Gus Solomon

Zell:  Judge Solomon, thank you for your time. We’ll start with a general question about where did you or your grandparents or your parents come from?
SOLOMON: I was born in Portland on August 29, 1906. My father came from Romania almost 100 years ago. He came to the United States when he was about 14 years old and landed in New York, but shortly thereafter he went to Florida, where there was a big Romanian community at Key West. That community spread out and went to Tampa. Some of them went to New Orleans, and quite a few of them went to Cuba. My father’s brother went to Matanzas, Cuba. After being in Florida for about seven or eight years, he followed the fairs, and finally landed in Portland at a fair in the 1880s. He ran into a landsman [a fellow Jew who comes from the same district or town] of his by the name of Burrell. He decided to remain here, and he went into business with Burrell, stayed with him for a short time, and then he opened up his own business. 

Zell:  Why did he leave Romania? Why did he decide to come to a new country? 
SOLOMON: My father’s mother died at [his] birth, and his father died when [my father] was a young boy, so he was brought up by some relatives in a little town called [Hoosh?], which has been destroyed now. 

Zell:  I see. So he was on his own then, more or less?
SOLOMON: Practically. Yes, that’s right.

Zell:  What do you think gave him the idea to come? 
SOLOMON: There were a lot of people who came. I think it may very well be, but I don’t know, that his older brother had come before him. And he had a sister. I knew his brother and sister. His sister lived in Brooklyn, but I don’t know whether she — she was older. Of course they were older because my father’s mother died at childbirth, with him. I don’t know anything more about it; he didn’t speak very much about Romania.

Zell:  What kind of fair was this that he followed? You said he followed the fairs. 
SOLOMON: I think one of them was a world’s fair in Chicago. I think he used to sell shoelaces, things of that kind, when he came. He came to Portland around 1885, around there. 

Zell:  And it was because there was a friend here, somebody that he knew, did you say? 
SOLOMON: He ran into him in Portland. The Burrells, who were also from Romania. The Burrells were here from Romania and the Kauffmans [sp?], Kauffman the hatter. Some of the Kauffmans are still here. 

Zell:  Did he tell you where he settled when he first came to Portland, whereabouts in the city? 
SOLOMON: I don’t know, but it was in South Portland. He got married about two years later to my mother, who had come later. My mother was a Rosenkrantz, and she came here with my uncle. We used to call him Fetter [Fat] Moishe. He was known all over the city. I don’t know if you’ve heard the name. He was the shamos [caretaker] at the Sixth Street Shul [Synagogue]. He came first, and then a number of other members of that family came. He brought my mother, and then there was my Uncle Jake who came, and then, many years later, my uncle Chaim Hirsch [sp?], who was a teacher over there in Europe. They came from Russia.

Zell:  Your mother’s family came from Russia?
SOLOMON: Yes, from right near Kiev. Do you know M.H. Rosenkrantz? 

Zell: Yes.
SOLOMON: It was his father who came in 1906, many years after my mother came. My mother helped bring him over. You know how it was. One person used to come, and then they used to save money and bring the rest of them over. 

Zell:  Your mother and your father then lived in the South Portland area. 
SOLOMON: Yes, they got married. My mother was married in about 1892 or ’93, in the little hall across the street from the public auditorium now, on Third and Market Street. They lived around First and Hall. I was born in a little house across from the First Street Synagogue, on First Street between Hall and Lincoln Street. My father owned the three houses, and next to it was Neighborhood House. 

Zell:  Now if he already owned three houses, he must have done quite well.
SOLOMON: My father, like a lot of other Jews here who came, did very well because they worked hard. That was the only thing they knew. 

Zell:  What did he work at?
SOLOMON: My father was in the clothing business, and he used to also outfit logging camps, the clothes, and he had a store not only in Portland, but also in Klamath Falls. By the time I was born, I think my father also had an interest in a store in Havana, Cuba. This demonstrates that my father wasn’t the only one. There were all kinds of people who came here and who devoted their time to making money and to taking care of a family. When I was a young man, my father was already worth a quarter of a million dollars at that time. He built an apartment house, what was commonly known as the Solomon Apartments but what was really known as the Caruthers Apartments, on First and Caruthers. Of course, a lot of those people —  Jews didn’t lose their money, except my father; he lost quite a bit — but they had devoted their time to making money, and they did. 

Zell:  Then his life really wasn’t circumscribed by the South Portland area. He seemed to have expanded well beyond that.
SOLOMON: We lived in South Portland quite a bit of the time. When I was two years old, the family moved to Goose Hollow, about Twelfth and Clay Street, and some of the rest of the family moved around there. The Rosenkrantzes moved someplace on Market Street near the old Jewish Community Center. Most of our interests were in South Portland. We went to the Sixth Street Synagogue because by that time my uncle Abraham Rosenkrantz, he was the chazzan [cantor] of the synagogue. I had one uncle who was the shamos and another uncle who was the chazzan. 

Zell:  Now was your family — they were involved in the temple. Did religion play a big part in their lives? 
SOLOMON: No, not my father. He was not a very religious man, and he wasn’t a very learned man, either, because he had come so early to the United States. He went to night school in New York for a couple of years, and he could read. He loved to read the newspapers. He could write a little, and he could figure. He was good in math. But otherwise he was not very literate.

Zell:  Now your mother’s experience had been a little different, and she was . . . 
SOLOMON: My mother was even less trained than my father. She could read a little Yiddish, and she could read a little English, but not very much. 

Zell:  I see. But they were able to get along well enough. Now when they got out of the South Portland community, were they at a disadvantage because . . . 
SOLOMON: No, not at all. We moved back to South Portland in 1913, and we lived in the South Portland community until 1918 or the beginning of 1919, when my father bought a big house on 14th and Knott Street, which was then a very nice neighborhood. It was a five-bedroom house. From then on, we lived either in Irvington or in Laurelhurst. My father began to lose his money, however, in 1921, and by 1927 or ’28 he had lost most of his money. 

Zell:  Was that because of some world or country economic situation? 
SOLOMON: Two things. The big depression came in 1921 [although the Great Depression began in 1929, there had been a large recession in 1921], which is the largest drop in American history; the prices went down. My father at that time had a corner on quite a bit of the working clothes, a certain kind of work clothes and cotton goods for trousers, and the market just went to hell. He was then in the jobbing business as well as the retail business. He lost money there. My father didn’t believe in fire insurance. He was the type of person who says if you don’t burn the place yourself, you don’t burn. And we had a fire that started three doors away. My father was practically wiped out. Then he also lost money — my father owned timberlands. He had fires over there, and at that time, even if he had believed in insurance, he couldn’t have gotten insurance, so fire caused a lot of his difficulty, and the market conditions.

Zell:  Let’s go back to your early life then. Your first few years were spent in South Portland. Did you start school? No? All right, then in Goose Hollow?
SOLOMON: In Goose Hollow I spent up to about, until I was almost six years old, then we moved to Fourth and Grant Street, and I went to Shattuck School when I was six years old. I lived and went to school there. I had two brothers and two sisters. My oldest brother was ten years older than I was, and I had another brother who was eight years older than I was. And I had two sisters: Mrs. Delphine Wallen [sp?] and Clara Cantor [sp?]. They were older than I was, and they all went to school at the same time. But my brother, in 1917, when I was 11 years old, joined the Army. He was the first person in Oregon to respond to the call; he was a patriot. He went into the Army that at time. 

During that whole period of time, I went to school, and I can recall that in 1917 or ’18 they were building the shipyards in South Portland. My father had this store, this building, on First and Caruthers, and also there were stores on the first floor, and my father opened a branch store at that time. Many of the people who worked in these plants had to walk up that hill to take the streetcar. The first shift was out about 3:30 or 4:00 PM. I went to Shattuck School, which was on Broadway and Hall Street, and I used to run practically down to that store so I could work there because there was only one man in the store and he needed some help. So I used to come down there. I must have been about 13 or so because prior to that time I used to go to cheder [a school teaching Hebrew and Jewish religious knowledge] at the old Neighborhood House on Second and Wood. 

Zell:  Now cheder prepared you just for your bar mitzvah at that time. Most of the other young people living in your neighborhood did the same thing, went to the public school with you? 
SOLOMON: There were a lot of them who went there. You see, during the early part of the 20th century, Jews didn’t believe very much in Jewish education. We were affected by the woman who did probably more harm to American life than anybody, Emma Lazarus. She wrote that poem about the melting pot and various others, which was a terrible thing to have done to Jews. [Note: Lazarus is falsely attributed here. The term “the melting pot” was first coined by Israel Zangwill in 1908 and was the title of his play by that name; Lazarus died in 1887. In Zangwill’s play, one of the characters first uses the term while contemplating the Statue of Liberty. The confusion no doubt stems from this.] In addition to which the early Jews who came to the United States, and to Oregon, too, were affected by the socialist tradition. They were not very religious. And so with a socialist background — although these people weren’t socialists, they were affected by it — and with the idea of the “melting pot,” it did great damage to the cause of Jewish education and Jewish learning. I was the victim of that, and so were my brothers. 

Zell:  Yes. It was to leave all that behind, was it? And to . . . 
SOLOMON: To start in to become Americans. And to become American means that you go through a blender or a grinder and come out looking and talking and acting like everybody else.

Zell:  Now with your father in business — and he somewhat, you had said before, was not religious — did he belong to local organizations, either . . .?
SOLOMON: There was one thing our family always did, which was it would contribute, and my father was a good contributor to the Sixth Street Synagogue. There were others. The Bardis belonged and the Nemorodskys [sp?], but I don’t think the Nemorodskys ever gave very much money. And Shenk [sp?]. But I think my father was about the second largest contributor. The Bardis were the first. And then H. B. Davis. I don’t think he gave very much, but he did belong to that. My father, incidentally — and I didn’t know this until after he died — helped out the Sephardic synagogue. My father may have had some Sephardic blood. Now we don’t know that exactly, but his mother was named Salomon also, but spelled her name with an “a” — S-a-l — and some people think that meant that she was of a Sephardic background. Before the turn of the century, the Sephardics were dissatisfied with going to the First Street Shul, and they talked to my father about the need for a Sephardic synagogue. He put up the money, or quite a bit of it, for them. I learned that when I was invited to a service at the Sephardic synagogue; they told me that story when I came there, about ten or 12 years ago, maybe a little longer. 

Zell:  Were there any business-type organizations, any ways that the men organized themselves business-wise, that you remember at that time?
SOLOMON: No, I don’t recall him being in any, in the Chamber of Commerce, for example. No, he didn’t take an active interest.
 
Zell:  There were no unions at that time.
SOLOMON: My father was not very friendly to unions at that time, but later on his store was a union store. 

Zell:  Now some of the institutions that we hear about in South Portland, such as the Neighborhood House, did they play a certain role in your life?
SOLOMON: Yes. We did not go to the Neighborhood House, my parents. I didn’t except to go to cheder. Our family had a little more money than the people who went to the Neighborhood House. We went to the B’nai Brith building, which now is called the Jewish Community Center. I did go there for a short time, and I did go to some of the activities there. My mother was the president of the City of Hope, “The Builders” I think they called it at that time, and she gave money and she was quite active in those organizations. She also gave money to Israel, or Palestine. But it was mainly the City of Hope organization, which had a different name then.

