No other ethnic group enjoyed the level of success, defined in terms of economic status and social acceptance, attained by Portland Jews in the second half of the nineteenth century. Hailing predominantly from the German states of northern and central Europe, the Jewish pioneers transplanted middle class values and mercantile skills in their new home. From a small unstable population of single men in the 1850s, Portland Jewry grew into an affluent class conscious family oriented community by the mid-1880s. The center of Portland's Jewish life during the formative years was Congregation Beth Israel, the first congregation in the Pacific Northwest. It provided the spiritual and social cement the community needed to meet the challenges of the frontier environment. As the population increased, the institutional structure of the community expanded with a succession of organizations--Hebrew Benevolent Association, Hebrew Ladies Benevolent Society, B'nai B'rith, YMHA, to name the most prominent. As the population increased with the immigration of Polish and Prussian Jews in the 1870s, some internal struggle occurred. The more traditional Jews, primarily from eastern Prussia, formed a new congregation, rejecting the reforming, Americanized Beth Israel. In the 1880s the split became further institutionalized as the wealthy German Jews established the Concordia Club, a social club for the Jewish elite. Despite this division, Portland Jewry remained fairly homogenous through the 1880s. The outstanding distinguishing characteristic of the community was its adaptation to American society and its integration into city life. The pioneer Jews sought the same rewards as their gentile neighbors--economic success and community stability. They experienced little racial prejudice and moved with no apparent self consciousness in Portland society. Although they were excluded from the Arlington Club, the bastion of the gentile elite, Portland's Jews maintained close business and social ties with the non-Jewish community. This experience was similar to that in other frontier communities where Jews entered city life early irr its development. While becoming Americcnized, Portland Jewry clung to its cultural heritage. Its organizations and institutions which showed the effects of the frontier environment were still distinctively Jewish. And in business, success was fostered by intra-group and family networking and credit arrangements that were familiar in Europe. The use of "new social history" techniques provides a view of all levels of Jewish society. By using data gathered from federal and county census records, burial records, marriage records, and tax records,as well as institutional records and personal papers, the development of institutional structure, leadership roles, and class divisions can be understood.

This thesis tells the stories of five Oregon women who transcended the customary roles of their era. Active during the waning years of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, each woman made a difference in the world around them. Their stories have either not been told or just given a passing glance. These tales are important because they inform us about our society on the cusp of the twentieth century. Hattie Crawford Redmond was the daughter of a freed slave who devoted herself to the fight for women's suffrage. Minnie Mossman Hill was the first woman steamboat pilot west of the Mississippi. Mary Francis Isom was a local librarian who went to France to deliver books to American soldiers. Ann and May Shogren were sisters who brought high fashion to Portland and defied the gender and social rules in both their business and personal lives. These women were not the only ones who accomplished extraordinary things during their lives. They are a tiny sample of Oregon women who pushed beyond discrimination, hardship and gender limits to earn their place in Oregon's history.

For about the first fifteen years after its commercial introduction motion picture entertainment throughout the United States was supported almost entirely by the mass of urban industrial workers, immigrants and their families. Beginning a few years before 1910 motion pictures began acquiring regular support from a limited element of the more affluent citizens until by the end of 1916 they constituted motion pictures' primary audience. This paper examines the audience development and conversion as it occurred in the downtown theaters of Portland, Oregon. Motion pictures were shown to two diverse audiences in Portland during the 1890s, regularly on a mass level to the lower income strata and sporadically to regular stage theater audiences. Their expectations differed greatly. Urban workers craved entertainment for the sake of diversion while middle and upper class audiences required responsibility and purpose in their entertainments. After the turn of the century when big time vaudeville established itself in Portland films were supported almost entirely by the lower class element in arcades and vaudeville theaters. Motion pictures in these venues catered to their audiences' tastes. During the 4-5 year period after nickelodeons developed in 1906 a small number of Portland's middle class became regular patrons, due partially to national imposition of licensing and establishment of a censorship board fostering a more respectable image. After 1910, when national support for motion pictures had been proven permanent and unsatisfied, large movie palaces emerged in Portland. These theaters and their amenities created atmospheres consistent with those of stage theaters, providing comfortable and familiar surroundings for middle class audiences. Industrywide developments such as increased story length, better quality productions and evidence of social responsibility enhanced the ease of middle class transition from the stage theater to the movie theater.

