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This story first appeared in the May 24, 2000, edition of WW under the headline “Walk on the Pinko Side.”
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, Portland’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 wayback machine for a walk through John Reed’s Portland.
1.
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.
2.
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.
3.
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.
4.
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 an American millionaire, but died a drunkard in the streets of Paris in 1936.
5.
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.
6.
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.