Zell:  What kind of activities did you participate in at the Jewish Community Center? 
SOLOMON: Not very much. I played basketball, I did a little gym, but I wasn’t very much of an athlete. They did have a Jewish organization there, a young people’s organization, young men, and I went to that, but I forgot the name. I think they called it the Junior Menorah. Was there such an organization? 

Zell:  I don’t know. First time I’ve heard the name. 
SOLOMON: I think it was the Junior Menorah. I belonged to it, and I remember some of the other people. Ted Swett [sp?] belonged to it, and Sam Sule [sp?], and Phil Silver, and some of the Weinsteins. We went there on Saturday night. 

Zell:  Now you mentioned the school, Shattuck, and the idea of the melting pot. If you remember back, was a large percentage of the students there Jewish, or did you feel a minority at that time?
SOLOMON: No. I think a substantial portion were Jews, and a lesser proportion, I think, were Italians. There were quite a few Italians. But just a few blocks up was the boundary for Failing School, so some of the Italians, some of the Jews, they went to Failing School. Some of us went to Shattuck. I think Failing had more Jews than Shattuck. 

Zell:  Was there a feeling of being different than others, or that just didn’t enter into your life at that time? 
SOLOMON: No. I felt no discrimination. I knew I was a Jew, though. I knew I was a Jew because at an early age we were “Christ killers.” The Italians told us that. And at times — where the Duniway Park is there used to be a gulch, and the train ran over there. I never went there. I used to go down because some of the kids used to chase us over there as we were going to cheder. 

Zell:  So little childlike incidences like that reminded you as to . . . 
SOLOMON: Yes, we always knew we were Jews. 

Zell:  Because somebody else told you. 
SOLOMON:It wasn’t a question that we knew very much about Judaism, except that we knew all the holidays and we knew the foods. We had a different kind of a life then. My mother’s family was a large family. We would get together in the summer, once or twice a month on a Sunday. We’d all come together, and sometimes we’d be as many as 50 or 75 people, as I recall, in the backyards of some of the homes. 

I remember my uncle Chaim Hirsh, that’s M. H.’s father. They had a place on Fourth Street. We’d go there, and they’d have a lot of food, and they would make tea outside. When we didn’t to that, we’d go to the Oaks Park or the Peninsula Park, and it was amazing how many people would show up, all the relatives and all the kids. We used to play ball, and we used to go in the park. I remember when I was 11 or 12 years old, even younger, we’d go to Peninsula Park, and we’d go there by streetcar, the whole family. It would be a whole outing over there. We had some relatives, the Cohens. They were a little older. They came sometimes, but they were ball players already, and card players, too. A lot of those people, they would come out and drink tea, and they would play cards, the older men. 

In the summertime, the whole family would go down to Long Beach, Washington, and there were all kinds of relatives there. Sometimes we would be down there for a month or six weeks. There’d be a lot of relatives and a lot of kids. Then subsequently, we went to Seaside. 

Zell:  It sounds like a very good life. Are your general remembrances of your childhood warm and happy?
SOLOMON: Yes, I think so. We had a good life. 

Zell:  Owing mostly to the fact that your family was financially comfortable and that there was a large family group?
SOLOMON: Yes, but I didn’t think that there was any distinction between our family who had money and some of the relatives who had much less than we did. There was no distinction at all. We never knew of any distinction, except we knew that some of the kids didn’t have as much as we did, and we used to help finance them, that’s all. There were a lot of other people who had money, Jewish people, who came about the same time my father did, maybe a little earlier, maybe a little later, who had a lot more money. But that didn’t have any influence on us, not at all. 

Zell:  Now the difference between the community that you are speaking of and the German Jewish community that we hear about. Were you aware of any distinctions? Maybe not in your early years, but as you got a little older, were you aware of distinctions? 
SOLOMON: Yes, we did. We knew. We didn’t go to the temple [Congregation Beth Israel]. Some of the kids went to the temple. At the age of 12 or 13 I’d moved to Irvington, so some of my friends there, their parents went to the temple, but I never did. 

Zell:  Did you still come back to the Sixth Street Shul when you lived in the Irvington area?
SOLOMON: That’s right. By that time I wasn’t going to Sunday school anymore. Some of the other kids went to Sunday school, and they went to the temple, and some of them went to the Ahavai Shalom. That was after the war — 1918, ’19 — and by that time there were a lot of people who had made money during the war. The Weinstein family had become quite affluent at that time. Of course, the Bardis had a lot of money. That was of the Polish and Russian Jewish community. There was a very small Romanian community over here. But we did know that there were German Jews and that they regarded themselves as better than we were, and I think that subsequently we felt much satisfaction of the fact that the boys who came from Russian and Polish heritage did much better in college. I don’t know whether you’re acquainted, but this is one of the great intellectual communities in America with a very small Jewish community. Some of the Jewish leaders of the world came from Portland, intellectually. 

Zell:  I think I’m going to come back to that in a whole general subtitle, because you really do know about that. I’m going to cover it and come up to that point. You mentioned one thing I was somewhat interested in. Did the people in the Jewish community stick within their nationalistic groups? You said the Romanians were different from the Polish Jews. Was there a little grouping off?
SOLOMON: There may have been. We did not fraternize with the Romanian Jews. There were some. We knew them. There were the Feldsteins and the Kaufmans and the Adlers and the Yankwitzes [sp?], which is the family name of Hy Samuels and his family. It’s a good family, incidentally, an intellectual family. 

Zell: You were speaking about the large Rosenkrantz family, and the fact that it was good to have family relationships. 
SOLOMON: We didn’t have to go out from them. Now when we moved to Irvington, of course, I knew a lot of young people who were my age. There was Ted Swett and Ted Schenk and the Weinstein boys, and we were going to high school together. And I went to Lincoln High School and I went to Jefferson High School, so I knew a lot of young people who went to both those schools, and while we knew a number of non-Jews, I don’t think we had any close friends who were not Jewish. 

Zell:  When you speak of your high school years, was there a special encouragement from the family for the attainment of good grades and diligence to your work?
 SOLOMON: Actually, I wasn’t pushed like some of the others, and I didn’t do as well in school as I should have because I had many other interests. Not athletic interests. I don’t know what I did, but I didn’t do as much studying as I should have. I knew that. Some of the other boys were much better than I was. I was not among the best. For instance, I was nowhere near in the same class as Louie or Morton Goodman. Louie was a genius, and he was in my class. And Milton Harris, who was a fine student. We had some great students there.
 
Zell:  Can you remember some more names? Names are always interesting for a project like this.
SOLOMON: Well, Milton Harris was just an outstanding student. He subsequently became vice president of the Gillette Company and chairman of the board of the American Chemical Society. He has a sister here, Helen Rotenberg [sp?]. Then there was, of course, Joe Dorfman [sp?]. The Dorfmans were very, very bright people. And Harold Weinstein was a brilliant student. He was killed during that first slaughter, when they were going to the North Sea, a team of Americans. And Sidney Weinstein, who lives in Seattle, he was a bright student. And Phil Silver was a brilliant young man. He just died here. He had a tragic life, a bad life, but he was a very good student. Those are the ones that I know of most. There were other boys of great talent. For instance, David Tamkin, who recently died in Los Angeles, and I went down to speak at his funeral. He was a great composer. He composed The Dybbuk. He was a fine artist. There were many. Benny Vigdoff [sp?] was a fine student. He was a little behind me. Maury Goldschmidt was a great student. Rabbi Jacob Weinstein was a fine student. 

Zell:  Was it that there wasn’t great encouragement at home to excel in studies, or . . .? 
SOLOMON: Maybe in their families; in mine there wasn’t. My father was not very intellectual, and my mother wasn’t intellectual. I got my encouragement, primarily after I left high school, because of the company I kept. I was in a very fast league over there, of intellectuals. You just couldn’t sit down and do nothing; you had to keep up. That’s where I got my encouragement. All these boys were going to great schools in America. Talk about schools, we were going to Columbia and Harvard and Yale and all the top schools in America, these boys that came from this little community. 

Zell:  Now where did they get the idea that they could do this? Were they encouraged by teachers, or did they just have a great vision that they would be accepted if they worked hard? You hear a lot about quotas in those days, about getting into college.
SOLOMON: It wasn’t so bad in most of the colleges until you got into the professional schools. For instance, a little ahead of me there was Mark Rothko and a Director boy and a Neimark [sp?], who went to Yale, I remember. I was growing up in Irvington with Ted Swett and the Weinstein boys and some of the others, and we just assumed that when we graduated from high school we’d go to college. Now we had the money to go to college, all of us. We didn’t have the problem that some of the other people had. There were other fellows who had a more difficult time. The Sussmans had a more difficult time, but they were very good students. 

Zell:  Does somebody step in and help a student like that to go to college? 
SOLOMON: I think they worked. I think that Jacob Weinstein was a very good student. He had no money. I don’t know how he got to school. He might have worked. There was Max Gordon and Sam Gordon. Sam went to Hebrew Union College right away; he was taken care of. I think there was money to help a man to become a rabbi. But his brother, he worked. He went to Reed with me. I’m surprised now that I did go without the encouragement, except that I had plenty of money at that time. I sometimes think of the amount of money that I had, and I’m kind of ashamed that I had so much. I used to get an allowance in high school of ten dollars a week, which is about 100 dollars a week now. 

Zell:  That’s really different, certainly. Actually, there were lots of choices open to you; you didn’t really have to go to college. Was there something in your mind that told you that you must go?
SOLOMON: No. I went to college because all my friends were going to college. I didn’t really like business, I wasn’t very enamored of it, and all the other fellows were going to go, and so I went. I didn’t know what I was going to do, but after I spent a short time at the University of Washington, I came down to Reed College. 

Zell:  What was the University of Washington like then? About what year was this? 
SOLOMON: 1922. I didn’t have very many friends, and I was all alone. I wasn’t very happy with the school. It was a big school. I wasn’t very happy.

Zell:  Even then it was large. 
SOLOMON: Yes. And I was awfully young. I was 15 years old. 

Zell:  How did that happen? How did you get through the Portland school system so quickly? 
SOLOMON: I didn’t start until late, but they moved me along.

Zell:  You must have shown talent. 
SOLOMON: There were a number of us who took a little over three years to go through high school. So I was very young when I went there. I shouldn’t have gone to college that early. Then I went down to Reed, and that was a school that I took to. I liked it. Apparently they liked me. So I stayed there two years, and I really enjoyed it. It was a great school there, and I sort of found myself, although I wasn’t by far the best student there. A lot of the other Jewish fellows were much better than I was. I stayed there for two years, and then I left because the president died, Scholz, and because two of my political science professors left on sabbaticals and there was really nothing for me to do. I was interested in history, modern European history, and somewhat in politics. It was only then that I learned about discrimination. It was in the year 1925 that, when I went back to the University of Chicago, I learned about discrimination.

Zell:  How was that? How did you . . .?
SOLOMON: I was there as a senior. I decided I would go into history, but then it became abundantly clear to me that a Jew wasn’t going to get into the History Department. While all the other people were getting good offers and fellowships, I had one little teeny offer. I was really told, “Look, you’d better find something else. Don’t go into the academic world.” Because Jews didn’t get anyplace in the academic world. Maybe there were one or two. They were the heads of the departments; they were really brilliant. But there were brilliant fellows who weren’t getting anyplace. And so, when I graduated from the University of Chicago, I decided that the only thing open to me was to go into one of the three professions, either medicine, or accounting, or law, because by this time my father was losing his money, and I would have any money. He was beginning to lose it, but I was still taken care of. I didn’t work. I went to school. 

