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Portland
YWCA and World War II
Document
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Document
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Aid
to Women
Interracial
Charter
Youth
on the Move
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How Did the
YWCA of Portland Respond to the Social Challenges
Posed by World War II?
Research
by Rose M. Murdock, Mary K. Gayne, and Patricia A. Schechter
"Terrific
change" well describes the dual character of wartime Portland: terrific
in the sense of inspiring terror and terrific in the sense of intense
excitement.[1] A key to this change
was the phenomenal movement of people via migration, employment, enlistment,
and incarceration. Oregon witnessed tremendous human mobilization in
the shipyards, the military, and internment camps and most of this activity
touched Portland directly. City officials met these challenges with
a minimal investment of resources and with an eye toward maintaining
the social and political status quo, most notably in terms of racial
segregation. Innovation in social planning instead came from the private
sector and the federal government. The Kaiser Corporation built housing
and childcare facilities in Vanport, the town-like area built to accommodate
shipyard workers, which ranked as the nation's largest housing project
at that time, home to 50,000 people. There was, however, little long-term
investment in supporting social change. The emblem of this stance was
Vanport itself, hastily constructed on the flood plain of the Columbia
River. Still home to some 15,000 residents in 1948, a significant portion
of whom were African American, Vanport flooded in May, effectively destroying
the "town." The lack of warning and protection to Vanport residents
and the suffering they endured provide haunting testament to the lack
of welcome facing newcomers to Portland, especially people of color,
during these years.
Under
these difficult circumstances, the Portland YWCA tried to offer kindness
and flexibility. The organization wrote one of only two letters received
by Oregon's governor commending restraint toward Japanese-American citizens,
whom the Secretaries of the YWCA praised as loyal and patriotic.[2]
While a visit from national YWCA staff noted that there was an "anti-Japanese
group" within the Portland association, other records note the awkward
and sad good-byes at farewell parties among club girls and the support
in the form of transportation, letters, and visits provided to Japanese
YWCA members and staff.[3] When
the YWCA was pressured to uphold racial segregation in the military
by renting its Williams Avenue Branch building to the U.S.O. for the
use of African-American soldiers stationed in Portland, leaders tried
to point themselves in a progressive direction by pursuing the integration
of its own segregated programming. African-American YWCA leaders moved
their offices from Williams Avenue to Taylor Street downtown and black
women and girls were encouraged to make full use of the building. This
innovation, capped by the hiring of Marjorie Jackson as the first African-American
associate executive director of a city YWCA, earned the Portland YWCA
high marks with the National, thought to be "second only to Brooklyn
in integration of membership," according to a 1944 report.[4]
The election of Dorothy McCullough Lee (who was white) as mayor of Portland
in 1950 was a new high water mark of female ambition and achievement
in Portland. Although the city in 1950 was marked by "financial insolvency,
cultural backwardness, and racial prejudice," according to one scholar,
the Portland YWCA embraced racial integration, heralded the new United
Nations and expanded roles for women in the public sphere, and embraced
an ambitious capital campaign for a new building in downtown Portland.[5]
1.
Annual Report to National YWCA, 1942, Portland YWCA Archives, Portland,
Oregon.
Back
to Text
2.
Betty Britton, Mildred Bartholomew, and Lazelle Alway to Governor
Charles Sprague, 8 December 1941, Charles Sprague Papers, Oregon State
Library, Salem, Oregon.
Back
to Text
3.
"Report of Local Visit," by Esther Briesemiester, March
6-7, 1944, Community Files, Administrative Affairs, National YWCA
Records, New York City (Microfilm, Reel 207).
Back
to Text
4.
Minutes of Committee of Management [Williams Avenue YWCA], 11 February
1944, Williams Avenue Pages, Oregon Historical Society, Portland,
Oregon.
Back
to Text
5.
E. Kimback MacColl, The Growth of a City: Power and Politics in
Portland, Oregon, 1915-1950 (Portland: The Georgian Press, 1979),
p. 654.
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to Text
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