Oregon's Others

Nativism, pseudoscience, and the campaign against the enemy within

Nativism, pseudoscience, and the campaign against the enemy within

In the era of the First World War and its aftermath, the quest to identify, restrict, and punish internal enemy “others,” combined with eugenic thinking, severely curtailed civil liberties for many people in Oregon and the nation. In Oregon’s Others, Kimberly Jensen analyzes the processes that shaped the growing surveillance state of the era and the compelling personal stories that tell its history. The exclusionary and invasive practices ranged from multiple wartime registrations for women and the registration of “enemy aliens” to the incarceration of women with sexually transmitted diseases, the use of deportations, and forced sterilization at the Oregon State Hospital and other institutions. But some Oregonians resisted the restrictions and challenges to their civil liberties. Their fierce determination to maintain their rights and freedoms fueled movements for human rights, social justice, and dissent that still reverberate today.Comprehensive and compelling, Oregon’s Others examines the collision of civil liberties and persecution through the lens of gender, gender identity and presentation, ability, race, ethnicity, and class.

Kimberly Jensen is professor of history and gender studies at Western Oregon University and the author of Oregon's Doctor to the World: Esther Pohl Lovejoy and a Life in Activism (UW Press, 2012) and Mobilizing Minerva: American Women in the First World War (U Illinois Press, 2008).

Kimberly Jensen is professor of history and gender studies at Western Oregon University and author of Oregon’s Doctor to the World: Esther Pohl Lovejoy and a Life in Activism and Mobilizing Minerva: American Women in the First World War.

"Readers of Oregon's Others will find a rich history of the state that examines stories of oppression and exclusion together with narratives of dissent and resistance, expanding our understanding of the struggle for civil rights and liberties."

"A great strength of this work is the portrayal of women resisting, disrupting, and acting against legal attempts to control their lives, while also revealing how some women--namely white women of greater socioeconomic means--participated in these systems of surveillance and oppresion. . . . This book reveals the intensity of surveillance systems in the early 20th century and how impactful even briefly existing policies were on marginalized populations both during and after the war."

"Much of what Jensen uncovers in Oregon’s Others is disturbingly relevant at a time in which politicians routinely vilify immigrants and bodily autonomy is under attack. Jensen’s primary research is wide-ranging and impressive, and she draws on numerous contemporary scholars to reframe archival materials in provocative ways. While this book will be of particular interest to scholars of Oregon history, it also exposes the darker side of the Progressive Era in general."

"Makes a significant contribution to scholarship on gendered citizenship and relationships of liberty and policing in the early twentieth century through its thorough examination of these issues from various angles in a state that was at the forefront of surveillance in that era."—Cynthia Prescott, author of Pioneer Mother Monuments: Constructing Cultural Memory

"Kimberly Jensen's exceptional contribution to American gender history deconstructs the chilling connections between the success of woman suffrage in Oregon in 1912 and the shocking attacks on civil rights, particularly of women, in the state during World War I and the white-supremacist 1920s. The targets were the most vulnerable—sex workers, foreign nationals, wards of the state, gender nonconformists, and other 'undesirables.' Yet through these people's tragic stories, including their resistance, Jensen offers hope for the nation."—Peter Boag, author of Pioneering Death: The Violence of Boyhood in Turn-of-the-Century Oregon

"How safe are our civil rights today? What can we learn from those whose liberties have been challenged? Kim Jensen's scrutiny of Oregon's past exclusionary policies brings caution for our own roles as citizens. Her deep inquiry into those who challenged policies discriminating against gender, race, ethnicity, and ability highlights our need to be vigilant against continual challenges of 'we' versus 'they.'"—Linda Tamura, author of Nisei Soldiers Break Their Silence: Coming Home to Hood River