Zell: Now you mentioned you wanted to get into the department of history, and they recommended that you shouldn’t do it. Was there someone who actually comes and tells you not to do it because you are Jewish? Or is it a little bit more subtle than that?
SOLOMON: You talk to the other kids, the other students, and when you see other people getting fellowships and things like that and you’re not getting them, you know what the problem is. It wasn’t so bad; it was even worse in chemistry or physics.

Zell:  What — you would apply? The reason I am going into this is because my children probably would never understand the way it was then. That’s why I’m asking you. 
SOLOMON: Well, you really didn’t have to. They knew I was there; they knew I was interested in going into the graduate school. I was taking graduate courses, and obviously I had to get a fellowship. Everybody got a fellowship who was going to go into the academic world. I didn’t get any, and at that time I was an honor student. When I graduated from Chicago, I came home. That’s all. I had earlier thought, when I first got out of school, of maybe going into medicine. Good luck. Jewish kids always went into medicine. But I didn’t like it. I didn’t like biology. I wasn’t anywhere near the student that some of the other fellows were, like Louie Goodman. They were great students, but not me. You know that old saying, “Why does a young man become a lawyer? He’s a Jewish boy that can’t stand the sight of blood.” 

There was nothing for me to do, actually. In 1926 — it was easier for Jews to get into law school then, particularly if you were from the West Coast and went to the East Coast. They didn’t have these geographic quotas as bad as it subsequently developed. So I applied to Harvard and I got in, but I didn’t go to Harvard. Phil Silver went to Harvard, Ted Swett went to Harvard, and some of my friends, but I went to Columbia University because I wanted to go to New York. I had been to New York once in my life when I was 11 years old. My father took me to New York to see my brother off, who was going to France. I always remembered that city, and that’s where I wanted to go. So I went to New York, and there were other people who went to New York. I had a roommate by the name of Max Gordon. He went there, too. He wanted to go to law school.

Zell:  How big was your law school class in those days? 
SOLOMON: About the same size it is today, about 200. You see, the big schools, the famous schools, they don’t have a lot of people.

Zell:  No, they don’t change. Keep it down.
SOLOMON: There were about 200. 

Zell:  Once you were in law school, there was no feeling of discrimination?
SOLOMON: Oh, there you felt discrimination very bad. 

Zell:  Oh, you did.
SOLOMON: In Columbia University you really knew you were a Jew. Yes. 

Zell:  About what do you think in your class, the percentage of Jews?
SOLOMON: I think they had a limit of 25 percent. 

Zell:  So that’s where the quota comes in, the limit. 
SOLOMON: We had a pretty good-size quota. But it wasn’t in there; it was in social activities and in the law clubs. Everybody was supposed to be there by choice. I remember we had one club there — there were eight Jews and one Negro. On the theories of statistical frequency, you can’t — by chance, that’s a pretty difficult thing. Jews didn’t get into these law fraternities. 

Zell:  Those things were supposed to be an advantage to practicing law later, the fact that you would have . . .
SOLOMON: I guess so. Subsequently, after I became a judge, I was invited to join one. I said, “Nothing doing. When I might have used it, or it might have been a help to me, I wasn’t asked. I’m not going to go in now.” 

Zell:  After you finished Columbia, did you come back to Portland? 
SOLOMON: I didn’t finish Columbia. I went to Columbia for only one year. Then I came to Portland, and I was sick. I was in the hospital around the end of August. And by this time, too, my father was losing money. I remember at that time, in 1927, it cost me over $1,500. At that time, that was kind of expensive, for the fare and everything. So then I got sick, and I was in the hospital when Columbia started. It used to take five days to go back there, or four days. So I transferred to Stanford University. It was less expensive, and the fare was less. I stayed for two years at Stanford, and then I finished at Stanford. 

Zell:  Was there a similar discrimination at Stanford, or was the West Coast a little different than the East Coast?
SOLOMON: Socially, yes, there was some, but there were a lot of wealthy kids at that time. There weren’t very many Jewish kids that went to Stanford, but the best students in the class were Jews from Los Angeles usually. We didn’t feel discrimination over there. I went through without any problem; I knew Jewish fellows and non-Jewish fellows. We got along fine. It was a very easy place to go. It was a wonderful place to live, and I enjoyed it. The intellectual atmosphere at that time was not what it was at Columbia University. The whole emphasis was on success, making money, and people were satisfied with life as it is. You didn’t find people going out and leading the flock for civil rights or anything like that. And yet, in spite of that fact, many of the great civil libertarians came from that school. It’s a curious thing.

Zell:  But as you say, they did not come out strongly for a cause. Do you think they wanted to keep a low profile at the time? The young Jewish students in the colleges in particular?
SOLOMON: No, I don’t think so. They just attracted people who were business-oriented or establishment-oriented. I was the one who was probably the most well read in non-legal subjects. I didn’t have too much money at that time, and I didn’t go to work, so I used to spend two to three hours a day in the periodical room, and I knew all the magazines — The Nation and The New Republic and all these magazines — and I used to read a great deal. I was sort of the arbiter on non-legal subjects over there at the school.

Zell:  Were there campus-type organizations for causes as we hear of today, for social causes?
SOLOMON: No, I don’t remember any such organizations. I didn’t belong to any organizations there. We Jews knew that we were not welcome in campus-type organizations. It didn’t make any difference whether your name was [Fleishak?] or Solomon or Cohen, you didn’t get into the gentile fraternities, things of that kind, the gentile organizations.

Zell:  Consequently, did the Jews form organizations for themselves?
SOLOMON: No, not at Stanford they didn’t, neither the men nor the women. I don’t know of any Jewish organization. Most of the Jews were reluctant to identify as Jews, and that was not only true at Stanford, but it was true at Reed. I tried to organize a Menorah Society. I tried to organize Jewish organizations there because in spite of the fact that I wasn’t religious, I always knew I was a Jew. And you find people here who came from real Orthodox backgrounds, whose name I won’t mention, but who were very upset when I brought Jewish speakers to the campus because they didn’t want that. They said, “We’re getting along fine. Let’s not rock the boat.” And it was true when I came back there. Young people were not interested. I came back with some people on Brandeis Camp Institute. I wanted to interest them. I had been on the board of trustees of the university. I was president of the alumni association. 

Zell:  This is at Reed?
SOLOMON: Yes, and I came back, and they couldn’t get anybody to come to the meetings. But I think things are different now. 

Zell:  Oh, yes. 
SOLOMON: But they were totally uninterested then. At Stanford Jews knew each other. We didn’t have any outward type of discrimination, and as far as I know there was no discrimination in the classroom, but nobody had to tell us that we were Jews. This was quite an experience for me, when I went back to Columbia and to Chicago and to Stanford, because I had not experienced that at Reed College. Everybody was permitted to participate in every aspect of student life. What school did you go to?

Zell:  I went to UCLA, and by the time I was there the school was probably more than half Jewish. My daughter’s back in Connecticut, at Wesleyan, and her school is probably half Jewish, also. It’s different now.
SOLOMON: Wesleyan had a great influence on Reed. 

Zell:  There was some connection, that’s why . . .
SOLOMON: Professor Rosenbaum is there now, I think, a professor of mathematics. William Truman Foster came from Connecticut Wesleyan. 

Zell:  Now when you mentioned the separation somewhat, how did that affect social life? I’ll have you cover of span of social life, meaning dating and clubs and girls, in high school and then on through these college years? 
SOLOMON: I’ll tell you something. I was not very much of a socializer as far as women were concerned. Maybe I was . . .

Zell:  Parties. Family parties.
SOLOMON: I was kind of overweight. I wasn’t very attractive, I don’t think, so I didn’t go out to very many parties. When I went to Reed, there was no distinction there, except at Reed I didn’t go out very much. Maybe I would have liked to, but I didn’t have very many friends over there. I knew the fellows, and the same thing is true in Portland. I didn’t know very many girls. I knew all the fellows, and we used to play cards, and we used to have a very good social life. You’re talking about when I was in college?

Zell:  Yes. 
SOLOMON: That’s right. I’m sure that there were other fellows who were going out, but I wasn’t.

Zell:  Now you spoke earlier about an intellectual . . . 
SOLOMON: Some of the fellows who were just a little older, I remember, they were the fellows who went out with girls. We didn’t go out.

Zell:  It was always the older boys. I was going to go back now. When you said intellectual community, considering the size of Portland, you mentioned lots of names of young men who went through school with you. Did many of them come back to Portland to add to the community? The fact that these were really great minds and great talents. Or did they leave Portland?
SOLOMON: Most of them left Portland. I gave the — [asks for tape to be turned off]. 

Zell:  You were speaking about [how] a synagogue is measured not just by itself, but by the people that come from it. 
SOLOMON: I said that, measured by that standard, Congregation Neveh Tzedek was one of the most important synagogues in the state because of the people that came from that synagogue and who had made real contributions. Among them, Louie [Lewis] Browne, he wrote that book This Believing World, and this man Heine [sp?], he had been there, but not so much as some of the rest of us. Take the people who were born in practically the same month as I was. There was Louie Goodman, who was the world’s most famous pharmacologist. That’s Morton’s brother. He was born two days before me. Then there was David Tamkin, who was a genius in music. He was born a day after I was. And then there was Milton Harris. Milton Harris went to another synagogue; he went to Ahavai Shalom at that time. And then there was — [asks for tape to be turned off]. 

Zell:  Tell me again the name of the synagogue because . . . 
SOLOMON: Neveh Tzedek Talmud Torah. Then there was Louie Kaufman, who was also a great violinist; he’s a musician’s musician really, a musicologist, and also an art collector of the first rank. But they never came back to Portland. Now there were other people in that synagogue who made great contributions. One of them was Herman Kennan [sp?], who came back, and he became president of the International Musicians. There were many others. Some of them came back for a short time, and some of them came back for all time. Harry Kennan was a member of that congregation. 

Zell:  What do you think it was that gave Portland, or even that small group, at that time, such a desire to achieve?
SOLOMON: I don’t know. There were a lot of good . . .

Zell:  You were mentioning the [Vidgoffs?].
SOLOMON: They were a very good intellectual family. One of the most intellectual, who I didn’t know at that time, who now is part of the family, was the Goldhammer family. They were a real brilliant family. They went to Ahavai Shalom, though. They had come here from Denver after some of the rest of them had come. There were two Weinstein families. The family that Rabbi Weinstein came from, he and his brother were really able people. And then there was the other Weinstein family. Harold Weinstein, about whom I talked, he went to school with me, and then when I was back at Columbia he was at Harvard, and then he got a PhD at Columbia in history. He was a real good historian. 

But why did these boys do so well, and how did it happen that this small Jewish community produced so many good young people, I can’t tell you. I think it’s just a matter of chance that so many of them did so well intellectually. There have been other areas in other countries, in other streets, in New York and elsewhere, where a small group of people have made real contributions. But what I was going to mention, it happened that none of the old Jewish community — and this Jewish community is about 125 years old — these intellectuals didn’t come from the German Jewish community. They came from the Polish and the Russian community, and the Hungarian community. These were the ones that really achieved intellectually. 

Zell:  I wonder why that was?
SOLOMON: I don’t know. Take, for instance, the Goldhammers. Bernie Goldhammer, you know him?

