people + place

In writing the story of Longview, you run head-on into a startling paradox: Our high-minded group of conservative Christian businessmen would set up a system of blatant racial segregation. All in the name of the “good” as they perceived it in the 1920s. They’d extend those biases to other ethnic groups even into the late 50s and 60s.

Now, it’s our chance to judge their actions, and who protested them or accommodated them. But, as we suggested in a previous essay in this series, if we are to be fair ourselves, we must try to judge events and behavior considering the context of their own time. Grafting our modern morals and standards on history can be arbitrary, inflammatory, smug and simply stupid.

And it further poisons the atmosphere of grievance.

Longview’s founders struggled, with fits and starts, to achieve their “good.” Economic prejudice and social segregation were both shameful and harmful. But note also that no buildings burned, no violence erupted, and there seems to have been little physical harm or danger visited on individuals. Longview’s citizens of all colors lived, civilly, in step with the times themselves.

It’s far from a perfect chronicle of the good. But it’s not horrifically bad, either. And to everyone’s credit, unlike today’s culture wars, it never became truly ugly. ,

EVERY GENERATION, WE THINK WE’VE FIGURED IT OUT

where we’ve Been • where we’re GoInG

The Long View project pairs history with modern context. To celebrate Longview’s 100th birthday, Columbia River Reader is expanding its monthly “People+Place” feature to contrast the historical “Then” with the contemporary “Now.”

“It’s important to look back and celebrate the past,” said publisher Susan Piper, “but equally important to track the changes that make us what we are today. How close are we to the founders’ vision? What remains? What’s entirely new?”

Thanks to tremendous community support (see Partner Spotlights, page 28), the Reader is presenting 12 months of “People+Place Then and Now” reportage, then will combine and expand these features into a commemorative book. Empire of Trees: America’s Planned City and the Last Frontier, written by Hal Calbom, with a foreword by John M. McClelland, III.

The Reader is coordinating with the Longview Centennial Committee, led by Reed Hadley, to publicize civic activities and celebrations (see Centennial Countdown, page 29) and will host a Book Launch Gala June 30, 2023.

Then And Now

1. Developing Dreams

2. Empire of Trees

3. Heavy Lifting

4. Work Force

5. Waste Not, Want Not

6. Telling Stories

7. Transport and Trade

8. Darkness and Light

Photos:

Below: Longview Community Church congregation, opening Sunday, April 1926.

Opposite page: The YMCA on 15th Avenue, formerly Community House.