A Hostile Environment
Anti-Chinese sentiment
Hillyer explains the importance of the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association and how the association helped Chinese immigrants assimilate into Portland. Chinese immigrants were nicknamed the derogatory, racist term "cooley" by white workers who used the term to refer to people seen as deviant, unable to assimilate, and drove down the price of labor. Portland was once the heart of an anti-cooley association.
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.