Zell:  No, I don’t.
SOLOMON: He’s supposed to be the most intellectual man in Oregon, the greatest mind here. Louie Goodman is somewhat of a genius. And there are a lot of those fellows. 

Zell:  Of course, this kind of intellectual recognition is completely different from the young person who went out and made a million dollars, too, in other words, those who made great financial gains, which is another aspect of . . .
SOLOMON: Well, I say to the credit of those people, none of my friends were really dollar chasers, none of them. They were all interested in the intellectual activities, and it was more important for them to have the respect of people intellectually than for dollars. We see it even today. We see it in men like Morton Goodman, Dr. Goodman, he’s not looking for money, never has. And there are lawyers and physicians and other people of that kind, who have gone into the academic world, who have made great names for themselves. But I don’t know why. Maybe it was just because when we were young people, we weren’t thinking in terms of money. And money meant nothing to us. Oh, I was glad to have a little money, and life was easier, but we never used money as a distinction between various members of our group. 

Zell:  Now when you finished college, you came back to Portland, and you established yourself as a lawyer in town. That’s after you got your law degree, you came back to town as a lawyer? 
SOLOMON: I just gave a speech with Mayor Bradley on my encounters with discrimination . . .

Zell:  Did you handle cases? The kind of cases that you handled, did it cover . . .?
SOLOMON: You’re rather new in this city, aren’t you? 

Zell:  Yes, that’s it. I don’t know your background. But even if I did, I’d have to ask it for the tape.
SOLOMON: I came to Portland in 1929, and that was the period that Jews couldn’t get jobs in law offices, not in the gentile law offices. It was tough for everybody to get a job, but it was particularly tough for Jews to get jobs. I came here in 1929, and I looked around for a job and I couldn’t, so I opened up my own office on the Monday after Black Thursday. I went to the old Panama Building. Lousy place. Next to the Portland Retail Credit Association, the adjustment department, because I had a brother-in-law who was a manager of that. So I started to practice then.

Things were rough. I had tried to get a job for $50 a month. I couldn’t get it. Then I tried for $25 and I couldn’t get it. And then I tried for nothing if I could just get space, and I hadn’t been able to get anything, so I got this particular spot. Most of my friends were having the same difficulty. I had one friend, however, who got $75 a month. He was lucky. So I started into practice, and the thing that helped me, I got some business from friends of my father. My father at that time had no money at all, but he had a good reputation, “Solomon’s word is as good as his bond.” So people didn’t come to me who wanted to break contracts. They came to me to draw up contracts and wills and things of that kind, which was a nice kind of a practice for me. When I was in practice there for about a year, I met a young man by the name of Leo Levenson, at that time a young man, and he didn’t have very much practice, either. He didn’t have the friends that I had, so he thought if we went in together we might do well, so we did go in together. 

So I went to the [inaudible name] Building and I worked, did some of those collections, and I began to get some other kind of business. It was fairly tough, but when I came out of law school and I looked for a job, I was treated kind of miserably by the people from whom I sought to get a job, and I resolved that if ever I got on my feet, I would treat people a lot different than I was treated. After a year or so I began getting a little business, and people came to me, other Jews, and I tried to make it easy for them to see various other people. I was a little successful, but my greatest success came in 1933 when the New Deal came in.

Now many of the people who came out with me never did get very much of a job, so when the government opened up jobs in the New Deal agencies, they flocked to Washington. They got jobs. And they stayed because, unlike their gentile counterparts who could go to Wall Street after that, with the big Wall Street firms and the big banks and securities houses, and others, they couldn’t get those jobs.

Zell:  The government wasn’t discriminatory then.
SOLOMON: Well, they would . . . 

Zell:  Not quite as much as Wall Street, in other words.
SOLOMON: So they stayed, and then they needed people out west to open up offices — the Farm Security Administration, various other New Deal agencies. Well, I had classmates from Columbia and from Chicago and from Stanford who were in those jobs. They would get in touch with me to recommend people, and I was able to place a lot of young lawyers in these offices. Not very many Jews, but some Jews. This was a boon to them. These Jews got quite a few jobs, and as a result of that experience, the various colleges — Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Chicago, Pennsylvania — the fellows knew that I was getting jobs for people. So I began to get letters and calls and things. It continued over a period of many years.

Now at that time, and for some time later, Jews couldn’t get jobs in firms; even the firms that had a lot of Jewish business never hired Jews. I could tell you about some [relatives?] that didn’t go to the firms that hired Jews. Then I became a judge, and I decided that I was going to break that.

Zell:  When did you become a judge? 
SOLOMON: I became a judge in 1949, which was exactly 20 years after I had started to practice law. I’ll tell you this story about lawyers and what we did to open up the legal offices to Jews, and then I’ll come back. 

I recall that I went to one of the big offices after I became a judge. We went out to lunch together with the head of the office, who happened to be a very good friend of mine, and I said, “Look, I want to talk to you about your hiring policy.” He said, “What about it?” And I said, “You don’t have any Jews in your office.” He said, “You don’t think I’m anti-Semitic, do you?” I said, “Oh, no. I don’t think so. That’s the reason I’m talking to you. But I’ve sent you a lot of people.” He said, “Yes, and we’ve hired some.” I said, “Yes, you’ve hired some, but you never hired a Jewish fellow.” He said, “Well, we take certain types of lawyers.” I said, “I know, but I’ve sent you fellows who wear hats and vests, and who have polished shoes, and who have all the amenities and social graces.” He said, “Personality-wise.” I said, “Yes, and I’ve sent you fellows who are really able, fellows who are bright and have good personalities. I’ve sent you fellows who are from law reviews of the big law schools in the country.” He said, “Maybe they just didn’t fit.” I said, “How old is your office?” He said, “75 years old.” I said, “You mean to tell me that in 75 years you’ve never found a Jewish fellow that fit?” He looked at me, and he said, “Send me the next fellow.”

Zell:  Yes. 
SOLOMON: Well, that was one office. And so gradually I kept talking and working on them. Then I had the same thing with women. Women suffered more than Jews, and I opened up the offices for women in this city. But this doesn’t tell the whole story. After I was in law with Levenson for three years, we took in another man, by the name of Irwin Goodman, who had represented the left wing of various organizations. Even before he had come over, I had decided that we in Portland ought to have a legal aid society. A man by the name of David Robinson had done quite a bit, and he had asked me to help him, and I did help him, but I came to the conclusion that it shouldn’t be run out of a person’s hip pocket, that we needed an organization. So I wrote to the organization at Harvard. Actually, it was because I needed a deposition from them in a case that I was handling. Then I wrote to a person in Atlanta, Georgia, and various other places, and they were willing to help. Then I went to David Robinson, but he wasn’t willing to help. He didn’t want it on such an impersonal basis. So I helped organize that. 

We brought people out, and it was during the Depression. The government was willing to hire lawyers and do other things, provided we get a little money and get official sponsorship. They weren’t interested in the poor people except if they were lawyers or secretaries. They were interested in the principle. And I went before the bar and urged them to give us official sponsorship, and I was attacked by the bar on the grounds that I was trying to take bread out of the mouths of lawyers. 

Zell:  That was the legal aid society, you mean.
SOLOMON: The lawyers, the bar association. We didn’t call it the legal aid society then; there was no legal aid society. But we tried to get the legal aid committee.

Zell:  Yes, I can see how the lawyers felt threatened by that, the fact that you were going to . . .
SOLOMON: That’s right. I was accused of being a communist and a socialist and an anarchist. And the local bar never did approve. I had to go to the Oregon State Bar, and they approved. It didn’t cost them any money. They just gave it official status. We did get it approved at that time. Later on it did cost them some money. We organized, and we had a legal aid society. They were very careful in the first few years. They wouldn’t handle divorce cases, and they didn’t handle bankruptcy.

Zell:  What kind of cases did they handle, and what kind of people came to legal aid in those days?
SOLOMON: In those days, they handled when people were threatened by collection agencies and by stores, and by automobile companies, and when they were going to be thrown out of their homes, and things of that kind. But they wouldn’t handle personal injury cases, which they don’t handle now, and they didn’t handle any of these civil rights cases, of course. And they didn’t handle divorce cases. I protested against that, and I resigned from the organization about five years later. I used to write their report, and they wanted me to take out a statement that we look forward to an “ever-expanding opportunity.” They didn’t like that. They wanted to contract it constantly. But now they have maybe 50 to 75 lawyers in the state in legal aid. 

Zell:  Why is it that they didn’t want to handle all these other types of cases? What were they afraid of?
SOLOMON: Socialized law, just like socialized medicine. They were a conservative group. 

Zell:  A financial question, in other words.
SOLOMON: Yes. Then shortly thereafter, I helped to organize the American Civil Liberties Union here. We thought they needed it. A few of us got together, and we were having trouble getting representation involving civil rights. The union lawyers didn’t want us to do that because they wanted to get the business, and they regarded my activities as threatening them. Not so much because they wanted to handle the business — they didn’t want to handle it — and not so much because they wanted to get the business from the unions — because they didn’t want to have it — but because they were threatened in their personal injury business. That’s where the money was. And they didn’t want me, and later on they didn’t want Leo Levenson and Erwin Goodman to get in there because we would get the personal injury business, they thought. Well, Goodman represented the left wing, sometimes the Communist Party, International Labor Defense, the Worker’s Alliance. They’ve got some publicity in the paper today about [Mackin McCabe?]. And so we did begin to represent the so-called radical element, some of them.

Zell:  This was in the ’30s?
SOLOMON: In the ’30s, during the period of unemployment. And I represented WPA  workers . . .

Zell:  You were representing these people against what? You were representing a person against a large organization? A government? The case was usually . . .?
SOLOMON: Many times, with the Worker’s Alliance, we would appear for them against the various government agencies, trying to get them food and things of that kind, and the right to organize. Then we began to represent some of the trade unions. Then there were people who were charged with the commission of offenses. After I organized the American Civil Liberties Union, the first big case we handled was the De Jonge case, which became the most famous case in America on the right of assemblage. De Jonge was a communist. He was the chairman of the meeting that was called to protest against the beating up of workers on the waterfront. He was tried under the old alien  and sedition law, not because he had advocated anything unlawful, but just because he was the chairman of the meeting. He was convicted and sentenced to seven years in the penitentiary, and then the American Civil Liberties Union got into it. I got into it. We appealed that case, and we won it in the Supreme Court of the United States, which was a very great victory. From then on, we began to handle other kinds of cases, and I was hired to handle cases involving picketing laws, cases involving constitutional questions. So we did all right.

During this period, I became a member of the Oregon Commonwealth Federation, which was a farmer labor party. Some Jews were in there, but it was farmers and laborers, and various other people, and there was some strong socialist background, and New Deal Democrats. Of course, there were some communists, and the communists were constantly trying to take over, and it was a real battle in the organization to keep the communists out. At the beginning of every day, or on the first day of the semi-annual conventions, we used to have to battle them and beat them, and then we would go ahead with our work. Now we were more successful than they were, for instance, in Los Angeles, when the communists took over the unions down there, and in the State of Washington, Seattle, where the organizations were dominated by the Communist Party. Some of the big labor organizations. We kept them out here, from the political life of this community. There were a group of us who did that. One of them was Richard Neuberger, the other was a fellow by the name of Stevenson Smith, another man was Douglas Anderson, then Monroe Sweatland [sp?], and I.

