Ran across the statement in the 1940's that Portland was "the most prejudiced city in the west." This from the September magazine "Portland Monthly - The History Issue" page 87.

This is also stated in the paragraph below from "The Oregon History Project" page, created by The Oregon Historical Society:

"Portland had long had a reputation as what one national black leader called “the most prejudiced (city) in the west,” a place where African Americans were limited to work on the railroads or as domestics in homes and hotels. As a result, only 2,000 blacks lived in the city just before the war. In the rest of Oregon, there were virtually none. This was due in part to Oregon’s first constitution, which prohibited blacks from even entering the state, and to the activities of the Ku Klux Klan, which in the 1920s had up to 200,000 Oregon members."

That was 50 years ago and we've all come along way but so have other cities in the west. My question to YOU. Given the strides forward, is Portland still the most prejudiced city in the west? If not, who is?

If you have never taking one of Portland's walking tours I highly suggest it. Portland has a sordid past that includes the likes of the story you posted Craig. Sad to say there is still some deep racial problems even today. Is Portland still the most prejudiced city in the west? Depends who you talk too.

Salt Lake City/Utah is much worse.

I think that Portland has diversified well in the last 50 years, and our racial tolerance has improved greatly. But get out of the big urban areas of the Pacific NW, and I think you'll find quite a bit of prejudice.

Mrs merkin is on to something. What do Portland and Salt Lake City have in common?

Both cities embraced the same restaurant......

The Coon Chicken Inn:

http://www.ferris.edu/jimcrow/links/chicken/

I think Portland itself embraces tolerance ... the issue itself is the city itself. Portland is the whitest "big" city in the United States, the least racially diversified. Given that, I think the city itself does pretty well.

The most prejudiced city of size in the West I can think of is, sadly, Spokane. Another town that is like Ivory Soap, 99 44/100% white, and a lot of the hicks and rednecks up there LIKE it that way. To hear the comments of some of the people up there, some of the people I grew up with even ... and to see the actions up there ... yeah, it's not great. Heck right across the border in Idaho you find the white supremacist capital of America.

I find some parts of the Idaho pan handle scary...

They have progressive talk there though! Funny as hell to hear that being discussed.

IMHO, Portland is still changing. It's a nice city, full of a lot of polite people. Some areas are nicely diversified. Where I live, this is true.

Funny story ... in the mid-80s (I forget the year exactly), Richard Butler and the Aryan Nations held their annual pow-wow of white supremacists on his compound on Hayden Lake. It was an exceptionally hot and dry summer, so there were strict burning bans all over. Butler put in a petition to the US Forest Service to see if he can get a pass to burn his crosses ... and he was shot down.

My mother and I turn on the 11 o'clock news and the first story, of course, is the annual burning of the crosses. Since they couldn't BURN them, the wrapped white Christmas lights around them and did their Heil Hitlers and all that. The sight of these big bad bigots saluting a cross with white Christmas lights around it made my mother and I laugh .. hysterically. We laugh about it to this day.

Craig, Merkin, et al are right on target -- as usual. Brianl, that story is classic. I remember it too. :0)

Our two Coon Chicken Inns were located on Sandy Boulevard. One was located at 12th & Sandy & Burnside. It was bulldozed years ago and replaced by a big billboard. Now, the long vacant site is the new Portland Rock Gym.

http://www.portlandrockgym.com/main.html

The other location probably had the racist facade removed, but the entrance still has a large structure around it. For years it was known as The Prime Rib. New owners have brought life into the joint, and a very ironic twist. Like many Portlanders, I was delighted to see a whole new era dawn with Clyde's Prime Rib.

http://www.clydesprimerib.com/

Our city was segregated like no other city outside of the South. At one time, even our beloved Waddle's had a sign that read White Trade Only -- Please.

http://content.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/hb0b69n6qr/?brand=oac

To follow up a bit on Brianl's story, here is an excerpt from a chilling portrayal of Hayden Lake, Idaho written by Simon Winchester with fantastic photographs by Mary Ellen Mark.

"LONDON SUNDAY TIMES MAGAZINE -- THE FĂśHRER'S GHOST
September 14, 1986

It may never rank in the annals of war alongside Sarajevo or Hiroshima. But let the record state, none the less, that it was the little woodland town of Hayden Lake, Idaho, where the first shots were fired, on a recent hot summer's weekend, in the bloody confrontation that some people firmly believe will soon split America asunder the War Against Zog.

The War Against Zog will be led, and the ensuing White Sovereign National State will be headed, by a 66 year old Hindi speaking aero engineer and correspondence school pastor known as the Reverend Richard Girnt Butler, a man who drives a muck spreader with a sticker on the back that reads: "Jesus is Coming Soon and Boy is He Mad!"

