Story Image

Four Chinese men standing in a "Chinese drug store", 1904

Image: City of Portland Archives, A2004-002.6866 (Used by permission)

Newcomers From a Distant Land

Remembering Portland's Chinese immigrants

Hillyer talks about the Chinese immigrants who came to Portland in the early 20th Century. Not only was Portland's immigrant population made up mostly of the Chinese in 1910, but these immigrants also worked various occupations while also tolerating harsh discrimination that eventually led to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.

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As Told By...

Reiko Hillyer, PhD

Assistant Professor with Term

Lewis and Clark College

Since 2006, Reiko has taught in the history department at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon, where she was awarded Teacher of the Year in 2009. Reiko teaches courses in modern United States history, African American History, the Civil War, women’s history, and the history of the American landscape. Reiko received her B. A. from Yale University and her doctorate at Columbia University. Reiko’s current book project, Designing Dixie: Landscape, Tourism, and Memory in the New South, explores northern tourism to the South in the era following the Civil War and examines the role that tourism played in fostering reconciliation between North and South. Formerly a high school history teacher and guide for Big Onion Walking Tours in New York City, Reiko is a lifelong New Yorker who is almost adjusted to the calm of Portland.