Zell:  These communist sympathizers, were they people from the Portland community or were they sent in to organize?
SOLOMON: Both. We had some local people, and we had people from the outside. We really organized the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party was a very reactionary party here, and they were not very happy with President Roosevelt and the New Deal agencies, so many of us went in there. After the first year, I became the chairman or the treasurer of the Norris-La Guardia Committee that brought in money and organized outside the party. And then the next time I was also the treasurer of the Draft Truman Committee. We were in the vanguard of the liberal movement. 

We were fighting that, and we were fighting the Jewish community. The wealthy Jews were very unhappy. “Don’t rock the boat.” And we did other things. For instance, we were about to picket the Jewish department stores, because they were doing business with Hitler. We didn’t like that. We wanted to boycott German-made goods. We went to the various churches and said, “Hitler smashes the trade unions.” And we did all these other things. It was these organizations that really carried the fight against Hitler, when we were having trouble with members of our own Jewish community, particularly in the business community. We put out pamphlets. We went door to door. We called on merchants, and we told them, “You can’t do that because if Hitler is able to do that over in Europe, the next thing it’s going to happen to us in the United States.” 

Zell:  Were you successful in being able to . . .?
SOLOMON: A little. Not very much. The difficulty is that Jews were very worried at that time. They were worried about their position. They were on their way up, and they didn’t want anything to happen to it. Of course, if you’re in a fight like that you’re not being treated very well by the newspapers. I recall that my mother used to be talked to by her friends. She once asked me, “Why can’t you represent nice people?” But it was during that period of time that we were having the real struggle.

I was on a lot of fronts because I was at that time active in the fight for public power. I was active in bringing Bonneville to Oregon and keeping the Army of Engineers from regulating it and putting it in the Department of the Interior. We represented the various districts, like The Dalles, who wanted to have public power, against the private power companies. We organized co-ops to distribute low-cost central station service. A lot of the wealthy and the wellborn, they were unhappy. They identified themselves with the wealthy and the wellborn of the power companies. They identified up to the point in that they wouldn’t let them in the Arlington Club and various other places like that. So the Jews were worried about the fact that there were other Jews, particularly among the lawyers. I wasn’t the only one. Nationally, you see, the whole practice of law was changing. Jews, lawyers, were becoming activists. They wanted to use the law, not only for the protection of property rights, but for the advancement of human rights. This was a cause that was coming out all over the United States, and we had it in Portland. 

Zell:  Now did this alienate you a little bit from your other professional companions?
SOLOMON: Sure. 

Zell:  How did that alienation show?
SOLOMON: When I was up for nomination for United States District Judge, they sent people back and said the people of Oregon don’t want a Jew for a Federal judge. We had little things of that kind. They said, “Oh, he’s a radical.” I was accused of being a communist and all these various things. The federal judiciary was the stronghold of the wealthy and the establishment, and in a community like this no Jew had ever been a judge of any court in Oregon. A lot of Jews didn’t even act as trial lawyers. The insurance companies wouldn’t hire them because they thought maybe we don’t . . .

Zell: You were saying you always regarded yourself as a liberal.
SOLOMON: Yes. As a Jew I recognized and experienced discrimination, so I decided that as a lawyer I would do something about it. Unfortunately, a number of the young Jewish intellectuals of my time thought that Communism was the answer to the problem, and we found many Jewish intellectual young men who became card-carrying communists and who became sympathetic to the communists. But I never believed that you can achieve by force and violence. Very early in the business I learned of the treatment of Jewish intellectuals in Russia, and the trial of the Jewish doctors, and when some of my friends used to justify it, I said, “No, you can’t justify that. You can’t justify a wrong under any circumstances.” I went before Jewish organizations in this city and I said, “We’ve got to speak up against the treatment of the Japanese because today it’s the Japanese and tomorrow it’s the Jews.” But I was the only one. They threatened to blow up my house. They did all kinds of other things. I was the only Jew in Portland that was willing to stand up, and I became the chairman of the committee to aid relocation.

Zell:  Would you say they did not want to rock the boat?
SOLOMON: They said, “How can you tell that these Japanese aren’t going to support the [inaudible word]?” I said, “How can you trust the Jews then? This is a violation of everything we hold dear.”

Zell:  In those days, did the temple take a stand? The Jewish organizations?
SOLOMON: No, I tried to . . .

Zell:  Did they come out and take a stand on these types of things?
SOLOMON: Not on the Japanese. There was a fellow — I got a man in Seattle, Jeff Epstein, to [inaudible]. There was one hired person, Fanny Freedman. I know of no other Jews. There was a fellow in Los Angeles by the name of Hal [Wirin?], and I in Portland, and Jeff Epstein, and we were the ones who fought that battle over there. It was an interesting experience. 

Zell:  On some of the other social issues that you mentioned, did the Jewish organizations in town — I’m thinking of ADL and some of the others — take a stand one way or another?
SOLOMON: I guess they did. The difficulty was that during that period of time the ADL was Mr. David Robinson alone, and he didn’t have anyone to help him. He was the one who ran the organization, and he used to do all these things. He didn’t want a mass organization to help him. 

Zell:  Were there some other organizations that I might not know about that either did or did not take a stand?
SOLOMON: I remember when Roosevelt was running again, and I was on the Norris-La Guardia Committee, I went to the rabbi at the temple and told him, “Look at all the antisemitism that’s coming out in this campaign. Why don’t you come with us?” “Well,” he said, “I’m going to vote for [inaudible].” We didn’t get any help there, but the Jews generally supported Roosevelt. Some of the Jews, what we then regarded as German Jews, identified with the wealth. Businessmen. 

Zell:  Assuming that perhaps the Jews have changed their idea toward social change, what do you think made them change? Do you think they have changed? I’ll ask it that way. Do you think the Jews have changed now?
SOLOMON: Yes, I think so. I think everybody’s changed, Jews and non-Jews.

Zell:  What do you think brought about the change?
SOLOMON: In the first place, education. The younger generation coming up. In the second place, younger people were thrust into the liberal movement, and Jews all the time have been interested in the liberal movement. When I tell you about the lack of success of the Jewish people, I’m talking about the Jewish establishment. There were other people in this community who didn’t feel that way and who were interested. At the Neighborhood House there were people who had organizations. But I’m not acquainted with any of the formal Jewish organizations that took any action because many of these people felt threatened. Of course, as Jews became more affluent and as their children began to go to school, and as the result of some of the work that I did and my friends did, and the discrimination against them became less and less, they felt more secure and could speak out.

Zell:  Do you think that World War II had some effect, perhaps the concentration camps, when all that came to light?
SOLOMON: Yes, I think that was true. And it’s a greater understanding of the problem. 

Zell:  Now you mentioned at one point the Arlington Club, and you know the restrictions there, and they have changed. Did you play a role in that? How did you play a role?
SOLOMON: In 1963, I opened the fight against them in a speech that I made for . . . 

Zell:  I know that you did. I’m asking the question just so that you can tell the story more or less. Did all the clubs need opening? Would you like to explain the social club situation in town as it was and how it changed?
SOLOMON: There were social clubs in Portland, and they traditionally didn’t permit Jews to become members. I began to speak at various organizations about the correlation between economic opportunity and social acceptability. I said that you will never have a fellow who is the president of a bank or a utility company until such time as you make him socially acceptable. And that the big deals in town are not conducted in offices but are conducted over the lunch table at the Arlington Club or the University Club and various places like that. It’s not an extension of one’s living room. It’s a place where either Jews can go in on terms of equality or they can’t be permitted to compete on terms of equality. That was published in the newspaper many, many times. 

Now I have traditionally refused to go to any organization which does discriminate against Jews. I just say that unless Jews are accepted on terms of equality for all purposes, I wouldn’t go. Now many Jews that I used to talk to told me that they would like to go to the University Club, and they wouldn’t do anything. We knew of Jews who were holding meetings [there] when they were on the alumni board. One woman, who is a well-known Jewish person in Portland, who was on the board of Willamette University, the alumni group, a parents’ group. And we went to her and we said, “Don’t give this over there. They discriminate against Jews.” But you couldn’t get anyplace with her.

Then I remember when Leonard Rose, the violinist, came to Portland. They had something over there at the University Club, and we called him. But the minute he heard what [inaudible] he wouldn’t go there. So we got different kinds of receptions. But then one thing happened, and I forgot what it was, about the University Club. One of my friends came over to the house and he tried to defend it, and I told him it was just indefensible, and I thought that he ought to do something about it and something. I [inaudible] him. So he tried, he decided to put somebody up for it, [Manfred Orlof?], and they had 13 black balls, the first time in the history. I don’t know if he’s a member now. This was done pursuant to a meeting we had [inaudible]. It was an act of courage on his part. So I talked to a group of people and they decided to change the by-laws. 

They had a big fight at the University Club. The fight was over me. The attack came against me on the grounds that the people who were supporting the amendment were lawyers, most of them, and that they were doing that because they were fearful because I was the chief judge on the United States District Court. Many people thought that the only reason that I wanted it was that I wanted to go to the club. Well, there were several meetings, and I had sent word over that I would never step into the cub regardless, and we won that fight, but the people who had been generally accepted into the club were the people who didn’t stand with us. They weren’t the ones who participated in the fight. I had asked them if they wouldn’t help. They didn’t want to. As far as the Arlington Club was concerned, I let them know early. I never went to the Arlington. I’ve never been inside the Arlington Club, wouldn’t go in. I had made speeches various places about how insurance is written. 

I can tell kind of an interesting story. Many years ago, I decided that in good conscience I should not fraternize with other lawyers after I became a judge. I said that unless a judge can fraternize with everyone on terms of equality, he shouldn’t fraternize with anyone. Since I couldn’t go to the University Club and couldn’t go to the Arlington Club, I was fearful that some people would say, “He was seen out eating with so-and-so and so-and-so all the time, and if you want to come to court you have to get that fellow to hire.” I talked to Sam Weinstein and Hy Samuels about it. They urged me not to take that attitude because I would be making a terrible mistake. I notified some of my gentile friends about it, and they were very upset, including some of the people from the Arlington Club and the University Club. I tried to tell them, “Really, we need this because Jewish lawyers are being prejudiced and Jewish businessmen are being prejudiced by this.” 

And one time, about six months later, Hy Samuels came over to me at a meeting, and he said something like, “Gus, I know you were right. And something happened yesterday that I think I ought to tell you. I have been representing a man in the lumber industry” — I think it was a certain type of plywood — “I’ve been representing him very successfully over a period of years, and yesterday this man came in with a friend of his from Florida. My friend says, ‘Mr. Cohen here needs a lawyer, and we came to you to recommend one.’ I said, ‘I’m feeling foolish.’ I felt very peculiar about it because there was no competition between these two people, and if he liked me why couldn’t I represent him? But he said, ‘I didn’t raise that.’ And I said, ‘While you were waiting out here, there was Sam Weinstein, who’s a very good lawyer and a fine man.’ And his friend said, ‘You don’t understand what we’re asking you about. My friend here sells this kind of a commodity, and most of that is sold at the Arlington Club during — and he needs a lawyer who has access to that club.’” 

And this was the first time that Hy realized the truth of what I had been preaching for a long time, that there is this correlation between job opportunities and economic acceptability and social acceptability. It was a difficult thing to tell people. I know that early, when Harry Kennan was going to run for Congress, people didn’t want him to run for Congress at that time because he was a Jew, and they didn’t want to raise the Jewish question. It was something even that Dick Neuberger had to overcome. And Julius Meier. Luckily we have.