The ghost of Adolf Hitler is being resurrected in America. The spectre of an all American apartheid is being revivified. And plans are afoot to create a new nation, all white, rurally based, God fearing and unpollutable by the heresies of miscegenation, here in Rambo land among the bighorn sheep, the bald eagles, the forests and lakes and mountain ranges of the Pacific northwest.

They are serious plans, too, laid by people far removed from the traditional American lunatic fringe. They have guns and money, a dubious but plausible case and, thanks to some peculiar features of the contemporary condition, an increasingly sympathetic audience.

Richard Butler, who claims to have seen the light about Aryan supremacy while working during the war in the Indian city of Bangalore, began to peddle his thesis in America in 1973. He formed a group known as the Christian Identity Movement, and launched a church called Jesus Christ, Christian an apparent tautology that indicates his belief that Christ was most certainly not a Jew.

That belief was central to Butler's theme: the Caucasian people, he preached, were the chosen people of God, and the Jews were the offspring of the devil who emerged through the genetically imperfect line of Cain. America’s Pacific north-west the Vacant Quarter, including the states of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana and Wyoming constituted the true Promised Land, and it was there, Butler told his tiny flock, that all true Aryans must settle and fulfill the bidding of the Lord.

Back in the Seventies a number of Pacific north westerners, particularly those who would never countenance mixed marriage, were evidently in a suggestible frame of mind. They saw their own peaceful cities; like Seattle, Portland, Boise, Missoula, Cheyenne, as delightfully free from what they were led to perceive as the twin scourges of the East blacks and Jews.

They were willing to listen to Butler's well publicised rantings, and thousands of them came to espouse something of the laager mentality more familiar on the veld. "Don't Californicate Oregon" was a popular bumper sticker in Portland.

The movement started to flourish. The Aryan Nation, the secular arm of Butler's mission, was formed. A headquarters was built a fortress-like structure of wood and corrugated iron set down in the pinewoods north of the old silver mining town of Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, in the obscure logging community of Hayden Lake. And at about the same time a whole asylumful of new groups dedicated to preserving white, non-Semitic supremacy grew up, to add the weight of their opinions to those of the old established Ku Klux Klans and to the rump of Lincoln Rockwell's nearly-defunct American Nazi Party. Among the new, Butler inspired, Pacific northwest based groups was The Order.

This was a most menacing body, founded in 1982 by a violently uncontrollable man now dead, killed in a fight with police named Robert Mathews. Its aim was precisely that of Butler to drive all Jews, Blacks, Red Indians, Chinese and sundry other non Aryans from the Vacant Quarter and establish a whites only enclave but to achieve it through a combination of terror, extortion and violent crime.

Accordingly The Order has a dreadful record. A pair of Order members held 150 children hostage in a schoolhouse in Wyoming last May, burning nine of them horribly in a petrol bomb explosion before killing themselves; another bludgeoned to death a Jewish lawyer, his wife and two children last Christmas Eve in Seattle (the killer claiming that America was "controlled by a Jewish elite who are subverting our national principles"); yet another member was accused of murdering the host of a Denver radio talk show who had denounced the group's tactics; another murdered a Missouri state trooper; still other members were involved in armoured car robberies that netted more than $4 million, as well as in counterfeiting plots, bribery and arson attacks.

Occasionally The Order was more subtle: a trio of members came to the southern Washington town of Goldendale last winter and established a carpet cleaning business called S. T. Enterprises: only when one of the three was arrested for using a stolen credit card did it become clear that "S. T." stood for "storm trooper", and the trio's purpose was to establish an all white community called Wolfstadt on a 2O acre plot that their business had bought in the Goldendale suburbs. All are now in prison.

The police believe that the brief and fiery reign of The Order has been extinguished: all 24 of its known members are either dead or behind bars. But the money they and their acolytes stole is still circulating. And more had poured in - thousands of dollars from robberies, counterfeiting rackets, and donations. Police estimate that about $5 million has come from the various criminal activities of group members, and another $2 million from donations sufficient funds, as the FBI remarked, "to keep them in arms and ammunition for a good while to come".

But now the Aryans have money, plans, an unwittingly collusive American press, a growing army of supporters, a political climate that favours some aspects of their cause, and an arsenal of weapons. They have a leader with as little grace and charm as the little Austrian housepainter had 60 years ago. And they have the total and guaranteed freedom to utter their message as and where they see fit.

