Venues
TURNVEREIN HALL
Webmaster's note: in German, Turnverein is a single word, and it means Gymnastics Club.
Per the Oregon History Project website under Ethnic Diversity in the City “Though Portland was described by journalists as a city dominated by native-born Americans, its ethnic diversity reflected that of most frontier cities. The proportion of foreign-born was less than in San Francisco, but by 1890, 59 percent of the population was either foreign-born or had at least one foreign-born parent. After 1890, Oregon’s foreign-born increasingly concentrated in Portland, which became far more segmented by class and ethnic districts.
The Germans were the largest foreign-language ethnic group, with a conspicuous social presence at the Turnverein Hall at First and Ash, and the Arion Society, the local branch of a national singing club dedicated to bringing German classical music to America. The officers of the Turnverein in 1874 were working men, including barber A. Staender, bookkeeper Peter Wagner, as well as a saloon keeper and a porter. The officers of the Arion Society in 1889 included the foreman of a harness shop, the owner of a machine shop, a printer at the Freie Presse, and a police captain. The German Aid Society drew men of more means, including several German Jewish merchants as trustees. Through the 1880s, Germans from the first ward elected small businessmen to represent them on the city council.”
N.E. corner of 4th and Yamhill. Also known as “Turn Hall” or the “Scandinavian Socialists Hall”, this was the site of a pioneering lecture on homosexuality. In August 1915, Emma Goldman was on her West Coast tour of the United States talking about birth control, socialism, Russian drama, Frederick Nietzsche, and included a lecture entitled, “The Intermediate Sex.” This was a contemporary term for homosexuals popularized by her contemporary and friend Edward Carpenter, who had published a book by the same name a few years earlier. Incredibly, the Oregonian published advertising of the event, and also covered in detail the controversy surrounding her arrest in Portland during the same lecture tour on charges of distributing “obscene” birth control literature.
13th/SW Jefferson
Emma Goldman's series of lectures given in Portland, Oregon, are advertised on a handbill published August 1, 1915.
Courtesy of the Emma Goldman Papers.
Oregon Journal January 11, 1936, page 12
Research by GLAPN has discovered that one woman in particular, Mrs. Josephine Devore Johnson (wife of the prominent City Attorney for Oregon City, William Carey Johnson) instigated the City’s attempt to shut down Goldman’s soapbox. In a letter in William Warren, Secretary to Portland’s Mayor Albee, Johnson wrote: “Please present to the Mayor, the protest of myself and others against permitting Emma Goldman the anarchist from continuing her propaganda of atheism, anarchy and free love in this city to the extent and manner that she has planned…
Last year we who are kindly protesting, reported to the Mayor’s office, as he will doubtless remember the substance of Goldman lectures of the 1914 mission, those being practically the same as those of this year; and in consequence detectives were sent to the meetings to gather evidence, and in the end Miss Goldman and her manager, Reitman, were ordered out of the city. This cut short an advertised plan to have Miss Goldman deliver a six weeks’ course of lectures and to found an anarchist colony here, (similar to that on Puget Sound) all under the patronage of certain distinguished citizens.
This year the Goldman lectures continue the former lectures of atheism, anarchy and free love and emphasize what was introduced last year for the first time, “Birth Control.” Last year (which finally drew the city’s authorities attention), she was openly advocating to a mixed audience the use of certain precautions of conception to be bought in the drugstores; which communication was contrary to the law and against the public good.
This year the “lecture” course of Miss Goldman contains the “birth control” lecture (for Friday evening next) and supplements this, for the first time, by distributing at other lectures (as last Tuesday night at Col. C.E.S. Wood’s lecture on this anarchist Schmitt and Caplan, whom he expects to defend in the court, which lecture preceded Miss Goldman’s) printed leaflets containing specific directions for preventing conceptions, including articles to be bought at the drugstore. Such directions cannot be passed through the mail or printed in a book as is well known, and the distribution of them constitutes an unlawful act.
This year Miss Goldman has a new lecture (to be delivered next Saturday night, called “A Study in Homosexuality.”) She defined this to an inquirer as being the advocacy of self-use, that is, “self-abuse.” This advocacy is a new and startling note, and one that cannot be struck in the city without question being asked as to how it is permitted. I am taking it for granted that it will not be permitted for the certain above-described literature to be circulated long or… it to be publicly treated of, or for the last mentioned unspeakable suggestion to be more than made (There are some young boys who attend Miss Goldman’s lectures. And there is being an effort made through the “Collegiate Socialist Club,“ I believe to bring out the “intellectual” people through complimentary tickets. So it is especially detrimental to permit this propaganda.)
The suggestion that we make to you is for you to send from your force person who will give you full and accurate stenographic reports of Miss Goldman’s lectures of Friday and Saturday (perhaps sitting in the gallery to be inconspicuous) in order to obtain absolute and full evidence to be used by your office and also for a larger purpose, if you permit. The following are the lecture that we desire to refer to particularly,
Friday, August 7 The Birth Control (with instructions)
Saturday, August 8 - The Intermediate Sex (A Study of Homosexuality)
We would advice [sic] for the sake of gathering complete evidence, Miss Goldman be permitted to deliver both of the above lectures, and if she is stopped, it ought to be at the close of the second lecture (which certainly ought not to be repeated in this city).”
Although the above letter suggests that the police may have been present taking notes of her lecture, no such notes have been found in the City Attorney’s records at the Portland City Archives, and no copies of her lecture “The Intermediate Sex” are known to exist. We do know from Goldman’s autobiography, Living My Life, however, that her lecture was an extraordinary defense of the homosexual to live his/her life without society’s stigmatization. Goldman reports that “sexual inverts” used to stop and talk to her after her presentation, and they confessed to feeling “freed” by her talk. She described these people as being “of finer grain than those who’ve cast them out.” At the same time, her anarchist colleagues tried to pressure her to stop speaking on the subject, because “they felt that anarchists were already suspect as a class,” and they didn’t want any additional antagonism from society. These attempts to censor Emma Goldman made her even bolder and more resolved to see anarchism became a “freeing spirit” in every aspect of life including sexuality.
Check out other articles: Oregonlive article link Oregon's Trails: Firebrand Emma Goldman left mark in Portland.