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Steve Law December 10 2020
My view: In an era when the country was yanking
out the welcome mat of those who risked their lives to build a transcontinental
railroad here, the Chinese population of Portland actually grew.
PMG FILE PHOTO - Mount Tabor is
known today for the city reservoir and for the bucolic neighborhoods, but the
neighborhood also has a troubled history of racist incidents.
The news garnered only two paragraphs in the
Morning Oregonian of March 5, 1886, but the headline was stark: "Another
Chinese Outrage: Fifty Masked Men Drive 125 Chinamen into Portland from Mt.
Tabor."
With the 1869 completion of the transcontinental
railroad and the United States suffering a five-year depression after the Panic
of 1873, many workers and politicians began blaming the Chinese for depressing
wages and taking jobs from whites.
The backlash culminated in the Chinese Exclusion
Act of 1882, which barred future Chinese immigration.
Here in the Northwest, mob violence in 1885 and 1886
forced the removal of Chinese from Seattle, Tacoma, Olympia and Chehalis, wrote
historian Marie Rose Wong. Washington's territorial governor declared martial
law to curb the violence.
Hundreds of Chinese immigrants fled from Washington to Portland, but
the leader of the Washington anti-Chinese campaign, Daniel Cronin, followed
them here in January 1886. Cronin, a Knights of Labor union organizer, soon
vowed "there will not be a working Chinaman in Portland" within three
months.
On Feb. 22, the anti-Chinese campaign mobilized 1,000 people for a
torchlight parade in downtown Portland, wrote historian E. Kimbark MacColl.
That night, armed men attacked 160 Chinese employees of the Oregon City Woolen
Mills, robbing them of their money and forcing them on a steamer bound for
Portland, according to the Morning Oregonian. Later that night, some 30 armed
whites broke up a camp of Chinese who were cutting wood in Albina, then a
separate city.
Evidently, many of the Chinese driven from Albina later found work
chopping wood in Mount Tabor, then a rural farming community not yet part of
Portland.
On March 4, a mob followed them to Mount Tabor. In the wee hours
of the morning, some 50 masked vigilantes forced the Chinese to leave,
shepherding them to the Albina ferry. At 3:30 a.m., an estimated 100 to 200
Chinese made a forced crossing of the Willamette River into Portland, then home
to a sizable Chinatown.
A leader of the local anti-Chinese campaign, Sylvester Pennoyer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylvester_Pennoyer, would go on to win his race for Oregon governor later that year. But the Portland establishment, including The Oregonian and business leaders, urged tolerance. Oregonian editor Harvey Scott, whose statue once sat atop Mount Tabor, penned an editorial criticizing the anti-Chinese campaign as "the base instinct of race hatred," according to MacColl.
In an open letter published in the newspaper March 15, Portland
Mayor John Gates https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gates_(Portland_mayor)called for a mass public meeting the next day.
"We all know of the disgraceful proceedings which have been
enacted lately in Washington territory, at Oregon City, Albina, Mount Tabor and
at our very doors here in Portland," Gates wrote. "It seems to be
high time for all good people to come out and show the disreputable outlaws
that the local authorities will be sustained by the people, and that law and
order must and will be maintained in Portland."
The violence eventually abated in Portland. Some Chinese left for
San Francisco. But many found a welcome home in Portland's Chinatown, Wong
says.
In an era when the country was yanking out the welcome mat of
those who risked their lives to build a transcontinental railroad here, the
Chinese population of
Portland actually grew, she says.
Steve Law is a retired reporter and editor for the Portland
Tribune. He lives in Portland and contributes columns to the Tribune.
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