And that makes a potent combination and one that may place Hayden Lake, Idaho, on more maps than its founders ever dreamed. "It serves as a warning to society," said one leading Jewish organisation, "about what might happen if bigotry ever is allowed to triumph in the country. Hayden Lake, and all that went on there this summer, is a signal of the new terrorism of hatred. It must be stopped before it gets out of control."

http://www.maryellenmark.com/text/magazines/london_sunday_times/904G-000-008.htm l

As Chris said, Portland has a sordid past. Fortunately in the 70's PDX moved into the modern age. While there are still instances of intolerances, the majority of the population frowns on it. Yay for us!

Mrs M, you might want to check out Salt Lake City a bit closely. I understand the mayor of SLC is a liberal Democrat. Nearly all the liberals in Utah live in SLC and they DO wield influence and power locally. As for the rest of the state -- a vast intellectual wasteland.

Well there's a good ending to Hayden Lake, Littlesongs.

A few years back, there was a Native American lady driving down the road that goes past the north entrance to Butler's compound. She had her young child in the car with her, who happened to be playing with a wallet. He accidentally threw the wallet out the car window, so she stops her car to get the wallet.

Two of Butler's guards stepped off of his premises and accosted the lady and young child to the point of threatening to kill them. This happened on the street - public property.

The lady, incensed, hired some hotshot civil rights lawyer from Alabama who has a stellar track record in these kinds of cases, winning his clients millions in lawsuits. The case went to trial, and Butler and his henchmen lost, big time.

A $6.3 million jury verdict was awarded to the mother and son, and the compound was also turned over to them. She later sold the compound to a philanthropist, who in turn donated it to a local college.

One of Butler's disciples bought him a house in Sandpoint, some 60 miles north of Hayden ... but the community forced Butler out of there too.

There are LOTS of good people in Northern Idaho, and a lot that won't tolerate the crap especially now with the influx of immigration in the Coeur d'Alene area. It's just sad that it took something like this to run this asshole off.

Skep, besides SLC, the majority of smart people and liberals also live in the ski and resort towns (Moab). Damn hippies! SLC is being dragged into appearing almost normal, whether they like it or not.

In SLC for a long time, Nordstrom was the only store open on Sunday. I remember the OUTRAGE when May Co. bought and turned ZCMI stores into M&F and began showing actual BRAS on women of any skin color in the ads in the paper, shocking!

Even Provo is now getting diluted due to the high tech companies, and Idaho still has a higher percap of Mormons than UT.

Mrs merkin: WOW! I never knew Idaho had more Mormons per capita than Utah! How did you pick up all this interesting information?

Uh-o.....Mrs. Merkin used "smart people" and "liberals" in the same sentence......

Isn't that like saying Government intelligence, sanitary landfill etc?

Moab.....Never been there. Yet. Me and my Land Cruiser hope to make it there someday. But at 8 mpg, I'm going to have to save for a long time!

Moab is probably the preeminent off road park in the western US if not in the entire country!

http://tlca.org/2007/05/07/may-7-2007-picture-of-the-week/

Jumbo Shrimp!

Kraft Foods
Martha Stewart Living
Computer Life (a magazine)
Live footage

Fresh Wild Pacific Salmon! (Previously Frozen)

"But at 8 mpg'

Seriously, how does a Land Cruiser get 8 MPG? A smogged-to-death big block ford in a F-250 4x4 gets 9-10 MPG. Are you pulling a tractor-pulling sled with you? (It belongs on a trailer! )

It's possible Skep ... my VW Bus gets about 10 miles per gallon ... and that's a four-banger.

Skeptical,

I did a SOA (Spring Over Axle) conversion and put 35" tires on it. It also has the stock 4:11 gears in it. It has a 4.0L fuel injected in-line 6 cyl producing a whopping 156 HP (when new!)

Brand new from the factory (in 1989) the FJ62's only got about 12 mpg.

Yeah, 8 mpg! That's why I haven't been pressing real hard to finish the transmission rebuild! However, Elk season is just around the corner (early muzzle loader season open 05-OCT), so I need it finished by then!

Let me tell you what Melba Toast is packin' right here, all right. We got 4:11 Positrac outback, 750 double pumper, Edelbrock intake, bored over 30, 11 to 1 pop-up pistons, turbo-jet 390 horsepower. We're talkin' some fuckin' muscle.

Where do you find the aviation fuel to burn in that high-compression monster? I had factory 10:1 compression and dialed it down to 9:1 due to the crappy gas you get today. Only way to get the engine to run decent.

Vitalogy, that quote sounds like the Matthew McConaughey character from "Dazed and Confused"!

Vitalogy, sounds fast and I'll bet it has a great rumble sound to it!

But..........Can it do this:

http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=viewImage&friendID=24184806 8&albumID=0&imageID=1090171

or this:

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&VideoID=17594075

I wish I had your kind of power in my Cruiser!!! That and a pair of ARB air lockers and it would be unstoppable!

Q- yes that is from Dazed and Confused (one of my all time faves!)