The present thesis describes the connection between political corruption and vice crime in Portland as it was portrayed by media and public institutions and agencies in the 1940s and 1950s. The main body of the thesis discusses attempts to rid Portland of its vice problem through the City Club's crusade against crime and crooked politicians in the late 1940s and early 1950s and Mayor Dorothy McCullough Lee's subsequent reform movements against gambling and prostitution. The thesis will analyze The Oregonian's expose' on bootlegging, gambling, prostitution and links drawn by the newspaper to the Teamster's Union and Oregon politicians. From there, the study focuses on Washington D. C. and the McClellan Committee's 1950s hearings on the mismanagement and corruption of Teamster leaders in local and national chapters. Finally, the thesis analyzes the role of Portland's two daily newspapers and their contributions to the controversies and mixed messages over vice and crime in the city between World War II and 1957.

From the dumpster-diving spiky haired dykes of the 1990s to the land-loving political lesbian folkies of the 1970s, queer women in Portland, OR have a long history of non-consumer-driven culture making, separatism and guitars. Remember Who You Are: The Story of Portland Dykecore explores the roots of the all-ages dyke-made music scene that exploded between 1990 and 2000.

This dissertation is a case study of the history of urban transportation policy in Portland, Oregon, between 1872 and 1970. The emphasis is on mass transit policy formulated and implemented by the private and public sectors as response to crises within both the local transit industry and the urban political economy. These crises are placed in the context of the continuing conflict between the industry's right to profit and its obligation to meet the competing demands of its constituencies: ridership's demands for low fares and comprehensive service; labor's demands for competitive wages; downtown businesses' demands for peak-hour service; and the regulatory demands imposed by the city and state. The development of Portland's mass transit policy is presented within the larger context of urban transportation policy and planning in general and is compared with the experiences of other cities throughout the country. This study concludes the primary crises that defined urban transportation policy in Portland can be divided into two types. Those that existed during the period of private ownership arose from the conflicting demands of the various actors in the transportation policy process. There were also those crises that arose just prior to and during the transition to public ownership: in addition to the traditional conflicts that had been present--labor, ridership, the city--there were new elements of conflict between the central city and the growing suburbs. This study also concludes that the decline of transit began in 1919 and that the roots of this decline lie in the structure of the industry, its place in the local political economy, and in its inherently antagonistic relationship with the city. While the use of the automobile, suburbanization, and highway development were all significant factors in accelerating transit's decline, they alone do not explain transit's decline. Finally, this study concludes that in the Portland case, it was a combination of several factors that worked together to facilitate the implementation of public ownership and operation of transit in Portland, including growing concern about the weakening economic strength of the central city and the availability of new sources of implementation funding.

The struggles for racial equality throughout northern cities during the late-1960s, while not nearly as prevalent within historical scholarship as those pertaining to the Deep South, have left an indelible mark on both the individuals and communities involved. Historians have until recently thought of the civil rights movement in the north as a violent betrayal of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s vision of an inclusive and integrated society, as well as coinciding with the rise, and subsequent decline, of Black Power. But despite such suppositions, the experiences of northern cities immersed in the civil rights struggle were far more varied and nuanced. The explosion of racial violence throughout American cities in the late-1960s bred fear among many in the white political establishment who viewed the cultural shifts inherent in racial equality as threatening to undermine their traditional racial dominance. Partially the result of feelings of increased powerlessness, and partially in an effort of self-preservation, many in the ranks of government and law enforcement worked to oppose the seismic changes underfoot. This thesis makes a concerted effort to examine and evaluate the role that race played in the Albina community of Portland, Oregon in the late-1960s, with a particular emphasis on the motivations, impact, and legacy of two racial disturbances that occurred there in the summers of 1967 and 1969. It asserts that while racial prejudice and bigotry were certainly prevalent among members of both the city's political and law enforcement community, and did play a significant role in the deterioration of their relationship with the black community, there were many other factors that also contributed to the police-community discord in late-1960s Albina. Moreover, it asserts that the reactions of the white and African-American communities to the disturbances were, contrary to conventional wisdom, not monolithic, but rather diverse and wide-ranging. The goal of this narrative history is not merely to analyze the racial unrest and public response to the disturbances, but also to integrate and link the experiences of Portland's African-Americans into the broader dialogue of the civil rights movement of the late-1960s. In short, the study of late-1960s Portland allows us to reach a greater understanding of racial inequality in America during this period.