Zell:  Yet there have been quite a few Jews who have served in the government, as mayor, in the city government.
SOLOMON: The first mayor of Portland was a Jew. 

Zell:  That’s right.
SOLOMON: And then Senator Joseph Simon was a Jew. We had various people who were Jews, but it wasn’t very common. And what happened in the early days was before we had such a change in attitude. This change came in the 1880s or ’90s, when Seligman was deprived an opportunity to go to a summer resort in upstate New York. It dates back from that time. But in the early days, the Multnomah Club was organized by Jews, or some Jews, and then for a number of years Jews were not accepted there. It was only 15 or 20 years ago that Jews in numbers were taken in. 

Zell:  Now when you say the Multnomah Club was organized by Jews, were they known to be Jews?
SOLOMON: Sure.

Zell:  Did they identify themselves as Jews?
SOLOMON: Yes.

Zell:  Or were they just known . . .?
SOLOMON: No. They were well known. Some of the big clubs — the Bohemian Club in San Francisco was organized by Jews, and they didn’t take in any Jews for years and years.

Zell:  How does something like that come about, that first it’s organized by Jews and then they don’t let Jews in? Those who are in are protecting themselves against something?
SOLOMON: No. If one person can blackball another person, how can you prevent it? The son of one of the organizers was denied membership in San Francisco. It’s a funny thing. Sometimes you think of someone as your very good friend, gentiles. I was in a different community within the past three years, and I was talking to a very good friend of mine, a very influential man. He was telling me that he was largely responsible for, when he was president of a certain private club, in bringing in Jews, and not only these amateur gentiles, but real Jews. And then he said to me, “But I sure hope that they won’t continue taking over the club.” And I was just sick about this remark.

I had an experience of a man who worked for a Jewish organization, an owner. He was a newspaperman. And I was on a committee to select some winners of a contest for good writing. The other member was the president of Reed. And I got a call that we’ll meet at the University Club at a certain hour and have a private room. I said, “I won’t go because I don’t go to the University Club.” This was about 15 years ago. So then they changed it to the new Heathman Hotel. The service that day was particularly bad, and it pleased me very much. We agreed on the winners, then as I was walking up the street with this newspaperman, he was telling me about how friendly he was to Jews. He was a member of the Arlington Club, but at that time he had been a member of the Oswego Country Club, and he told of how they had taken in some Jewish members because he had insisted upon it. And he says, “What do you think happened? A couple of weeks later I came out there, and there on the veranda, they had this fellow and his wife and his family and his relatives. They were all sitting out there. They’d taken over the place” [laughs]. So I said to him, “Suppose another member had done that, what would you have said? You would have merely said so-and-so is having a party. But if it were a Jew who had invited some relatives over there, they had taken over the club.” Well, that was the story about that.

Zell:  Now we haven’t covered your whole life. We could go on and on. But when you look back, how do you feel as a Jew living in Oregon?
SOLOMON: Oregon is much better. And I wanted to say that the mere fact that you get amateur gentiles and synthetic Jews in these various private clubs is on the plus side. Things are going to be better because the gentiles don’t make any distinction between a man who is a believing, active Jew and one who is born a Jew. And I found, and we found, during the war, that when we would get a Black man in a manufacturing plant, we would stop the nigger jokes. I’ve always said that when you get a Jew on the board of directors of a bank, or a member of a private club, you stop the Jew jokes. And once you stop the Jew jokes, you’re well on your way. In these various organizations, these various law offices, I got Jews into the organization. First there was one, now most of these organizations take Jews, and it’s not only one Jew, but it’s two or three and sometimes many of them. These big, important law firms have one or two Jews on there as partners of the organization. So I don’t really get excited when a person says, “Oh, he’s not very much of a Jew,” because I say, “That doesn’t make any difference. We’re not worried about that fellow. We’re worried about the people who come in the future.”

Zell:  Now I didn’t ask you about your marriage. I know, of course, you are married. Do you have a family?
SOLOMON: Yes.

Zell:  Your children have grown up in Portland? Has life been different for them, as a Jew in Portland, do you think, than it was for you?
SOLOMON: Yes, I think so. But it’s not all on the plus side. I’ve been fighting for terms of equality for all people, and we didn’t make any distinction in our house between Jews and non-Jews. My kids went to Sunday school, and one of my boys was bar mitzvahed, but they were taught that there was no difference between Jews and non-Jews, and all of my children have married outside the faith. Some of our daughters-in-law have become Jews, but there’s real danger that when I die they won’t have any more Jews in the family.

Zell:  I don’t know how to combat that problem. 
SOLOMON: Turn that thing off for a minute. This is a speech that I gave . . .

Zell:  That’s kind of a new area. You mentioned that you were active in the Second Vatican Council. What kind of . . .?
SOLOMON: I was active in talking about that. I have over a period of years been active in ecumenical activities. For example, I was on the Board of Trustees of the University of Portland, which is a school founded by the Congregation of the Holy Cross. I was on the Father Delany Center. I’ve contributed money. I’ve worked for ecumenical causes because I recognize that the key, or one of the most important elements to the doing away with this deicide charge, was through the Vatican. 

And I was active in the American Jewish Congress and the American Jewish Committee and Anti-Defamation, all of which organizations played some part in getting the Second Vatican Council’s declaration, which came on October 28, 1965. It stated that what happened to Christ cannot be attributed to all Jews then alive without distinction or to the Jews of today. It declared that the Church deplores hatred, persecution, displays of antisemitism directed against Jews at any time or any one. I might tell you that all of us had high hopes that this solemn declaration would eliminate the basis for discrimination and hatred, but unfortunately the benefits that we had hoped for have not been realized. It’s become painfully evident from the stories in the religious press after the Six Day War, where all the sympathy for the Jews seem to have evaporated. And what’s happening today in the Vatican is even more disturbing.

Zell:  Thank you very much, really. 

[End of first session]

[Continuation of interview]

SOLOMON: As a result of the cases that I handled for the American Civil Liberties Union and other such organizations, I was later hired by trade unions, particularly the International Woodworkers of America, to handle cases involving picketing. There had been a law passed in Oregon that made picketing and labor disputes unlawful, and I was hired by the CIO [Congress of Industrial Organizations] to represent all of the CIO unions in Oregon to get a declaration that this law was unconstitutional. Other people were hired to represent the AF of L [American Federation of Labor]. This was the case that was in court for several years, and I was the attorney for the CIO.

Feldman:  What was the name of the case? Do you remember? 
SOLOMON: CIO vs. Bain.

Feldman: Bane [spells out]?
SOLOMON: Bain [spells out]. Bain was the district attorney in Portland at that time. I think it might be under the consolidated name of AF of L vs. Bain or AF of L and CIO vs. Bain. That was the name of the case.

Feldman:  About what year was this? 
SOLOMON: About 1937, ’38. It’s a famous case in the Oregon Supreme Court. [Transcriber’s note: The case is cited as Amer. F. of L. et al. v. Bain et al. Decided October 22, 1940.]

Feldman:  Now would you please tell us a little bit more about your activities on the Norris-La Guardia Committee, and what year that was?
SOLOMON: It was the 1940 election, when President Roosevelt was running [against] Wendel Willkie. I had mentioned earlier that I was active in the Oregon Commonwealth Federation. The Oregon Commonwealth Federation was an organization primarily of representatives of CIO labor unions, a few [inaudible] but not many, and a number of farm organizations, particularly the Farmers Union, and some Grange members. We also had an assortment of liberals, primarily intellectuals, people from the universities. 

The Oregon Commonwealth Federation was strongly Democratic, and we were not looked upon with much favor by the established Democratic organization, who were concerned about the growing power of the trade unions and the liberals, and of the Oregon Commonwealth Federation. Not only were they fearful about what we stood for, but they were concerned that people from the Oregon Commonwealth Federation were running for party offices. We had a number of our members who became precinct committee members, and we began, as they called it, to “infiltrate” into the Democratic organization. 

Without checking some records, I don’t know exactly what we did at that particular time, but I know that the Oregon Commonwealth Federation and some of the people there, particularly Monroe Sweetland, Prof. S. Stevenson Smith, Douglas Anderson, and Richard Neuberger, and I were in contact with the Democratic National Committee and those people who are connected with the president, who trusted us more than they did the regular party organization. And we were . . .

Feldman: Was that President Truman?
SOLOMON: No. President Roosevelt. 

Feldman:  Roosevelt. Thank you. 
SOLOMON: For instance, we started the Draft Roosevelt Committee in 1940, and President Roosevelt, through one of his principal assistants, actually called me and asked me if I could stop that organization. He didn’t want that movement to go ahead in Oregon. 

Feldman: Why?
SOLOMON: I think he had other ideas. He was going to run, but he didn’t want to show his hand at that particular time. Then after he was nominated, there was a committee — I believe this was 1940; it may be 1944 but I doubt it — it was called the Norris-La Guardia Committee. [George W.] Norris was a United States senator, and [Fiorello H.] La Guardia was a congressman and subsequently became mayor of the City of New York.

Feldman:  Norris was the senator from which state?
SOLOMON: From Nebraska. He was one of the great liberal senators of that time. And they organized an independent committee outside the Democratic organization. They asked me if I wouldn’t participate in that committee, and I did. I think I became the treasurer of it.

Feldman: What was the purpose of the committee?
SOLOMON: To support the re-election of President Roosevelt, and also to elect a favorable House and senators and congressmen. It may very well be that I’m getting my dates mixed, and this was in 1942.

Feldman:  I’ll check it out. 
SOLOMON: Rather than 1940. I’m not sure. But I became active, and we got a number of people together, and we organized workers to go from house to house to distribute literature and to do the various other things that are necessary.

Feldman: To win the Democratic election for Roosevelt.
SOLOMON: I think that it probably was in 1940. During those dark days, when sometimes men and women didn’t have the jobs that they should have, it was easier to get people to go knocking on doorbells and distributing literature than it became some years later. I know that during the election when President Roosevelt ran against Wendell Willkie, we tried to get as much radio time as we could, and we found that most of the time had been pre-empted by the Republican Party. So we had a terrible time getting publicity, but we finally got it.

Feldman:  Was that paid-for publicity that you tried . . .? 
SOLOMON: Even paid for. We could not have a statewide broadcast because of the fact that all of that good time had been pre-empted. 

Feldman: By the Republicans.
SOLOMON: By the Republicans. And therefore we had to get individual stations throughout the state to put it on at different times, and it was very expensive then for advertising. We couldn’t advertise, “Listen to the president at a certain time.” I remember that we wanted to put on Secretary [Harold L.] Ickes, who had a wonderful speech called Mr. Willkie against Mr. [Charles L.] McNary. 

Feldman:  He was the Secretary of Agriculture, wasn’t he, under Roosevelt? 
SOLOMON: Secretary of the Interior.

Feldman: Oh, Interior, under Roosevelt. 
SOLOMON: But the only thing, to wind this up, I wanted to say that many of the liberals in the Democratic Party were in the Oregon Commonwealth Federation, and men like Mo Sweetland and Richard Neuberger and others were most active in stimulating activity among the people for the Democratic Party. 

Feldman: Wasn’t at that time the Democratic Party a minority party in the state of Oregon?
SOLOMON: I think it was still a minority party, but I also believe that the president won the ’36 election and the ’40 election and might have won the ’44 election also.

