend, David Louie lived across the street and I drove to college every day with a Chinese neighbor.  My brother attended Hebrew school after public school-day while his Chinese friend attended Chinese school, too.  Two doors away from me was my playmate, Joan Padrow, parents immigrants from Palestine/Israel.  

We had good relations with our buddies, an important part of our own make-up is based on the development of our childhood.  We got together and we each also had our own circle of close relatives to cherish.  We were a family--based people.  How is the world doing?  I need not ask, I know.  The question is, how are China and Israel getting along?  

On the left under Turkey is Israel on the border with the white Mediterranean Sea.  China is humungous.  China covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometers (3.7 million square miles), making it the third or fourth largest country in the world by total area.

Approximately 9,000 to 12,000 residents of Chinese descent live within the Portland city limits. They represent a substantial segment of Portland’s Asian demographic, which makes up about 8.1% (over 52,000 people) of the city's total population.

Approximately 57,000+ Jewish people call the Greater Portland area home . Approximately 3,000 to 5,000 Orthodox Jews live in the Greater Portland area,    According to the comprehensive 2022-23 Greater Portland Jewish Community Study, the wider metropolitan region—which spans into Southwest Washington—is home to roughly 56,600 individuals of Jewish descent , with some estimates reaching over 75,000 in the extended metro area. 

Global Strategy: China generally seeks to avoid direct frontline involvement in Middle East conflicts, prioritizing its energy security, trade stability, and its "Belt and Road Initiative" . Beijing attempts to maintain a delicate balance—professing concern over the escalating violence and backing a two-state solution while continuing its massive trade operations. Hopefully, since October 7, 2023, they realize a 2-state solution no longer is on the table.  

Political and Diplomatic Ties: Diplomatic relations have cooled significantly since the outbreak of the Gaza war and the regional conflict with Iran. Beijing has taken a stance aligned closely with the Global South, criticizing Israeli military actions in Gaza and Lebanon, and pushing for Palestinian statehood. China also maintains close strategic and economic partnerships with Iran, placing it at odds with Israeli security goals. 

Trade and Economics: China remains Israel's largest trading partner in East Asia and its second-largest globally, with robust Chinese investments in Israeli infrastructure and technology sectors . Israeli companies continue to do significant business with Chinese firms, and there are high-profile commercial disputes, such as a major intellectual property claim against a Chinese EV giant.

 The bilateral relationship between Israel and China is highly complex and strained due to the broader geopolitical landscape and the ongoing conflicts in the Middle East.  Of course, everyone is confounded by the Middle East today.

Anti-Semitism in the United States During the Twenties

 Nadene Goldfoot                                           

This is the first time I've seen my father so dapper.  He immediately started wearing jeans and plaid shirts and boots forever more.!!!  Only a few times, Mom got him dressed up for a picture for some reason or other, but it wasn't common.  They were a couple, Morris (from Moshe-Moses)  and Milly (Mildred).  Mom/s birthday was June 29, 1914 and Dad's was July 1, 1908.  Dad had 3 years of high school, pitcher on their baseball team, and Mom had less.  Both were very bright.                             

         Me and my father, Maurice Goldfoot;  he smoked cigars

Seven years before I was born was a time that shaped my parents.  It was their era of culture; music, politics, work and fun. Neither one finished  high school.  They met on the streets of Portland being from extremely different cultures, my father being Jewish and a kosher butcher taking a break,  and my mother from a Swedish Lutheran taking a walk with her charges as she was a nanny.   Both of their parents were immigrants, though.  

Antisemitism in the 1920s United States peaked during a period of intense xenophobia, nativism, and racialized anxiety. It manifested systematically through restrictive university admission quotas, exclusionary social and housing policies, and mass-media conspiracy theories championed by prominent industrialist Henry Ford.

The Dearborn Independent: Automotive pioneer Henry Ford purchased a local newspaper and used it to publish antisemitic articles that circulated to hundreds of thousands of readers across the country. 

The International Jew: Ford compiled these articles into a four-volume series titled "The International Jew," which heavily relied on the fabricated Russian text "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" to legitimize false claims of an international Jewish conspiracy. 

Impact of the Media Campaign: Ford's immense celebrity and financial backing brought deeply fringe, foreign conspiracy theories into the mainstream American consciousness, heavily influencing later international antisemitic movements. 

University Quotas: Elite institutions of higher education, most notably in the Ivy League, implemented strict, unofficial quota systems that drastically reduced Jewish enrollment. 

Societal Segregation: Jewish Americans were systematically barred from joining private social clubs, professional networks, and country clubs. 

Housing Restrictions: Real estate covenants were widely used to explicitly prevent Jewish families from purchasing properties in certain neighborhoods. 

Strict Immigration Laws: The pervasive xenophobia of the 1920s influenced federal legislation, resulting in the Immigration Act of 1924, which established rigid national-origin quotas designed specifically to limit Jewish and Eastern European immigration. 

Rise of the KKK: The Ku Klux Klan experienced a massive resurgence in the 1920s, boasting an estimated four million members . The organization amplified its hatred to target not only Black Americans but also Jewish and Catholic populations under the banner of white Protestant supremacy 

Doesn't all this look terribly familiar, like we're experiencing the same attitudes and outcomes right now in 2026?  

Bryson's book below has this on page 257:

Charles Lindbergh (born February 4, 1902, Detroit, Michigan, U.S.—died August 26, 1974, Maui, Hawaii) . Charles Augustus Lindbergh was an American aviator, author, and military officer who became famous for his 1927 nonstop flight from New York to Paris. He flew alone for over 33 hours, covering 3,600 miles. Lindbergh's feat helped advance aviation and made him an international celebrity. Yet he was an anti-Semite.  

  A few Jews add strength and character to a country.  Too many create chaos.  And we are getting too many. Charles Lindbergh

Charles Lindbergh’s antisemitism is primarily remembered through his 1941 Des Moines speech, in which he controversially accused the "Jewish race" of conspiring with the British and the Roosevelt administration to manipulate America into entering World War II.

The Des Moines Speech (1941)  On September 11, 1941, when I had just turned 7;  while acting as the leading public spokesman for the isolationist America First Committee, Lindbergh delivered a national radio address titled "Who Are the War Agitators?" In it, he stated that "the three most important groups who have been pressing this country toward war are the British, the Jewish and the Roosevelt Administration". He characterized Jewish people as outsiders who controlled the press, cinema, and radio, and claimed their primary motivations for war were not aligned with American interests.  

Resource:

AI

PBS, 

Wikipedia

Holocaust Encyclopedia

Museum of Jewish Heritage

Book:  One Summer America, 1927 by Bill Bryson, given to me by Portland Librarian Sandra Viah, my friend, that inspired me to write this blog article.  (look at the index under anti-semitism. )