The primary objective of this study is to find, statistically, how the women of Portland lived out their lives. By exploring the role of ethnicity, work and family, and the inter-relationships of these variables, upon their life choices, it is hoped a picture of women will result that can be used as a base for further interpretations on the community of women and the role they play in society. The study is based on data gathered from the Eighth, Ninth and Tenth Federal Manuscript Census Schedules for the city of Portland and East Portland and utilizes a sample of 8,012 women, aged fifteen years or older, comprising the entire adult female population of the city during the census years of 1860, 1870 and 1880. The information coded for each woman includes age, marital status, ethnicity, occupation, whether or not she was head of a household, the number of children present in the home, her husband's ethnicity and a rough categorization of his occupation, the type of family residence. The data was then interpreted using a simple cross-variable program. The introduction sets the theoretical framework for the study and places it in the historiography of women and the family. Chapter I is a brief survey of the community of Portland and the development of its various institutions to use as a backdrop for the general statistical picture of women developed in Chapter II. The differences apparent in the various ethnic groups and changes over the three census periods for marital status, and intermarriage tendencies are investigated in Chapter III, and Chapter IV deals with family structure. Chapter V covers general work trends for women, cites several of the larger occupational cohorts and compares Portland's female labor force to several other urban areas for 1880. Appendix A is an explanation of the methodology employed and some of the problems encountered in the study. Appendix B is the entire collection of charts extrapolated from the data by the program used. It should be noted that all of the data was not utilized in this study, and even more information can be gotten from the data by the use of a more sophisticated program. The author hopes to rework the data at a later date for a more in-depth study.

The Firebrand was an anarchist communist newspaper that was printed in Portland, Oregon from January 1895 to September 1897. The newspaper was a central catalyst behind the formation of the culturally American anarchist movement, a movement whose vital role in shaping radicalism in the United States during the Progressive Era has largely been ignored by historians. The central argument of this thesis is that the Firebrand publishers' experiences in Gilded Age Portland shaped the content and the format of the newspaper and led to the development of a new, uniquely American expression of anarchism. Anarchism was developed in response to the great transformations of the nineteenth century and the anxieties of a society that was being entirely restructured as industrialization and urbanization took hold across the globe. The anarchism of the Firebrand was a regional response to these same changes, an expression of radical discontent at the way in which life in Portland and the Pacific Northwest was rapidly changing. According to the Firebranders, the region had transformed from a place of economic opportunity and political freedom into a region driven by economic and political exploitation. Thus, the newspaper developed a uniquely western American perspective and expressed a formation of anarchist communism that was steeped in the history and culture of the United States. The newspaper was just as influenced by centuries of American libertarian activism as it was by outright anarchist philosophy. As a result, the newspaper frequently included articles about free love and women's rights, issues outside of the typical purview of anarchist communist political philosophy. This Americanized expression of anarchist communism allowed the newspaper to expand beyond the movement's core urban, immigrant audience and attract culturally American, English-speaking radicals to the cause. In the Fall of 1897, after two years and eight months in publication, three of the Firebrand publishers were arrested for the crime of sending obscene materials through the mail. The Firebrand's frank discussions of sexuality, women's rights, and free love offended the local censor and gave law enforcement an excuse to prosecute Portland's anarchists. The ensuing trial would result in the newspaper's closure. Nonetheless, a new intellectual movement had been established, and though the movement would remain small, it would play a disproportionately large role in shaping radical American politics and culture for the next two decades.

Between 1845 and 1980 the Portland waterfront between southwest Washington and Clay Streets, east of Front Street, metamorphosed from wilderness to trade center, to highway, to inner-city vacant lot. No place in Portland has more graphically illustrated the rapidly changing forces of the modern age in which the city has grown. For much of its history this stretch of waterfront was mired in law suits. The struggles centered on public versus private ownership. Originally dedicated as public property, but left unimproved by the city, the waterfront was usurped by private investors. Eventually, private owners allowed their property to decay prompting the public to encourage improvements. The legal battles even became reversed as private investors sought to force the sale of the waterfront to the city. Through all the confusion of legal battles this stretch of waterfront played a central role in the development and identity of Portland. It has finally become, undisputed public territory. The tension and greed of private investment have been replaced by the lack of municipal funds for aesthetic improvement and have left this stretch of land, a potentially fine and important urban park, a vacant lot.