Feldman:  Is that the end? 
SOLOMON: Yes. That’s all I . . .

Feldman:  In 1944, you started . . . 
SOLOMON: In 1944 I was active in the primaries, and at that time one of my very close friends, Prof. S. Stevenson Smith . . .

Feldman: Is that Stevenson [spells out]?
SOLOMON: Stevenson. Yes. [He] was running for delegate to the Democratic National Convention, which was being held in Chicago. This was during the war, and it was difficult to travel, but I was his alternate, not only in Portland, but . . .

Feldman:  You were telling me that you were the alternate to the Democratic Convention in 1944 in Chicago. 
SOLOMON: Yes. My wife accompanied me. We went there, and at that time most of the liberals were supporting, not only President Roosevelt for a fourth term, but we were supporting Vice-President Wallace, Henry Wallace. The president wasn’t being absolutely frank with the people there. He indicated that he was for Wallace, and subsequently we found he wasn’t for Wallace. And we were pretty active, Oregon was, in the support of the candidacy of Henry Wallace. It was there that we first met Hubert Humphrey and a number of other people.

Feldman:  You mean Wallace for vice-president running with Roosevelt? 
SOLOMON: Yes.

Feldman:  Okay. 
SOLOMON: As it turned out, Truman was nominated to run with Roosevelt. Some of the people were unhappy. As it turned out, that was a wonderful selection. 

Feldman:  How did that come about? Do you remember that? Were you involved in that at all?
SOLOMON: No, I wasn’t on the inside. I would prefer not talking about that. I don’t know enough about that.

Feldman:  All right.
SOLOMON: I do, but it would take so long to explain it to you.

Feldman:  All right. I’d like to know a little bit more about the fight for public power which you mentioned. 
SOLOMON: All right. 

Feldman:  What year did you start? 
SOLOMON: I think it was around 1936, but I’m not sure. The Bonneville Dam was being constructed, and there was a fight going on between the private power companies and those who supported the private power companies, and the public power groups, over who should control the output of the Bonneville Dam. There was quite a bit of power . . .

Feldman:  It was built by the federal government, wasn’t it? 
SOLOMON: Built by the federal government. Now the power companies wanted to have the output distributed by the Army [Corps of] Engineers because they concluded that it would be easier to make the contracts for their own benefit with the Army Engineers. The Oregon State Grange and the Washington State Grange, two powerful farmer organizations, wanted the distribution put into the hands of the Department of the Interior. All over Oregon and Washington there were groups formed for the purpose of urging the enactment of legislation which would put it in the hands of the Department of the Interior. I was in an organization called the Public Power League of Oregon, and we had a number of prominent farmers and liberals, and there again I was the treasurer of that organization. We held picnics, and we held meetings, and we petitioned Congress for the purpose of having legislation which would put the distribution of power into the Department of the Interior because we had great faith in Secretary Ickes. Luckily we won that fight and it was given to the Department of the Interior, and he in turn selected J. D. Ross as the first administrator of Bonneville.

Feldman:  Excuse me just one moment. How was the transfer of power given to the Interior? By Congress? Legislation?
SOLOMON: Yes, legislation. J. D. Ross was the head of Seattle Light and Power at that time, which was a publicly-owned system, still is. One of the great systems of the West. And he was a real fighter for public power. He came to Oregon and brought in with him a number of very staunch public power people. I was a local resident, and I was interested in it, and many of the people from the Commonwealth Federation were also interested in public power. But the backbone of the fight for public power was the Oregon State Grange, with men like Morton Tompkins and . . .

Feldman:  How do you spell Tompkins? 
SOLOMON: Tompkins [spells out]. And Ray [Yeon?], who was then the master of the Oregon State Grange. And there was a man by the name of Vern Livesay [spells out], from Bend, Oregon. We then, with that group, we had to organize co-ops and public utility districts, which in Oregon were called people’s utility districts, because we found that right in the shadow of the Bonneville Dam there were thousands of people who were living without central station service. They had coal oil lamps. And the power company didn’t want to serve them because they felt it was uneconomic to have lines for just two or three people on a mile of line. So I went around the state with people like Dr. Carl Thompson, who was a wonderful old man . . .

Feldman:  Thomp. . . [spells out]? 
SOLOMON: Thompson [spells out], who was the head of the Public Power League of America, from Chicago. And he came in here. One thing that J. D. Ross did was he filled that place up with all kinds of public power people, who were really crusaders. Among the men whom he selected at that time was our own Harry Cannon, who was a state senator and who was strong for public power. 

Feldman:  This was the committee that was formed, or these were people in his office, or what? 
SOLOMON: These were people whom he hired but who had been active in the public power movement. I got to represent a number of the co-ops and these people’s utility businesses. Tillamook hired me, and Wasco County, and The Dalles, they hired me. There were others, and I represented a number of the co-ops. It was a bitter battle, and we had a lot of opposition because people thought then that we were going to have all this power and no place to use it. The power would go to waste. Now we’re really — the trouble is now this all sounds ludicrous, but it was a real struggle at that time, and that was the basis by which Bonneville Power brought in the aluminum corporations and these various corporations that used a great deal of power. But we were always anxious that not all the power go to industry, but go to the people. In 1938 or ’40 or around that time, Harry Cannon and I and a few others, we started the campaign to create a public power district in Portland, Oregon. We fought that fight, but we lost it. The power companies put in tremendous sums of money into that election.

Feldman:  Who would have — there was an election for public power? 
SOLOMON: In Portland. 

Feldman:  I see.
SOLOMON: Pacific Power and Light Company and Portland General Electric Company, they said it wouldn’t work and it would be more expensive. But now the public power systems charge one-half of what we have to pay in Portland. It was a great struggle. There were a few of us who were fighting what we regarded to be the good fight, not only in politics but in these peripheral matters, and in a nutshell that’s the story. 

Feldman:  Now I would like to talk a little bit about the Japanese during World War II, if you could give me the story on what happened and what your role was. 
SOLOMON: Near the end of the war . . .

Feldman:  First, were you involved at all when they moved them into these concentration camps? 
SOLOMON: No, I wasn’t. I’m sorry to say that I wasn’t. I knew about it, I didn’t like it, but I didn’t protest, and I didn’t know if anyone was protesting. We were fed all this information that the Japanese might blow up our homes and our buildings and things of that kind. We didn’t really know what the situation was. But I did have a couple of clients in the concentration camps in Idaho, and I heard from them from time to time. During the war, I was asked by a fellow judge, Judge James Alger Fee, to appear as a friend of the court in a proceeding that was filed to have the Japanese Exclusion Act declared unconstitutional. And I did appear, and I got interested in it, and I became concerned about the validity of the law and the philosophy of the law by which American citizens, because of their ancestry and their color, could be put into concentration camps. This looked to me like what they were doing in Germany, the country that we were fighting. So I wrote to the American Civil Liberties Union and told them of my concern, and I filed briefs in our federal court on behalf of a man by the name of Yasui [spells out] Minoru. Min Yasui, we used to call him.

Feldman:  MIN [spells out]? 
SOLOMON: Yes. A contraction. I was about to file a case on behalf of a man who had lost both his legs, and I think both of his arms too, in the Italian campaign. The 100th combat team [100th Infantry Battalion], which became the 442nd — that was the famous Japanese Battalion of the American Army — had gone into Italy, and they had just been massacred, most of them. Now this man, who was a paraplegic apparently, had returned to New York, and he wanted to come back to Portland, and he couldn’t come back because he was an enemy. He was an American citizen, he’d lost his arms and his legs in a fight for the American Army, and he couldn’t come back. The American Civil Liberties Union asked me if I wouldn’t file a case to require that the man be brought back. I tried to get other people to help me. I tried to get Wayne Morse to help me, but he refused because he was going to run for the United States Senate at that time. Just before I was to file the action, General DeWitt lifted the exclusionary orders.

Feldman:  When was this? 
SOLOMON: I think it was 1944. I got a call about midnight. A reporter from the Oregonian called me and told me about the order, and I said, “I’m just delighted that the order was lifted.” I told him that I was just about to file an action, and this made it unnecessary, but this was something that should have been done a long, long time ago. Apparently, they had called a number of other people — mayor of the city, and the governor, and the head of the Grange and others — to ask them about how they felt about the lifting of the orders. Our statements appeared on the front page of the Oregonian, and I was the only one who was so enthusiastic about the lifting of the orders. The next morning, when I went downtown after this appeared — I knew various people who objected to my position and they talked to me about it, and I began getting telephone calls saying that I ought to have my house blown up, and that I was a traitor, and I was unpatriotic, and I was a communist and an anarchist. About 10:00 AM in the morning, when I was in my office, a young lady by the name of Betty Sale, whom I didn’t know.

Feldman:  S-? 
SOLOMON: Sale [spells out]. She was the director of the Conference of Christians and Jews. I didn’t know that. She came to my office and wanted to see me, and my secretary showed her in, and she said she wanted to talk to me about my statement. I said to her, “You, too? Are you unhappy about it?” She says, “No. I’m very happy about it. I’m with the YWCA group, and I’m with the Conference of Christians and Jews, and we have been meeting for some time with the Portland Council of Churches.” —  which was a division of the Federal Council of Churches of Christ —  “We’ve never heard of you before, and we want to welcome you into our group, and invite you to come and attend our meetings.” And that was the beginning of my connection with the group. I went there . . .

Feldman:  Now you were telling us that you organized a committee for relocation.
SOLOMON: Yes, we organized the committee to aid with relocation. We wanted to make the transition easier for those people who had been put into concentration camps. 

Feldman:  Can I ask you to stop for just a minute? 

[Recording pauses then resumes]

SOLOMON: We had some prominent people in our group, some of whom were not as enthusiastic as we were. For example, one of the leaders confided to me that he didn’t want to make Portland, or Gresham, into a little Tokyo. But most of the people were religiously oriented on our committee, and we got very good support. At that time Wayne Morse was in the United States Senate, and he was helping us. I spoke at various churches about the desirability of treating these people like human beings and why it was wrong to put them in concentration camps. Earlier I had urged some Jewish groups to change their attitude, but they were very fearful, and they had not given me the support that I thought we should get. I had also called Jess Epstein [spells out]. He was a good liberal in Seattle. He had been doing work for the American Friends Service Committee, and he helped out the committee in Seattle.

Feldman:  What exactly did the committee do? 
SOLOMON: I can give you a couple of examples of what we did. Sometime after we had organized, I heard of a man who, from Maryhill, which is right across from The Dalles, had brought a load of produce into Portland, and that he had had to dump it because . . .

Feldman:  A Japanese man? 
SOLOMON: Yes. Couldn’t sell it. I was called and told about it, so first I communicated with our United States Senator, and then I . . .

Feldman:  Wayne Morse. 
SOLOMON: Wayne Morse. Then I talked to various government agencies, including the Relocation Administration, which was set up to aid these people. They were concerned about it, but they couldn’t do anything, or said they couldn’t. So I asked my informant there to tell the Japanese to bring in another load of produce, and I was told that they’d do it this time, but they can’t keep doing it all the time because it was too expensive.

Feldman:  Now this was after they returned? 
SOLOMON: After they returned. Well, the man brought in his produce on a Friday morning, I remember. I went to the early morning market, which was on Belmont Street, about 10th and Southeast Belmont. I got there with Libby about 3:30 AM in the morning, waited there for a while. I saw the trucks line up, and the people in the trucks, and the doors would open and they took their position. There Sato was. I think his name was Sato. 

