John
Reed
b. 1897 Portland,
Oregon
d. 1920 Moscow, Russia
Reed's books
include Insurgent Mexico, Ten Days That Shook
the World and a collection of World War I reports called
The War in Eastern Europe. His Collected Works
are available in a Modern Library anthology edition.
Reed's mother,
Margaret Green,
was one of the first women in Portland to smoke cigarettes
in public.
Louise Bryant
was with Reed in Moscow when he died of typhus, a curable
disease for which no one there had medicine. The Bolshevik
government certified him as a Martyr of the Revolution,
and he was buried in the Kremlin wall on Oct. 23, 1920.
Only one other American, Wobbly godfather "Big Bill" Haywood,
is interred there.
Charles Erskine
Scott Wood (1852-1944), the corporate lawyer who founded
Portland's public library and the Portland Art Museum, was
a self-described anarchist who wrote regularly for The
Masses, the New York pinko mag that dispatched John
Reed to Mexico and Russia
Every generation thinks it invented counterculture.
The hippies had their cannabis-fueled idealism, the punks
their cut-and-paste rebellion. Even today, when every black-clad
street protester is branded an "anarchist" and creative
sexual orientations often take the place of coherent politics,
kids feel a fresh rush when they fight the power.
But how many of the rabble-rousers who faced off with cops
on May Day 2000 know that more than a century ago, the City
of (Red) Roses birthed America's greatest radical Renaissance
man?
As a noted journalist, John Reed covered the Mexican and
Russian revolutions, the Eastern Front in World War I, and
violent clashes between organized labor and corporate power
in America--establishing the blueprint for what, 50 years
later, became the "New Journalism" of Tom Wolfe, Norman
Mailer and Truman Capote. Reed also helped found the first
Communist Party in the United States, performed theater
with Eugene O'Neill, shared poetry with C.E.S. Wood and
argued politics with Emma Goldman. He died before his 33rd
birthday.
Like many a local agitator today, Reed came from the affluent
class, then spent his life criticizing affluence. He was
an avowed Bohemian, indulging in free love, rowdy black
music (Scott Joplin's shockingly syncopated ragtime) and
all-night gabfests about the evils of capitalism. Reed railed
against big business' collusion with corrupt governments.
With his unionist comrades, he often faced hostile police.
"He was an extraordinary idealist who gave his life to
social change wherever it was needed," says novelist Walt
Curtis, Port-land's unofficial poet laureate and a scholar
of John Reed-iana. "He really felt embittered by this country,
cheated by this idealistic democracy that turned to shit."
A lot of radical history has been erased in the 80 years
since Reed's death, but his hometown's possibilities for
ferment haven't disappeared. Step into our way-back machine
for a walk through John Reed's Portland.
About 130 years ago, at the top of B (now Burnside) Street,
John Reed's pioneer grandfather, Henry D. Green, set in
motion the Balkanization of the Latte Nation by building
the first mansion in the Southwest hills.
But Green proved an unwilling yuppie. For a man who made
his fortune hacking through forests and transforming wilderness
into city, a life of idle wealth and socializing was torture.
He eventually drank himself to death in the fine house.
Only one cement stairway fragment of Cedar Hill remains,
at a forgotten twist in the lower Forest Park road
connecting Southwest Cactus and Cedar streets. Remember
this stark fate the next time you ponder your dot-com's
forthcoming IPO.
The Arlington Club (811 SW Salmon St.) still serves
Portland's better-endowed cocktail-sippers. John's father,
C.J. Reed, was a salesman from New York who, in 1887, wed
one of Portland's richest debutantes and landed a seat in
the city's most privileged club. C.J. Reed secretly hated
the pretensions of Portland's snobbish nouveau riche and
became famous for his thinly cloaked jests about Arlington
Club associates' under-the-table legal and ethical scrapes.
In 1905, C.J. was deputized as the local United States marshal
and helped break up an illegal land grab that saw millions
of acres of publicly owned timberland sold by the U.S. Park
Service, at a fraction of its value, to local millionaires.
It was a big victory, but C.J. made so many powerful enemies--some
in the Arlington Club--that for the rest of his life he
struggled to provide for his family. He died in 1912.
John Reed's young uncle, Henry "Hal" Green, liked to drink
and socialize with the high-caste crowd. Unfortunately,
he was a good-for-nothing slacker. After spending his inheritance
and losing several jobs, Hal moved in with the Reeds and
got a job with John's father. But Hal hated work, and the
girl he loved married someone else. He hit bottom. On Nov.
15, 1898, Hal loudly and publicly killed himself by poisoning
his own drink while out with friends at the Portland
Hotel, which once stood on the site of Pioneer Courthouse
Square. Afterward, The Oregonian printed an editorial
bitching out the family for not raising him right, proving
that the daily's taste for the moral high ground hasn't
changed much. In 1952 the city pulled down the opulent hotel's
eight stories to make way for a parking lot.
Reed had lots of hot dates, but the love of his life was
Louise Bryant, one of Portland's small community
of radical thinkers and artists. John and Louise first hooked
up under scandalous circumstances at Louise's "writing studio"
(a.k.a. Bohemian Love Pad), in a respectable-looking brick
building at 1033 SW Yamhill St., right around the
corner from the Central Library. Today, the "Professional
Building" holds a collection of presumably less-torrid offices;
the curious can poke their heads into the silent lobby and
soak up the Bryant/Reed afterglow. After a few nights of
passion with Reed, whom she'd admired from afar for years,
Louise ditched her downtown dentist husband to join her
lover in Greenwich Village. They stayed together until Reed's
death in 1920. Louise later settled abroad and started a
small family with with an American millionaire, but died
a drunkard in the streets of Paris in 1936.
The International Workers of the World Hall (521
NW Davis St.) was quite a hot spot back in 1914--not unlike
the Liberation Collective, just around the corner today.
Back in the heady days before World War I, the super-radical
"Wobblies" organized from coast to coast. This is where
Reed hung out while visiting his Mum on trips home from
Greenwich Village. By the end of the decade, Wobbly organizers
were massacred, imprisoned or exiled and the union broken.
While a new condo occupies the former Old Town stomping
grounds, the revived local IWW lately scored its biggest
victories in generations by organizing the Mallory Hotel,
Harry's Mother and Janus Youth Services.
The Multnomah Hotel (now the Embassy Suites; 319
SW Pine St.) is where, in 1919, Louise Bryant shared a room
with John's mother, Margaret Green, during a speaking tour
in support of the Russian Revolution. The radicals were
restless for news about the fledgling Communist state. Because
of his Bolshevik ties, Reed was banned from returning to
the United States, so Louise addressed the capacity crowd
of 4,000 at the old Civic Stadium.
Touring the old haunts of Reed & Company reveals a
little of the Portland history you won't hear from the Chamber
of Commerce. But given the rowdy, painful and energizing
events of the past few weeks, it's clear that Portland's
revolutionary spirit endures, not in mossy concrete or comfy
club chairs, but in its new generation of agitators.
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Willamette Week | originally
published May 10,
2000
|
