LONGVIEW’S FIRST SCHOOL KIDS SHUTTLED ALL OVER THE PLACE

Mr. Long’s idealism once again strained company resources and energy. Creating a real city, a family city, a progressive city — cost time, money and resources. They had to endure, through the formative years, not the hardships of the original pioneers who came to the West and started with nothing, but the painful though often satisfying process of creating the institutions that make living together possible. These included self-government — taxation, laws and the choosing of leaders — schools, church congregations, and ways for the young and the mature to find enjoyment in what few leisure hours were left in workweeks made necessarily long by the immensity of the workload that had to be assumed.

R.A. Long 1925 letter to S.M Morris cont page 24

Longview’s first school kids shuttled all over the place. They started off in temporary quarters in Kelso, then moved to converted bunkhouses in Longview, previously used by mill builders before the St. Helens Inns were ready. The opening of Kessler School, a two-story stucco “palace” according to Virginia Urrutia, liberated the students in early 1924. But high schoolers soon outgrew that place, too, and R.A. Long High School, a crown jewel in any city, opened to meet that demand in 1928. Always, the schools struggled to catch up.

A Century of service to our communities from page 23

Mrs. Freeman Stands Her Ground

A more complicated problem emerged as Longview began putting its children in school. Mr. Long’s progressive views on universal education conflicted with the ingrained racial biases of Long-Bell Lumber Company and society at large.

“The Long-Bell people were Southerners, used to seeing blacks,” explains McClelland. The lion’s share of workers in the company’s southern mills were black, and the founders assumed there’d be a large-scale migration of able and willing African-American workers eager to man the new mills.

They would live by 1920s community standards:

In the South, the blacks lived apart from the whites. Their children attended black schools. It occurred to no one that any different condition would prevail in the new model city on the Columbia.

J.M.

McClelland Jr

R.A. Long’s

Planned City

With what they took to be the best of intentions, but wearing these cultural and historical blinders, the founders set aside 16 blocks in Longview as the “Negro section” and assumed it would provide for nearly 500 black families. When few Blacks actually arrived, the “section” was moved nearer to the mills, reduced in size, and still segregated a half-mile from the nearest white neighborhood.

Eventually two or three black families did come to town, and they had children. Thus, according to the thinking of the time, and however few in number, it would be necessary to provide for them a separate school. McClelland:

The little black children could not be sent to the new Kessler School. That was the white school. And public money couldn’t be spent on a black school. So an attempt was made to set up a private school.

Since there were only three students “eligible” for this elite private schooling, and the parents of two of them were so disgusted they sent them to another town to live with relatives and attend regular school, the problem seemed to be solving itself. Until a courageous woman named Victoria Freeman had simply had enough.

In 1924 Mrs. Freeman took her two sons, Oliver and Calvin Smith, to the newly opened Kessler School. When she and Oliver entered a classroom she was told there were no seats, that the class was full. In fact, she could see there were seats, and told Oliver to sit down. He did. At which point the teacher rushed out to seek help from the principal. John McClelland, Jr. continues the story:

The teacher….didn’t know that Mrs. Freeman had gone first to see J.H. Secrest, Long-Bell attorney and chairman of the school board, and explained her problem. Secrest had told her to take the boys to school, and if any difficulties arose, to call him. Meanwhile, he called the principal and explained the law, and so the teacher let Oliver keep his seat.

For many years Oliver and Calvin where the only blacks in the Longview schools. Just as in the nation at large, racial justice was painfully slow, and traditional prejudices prevailed. Blacks were relegated to menial jobs and were denied better-paying mill jobs. Longview Fibre only hired its first black millworker in 1950. Theaters, restaurants and even the town’s symbolic centerpiece — the Hotel Monticello — denied them admission.

A Painful Legacy

Longview’s story of racial intolerance and ultimate integration was not especially worse than, or better than, that of the country at large. The other significant minority — brought to Longview especially to do the toughest job in the mill, the green chain — was the Japanese. They were segregated, as well. And, with the onset of World War II, quickly herded together and sent to internment camps.

As time neared for their departure, a diversity of reactions is found among the Japanese ‘guests of America,’ but the deepest, most pained resentment, seems to be among those boys and girls who have tasted the American way of life through education in the public schools. For the most part they are taking their plight in good spirits, mildly protesting that they are loyal to the American government.

Longview Daily News, April 3, 1942

The building of a cohesive community, with rights and privileges shared among all its citizens, would prove to be one of the Planned City’s ongoing challenges. As in the country that spawned it, “liberty and justice for all” — the struggle between assertive individuality and collective conformity — would remain Longview’s imperfect ideal.

•••

Cambr(AI)n Explosion

AI is pulling a full “Sorcerer’s apprentice” move lately. It seems there’s another major innovation every month! There were text-to-image generators a year ago, but they weren’t very good, just an amusing novelty. But now? Suddenly, they are replacing real artists — able to make compelling album artwork, architectural variations, photo-realistic people that don’t exist, or putting your face into any imaginable circumstance or character. The same is now happening with text to video, music and even video games! While so far only producing dream-like sequences or low resolution content, it’s likely that within 6-12 months, anyone will be able to create any imaginable movie with anyone playing any role.

Wilbur and Winston rest on a bench in Downtown Longview with a smiling Robert A. Long, who’s been reading Columbia River Reader’s ‘ People+Place Then and Now’ series.

“My town has definitely NOT gone to the dogs!” he said.

Wilbur and Winston agree.