Feldman:  Sato [spells out]? 
SOLOMON: Yes. We went in, and by that time there were a couple of representatives from the War Relocation Administration and we got one or two other people, one from the Bar Association. There was some activity, but nobody was going around Mr. Sato — if that was his name — so we waited and he didn’t sell anything, and people were congregating in little clusters. So I went up to Mr. Sato and said to him, “With whom did you do business before you were relocated?” He told me it was one of the Mutual men.

Feldman:  Mutual? 
SOLOMON: Mutual [spells out]. That was a produce buyer. He pointed him out to me, and in a couple of minutes I walked over to him as unobtrusively as possible, and I said, “You know Sato?” “Yes.” “You like Sato?” “Good friend of mine.” I said, “Go over and buy something from him.” I am getting ahead of my story. Before they came in, I called Reed College. 

Feldman:  Before who came in, the Japanese? 
SOLOMON: Before this early morning market, when I just learned of the incident. I wanted to make sure that he was going to be able to sell his stuff, and if he didn’t sell it at the early morning market, I wanted to have other plans where he could sell. So I called up the head of the commons at Reed College, and I told her that this man was coming in and he had this stuff, and I wanted to know if she’d buy something. She said, “Certainly. What has he got?” I didn’t know at that time, but I called her back and I told her it was turnips and green onions. When I told her about these two items that he had, she laughed and said, “Didn’t you go to school here? What would you think if we served green onions and turnips?” 

I knew she was right, so then I called the bishop of the Episcopal Church, who got me in touch with the head of the purchasing department at Good Samaritan Hospital, and they were willing to buy until they found out what it was, and they told me these were gas producers, both turnips and green onions. So I came this morning without any sales to anyone else, but I went up to this Mutual man and asked him if he wouldn’t buy, and he said, “I’ve got all of these I need. I’m sorry.” 

So I took out five dollars and I said to him, “You go and buy one case of turnips and one case of green onions, and then you don’t have to give them to me, you can keep them, but just go over there and buy.” Then he said, “I’d love to, but if I go there, I won’t be able to sell them. I won’t be able to have them brought into our warehouse because the Filipino warehousemen wouldn’t carry it in.” So I said, “Actually, I took care of that.” I had already called the CIO and talked about that, and they said, “If you have any trouble with any of our people, we will take them off the job and put other people on.” The CIO was with us. So it didn’t do any good, and the conversation began to get a little heated.

Feldman:  What didn’t do any good? 
SOLOMON: My offer to give him five dollars to have him go and buy.

Feldman:  I see. 
SOLOMON: At that time, the market master came over. He was Garberino, I remember, and I knew him very slightly. There were other people around there, and he said, “What’s the trouble?” I said, “There’s no trouble at all except that Sato has brought in a load of produce and he can’t sell it.” He said, “The trouble is that there are too many strangers here.” “Well,” I said, “there were no strangers here last week when he brought in produce, and he didn’t sell then.” He said, “Well, it was a good try.” 

By that time I had talked to a number of people. Libby had talked to our vegetable man at that time, who used to come around in a truck, and he was an Italian, and he wouldn’t buy because he said that Sato was a foreigner. And there was a Jewish produce man, whose name I won’t mention, and he refused to buy on the ground that if he did buy from Sato he wouldn’t be able to sell to the Chinese restaurants. That was a lot of hokum because the Chinese, more than any other group, realized the implications of this for them, and unbeknown to any of us Sato had already arranged to sell all this produce to the Chinese restaurants if he couldn’t sell it there. 

There were a lot of people around, and I said to them, “Look, this is two times Sato has come here. He’s got to dump his stuff. That means we’ve got too much food if we are able to dump food. Now why do your men need gasoline rations? Extra coupons? Why do they need twine and fertilizer and all the other things they’re getting on rations?” I said, “Look at all these men of troop age around here. Why aren’t they at the fighting front if we have all this extra food?” It became quite hot. I was shouting at them, and then we all walked out in a huff. Well, to make a long story short, that was the end of the boycott. These people learned. We did get some other help, too. Father [Tolan?] was the vicar general of the Catholic Church. He got interested in it. 

That was one incident. It was a long incident. But I have another one, where they tried to prevent a Japanese from running a hotel. The one that’s the most publicized, however, is Harry Okomato, who has the vegetable stand across from Reed College on 28th Street. When he returned, he couldn’t get his property back in North Portland. I represented him.

Feldman:  Reed College is in southeast Portland. 
SOLOMON: Yes, but he owned some property in North Portland. We finally got his property back, and then he wanted to buy some acreage just at the bend before you get into Reed College on 28th Street. They wouldn’t sell it to him because he was Japanese. Now his wife was an American citizen. I had succeeded in getting her a certificate of derivative citizenship because she was born in California and as a child she went back to Japan. That’s an interesting story in itself, and I won’t go into it, but we had to go before the City Council in order to get her a license to sell produce in that area.

Feldman:  What area was this? 
SOLOMON: Reed College area. And Reed College was wonderful in that fight because they not only supported his application, but they gave Harry Okomato a job over there. That was the first job he got when he came back. 

Feldman:  How do you spell Okomato? 
SOLOMON: Okomato [spells out]. [Note: The correct name might be Okamato?] And we got him the license in spite of the fact that his so-called friends had told him that he’d starve over there. Harry Okomato has done very well over a period of years. There’s a stand still at Reed. It has one sad ending. He raised a good family, boys and girls, but when the Korean War started one of his sons enlisted in the Army and was killed. They had a story about that in the Sunday supplement. He didn’t have to go and he was a little young, but he felt it was necessary for him to prove he was an American. They have a picture of the bier in which he was put into the ground. That’s another thing that we were able to do. 

There were a lot of other incidents. I went down to Hood River many times to try to get the land back and to get an accounting for some of these people who had leased their orchards to Caucasian friends and never got any money for it. These people made a lot of money on their own land, but the land that they leased from the Japanese was never productive. I tried to get lawyers down in Hood River to represent some of these people. We couldn’t get anybody to represent them, so I went down there myself over a period of time. Finally, we could get lawyers to represent them if they wanted to sell their property, but not if they wanted to get their properties back.

Feldman:  These were local lawyers? 
SOLOMON: Local lawyers in Hood River. There’s an interesting story. I finally got a lawyer to represent them, and many years later I saw this man at the Multnomah Club one time, and I was telling some people about the problem and how he had helped. I said, “Is there very much of a Japanese problem anymore?” This was about ten, 12 years ago, and he says, “Oh, none at all. Last year there were ten intermarriages between Japanese and whites. Then I saw him a couple of years later at Palm Springs. I told that story in front of him, and he said, “You’re wrong. Last year there were 18 intermarriages.” So we have a situation that has sort of righted itself. 

Feldman:  That’s interesting. Did you know Frances [Kannen?]? She was active. I think it was Frances Kannen Friedman. 
SOLOMON: Yes, Fanny. She worked for them.

Feldman:  Which one? 
SOLOMON: For War Relocation. We used to work together there, and she did very good work. 

Feldman:  Is there anything else about that you want to tell me? 
SOLOMON: No. I think that’s enough.

Feldman:  You mentioned in your transcript that before you became a federal judge there had been no Jewish judge in an Oregon court. 
SOLOMON: Many years ago, there was a man by the name of Kraemer. 

Feldman:  Kra…[spells out]? 
SOLOMON: Kraemer [spells out]. That’s Ken Kraemer’s father. He had been a justice of the peace, which isn’t very much of a judge, but he was a justice of the peace. Now later there was a man who was appointed, and he served for a short time as a state district judge in Multnomah County. His name was Cohen, and he was a partner of Hy Samuels. 

Feldman:  Do you remember his first name? 
SOLOMON: I forgot his first name, but he was a very handsome man, I remember. He was a good judge, and he was defeated by a man whose qualifications were very questionable.

Feldman:  Who had appointed Cohen? 
SOLOMON: The governor of the state. I don’t know.

Feldman:  You don’t remember the year. 
SOLOMON: No. 

Feldman:  Judge Solomon, please tell me a little bit about your involvement in the ACLU. 
SOLOMON: I first became interested in the ACLU in 1926, when I was a student at Columbia University Law School. That was during the period in which there was great activity on behalf of Sacco and Vanzetti. I went to a meeting at Columbia University at which Roger [Goldman?] and Arthur Garfield Hayes and . . .

Feldman:  Hayes [spells out]? 
SOLOMON: Yes. A number of ACLU luminaries spoke. It was an exciting meeting, and I was deeply impressed with the work of the organization. When I came west and opened up my office, I wrote to the ACLU and joined the organization. They didn’t have many people here, but they had two people on the national board. I remember one was . . .

Feldman:  You said you’d get the names later, of these two people. That means Oregon people on the national board?
SOLOMON: Yes. There was one woman who was very much interested in child labor, to prevent child labor, and she was a labor commissioner or some job like that. And there was the other man who had been the father of the Oregon initiative, referendum, and recall. He was supposed to be a great liberal. I went to him and urged him to start a chapter here. We didn’t have a chapter. But he was uninterested. Then . . .

Feldman:  Yet he was the national board member?
SOLOMON: Yes. Then I went to some of the lawyers who represented trade unions. We were having a lot of problems at that time in the early 1930s on picketing and deprivation of civil rights, beat-ups of people. I tried to get those lawyers to help me organize. They weren’t interested. In fact, they discouraged me from taking any action because they thought that was a union activity, and as attorneys for the union they would handle it. But the fact is that they weren’t handling it and that there were many, many people who needed that help. We talked to a number of people. There was a woman by the name of Lucy Trebitt [spells out], and her sister, Mrs. Nunn [sp?]. They were old ladies who were interested in liberal activities. Then there was a man by the name of Ross Anderson, an ex-Methodist minister, who was interested.

Feldman:  Anderson. Sen? Son? [asks for spelling] 
SOLOMON: O-N. And then there were a couple of people in the labor movement — I just don’t recall their names and I may find it later for you — and Harry Kent. There were about six or seven, or maybe even ten, and we organized a chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. There again, I became the treasurer of the organization [laughs], Anderson became the president, and we began to write letters and do various other things of that kind.

Feldman:  To whom did you write letters? 
SOLOMON: To the editor of the newspaper. And we offered our services. But shortly thereafter the De Jonge case came up, and that was the first big case that we had. Some of the other people who were interested in the ACLU, there was a man by the name of Kelly Loe who was active . . .

Feldman:  Lowe [spells out]? 
SOLOMON: No, Loe [spells out]. He had a friend by the name of May Darling, who was in the school system, and they were active. Then B. A. Green, a union lawyer, helped us a little. And Leo Levenson came into the organization. And as I said, the first big case that we had was the De Jonge case.

Feldman:  You said that the first big case for the ACLU in Oregon was the De Jonge case. 
SOLOMON: Yes, and from that time on we handled other cases, but we weren’t as active as we might have been. 

Feldman:  Why? 
SOLOMON: It was difficult to get people to work for free. When I was active we got things done, but when I was busy trying to make a living we weren’t able to get as many people interested, although we did get some members. But we didn’t hold regular meetings. Later I became the Oregon representative of the ACLU.

Feldman:  To the national board?
SOLOMON: No, we used to call it the Oregon correspondent; that’s what we called it at that time. We did get some of the people from the national organization out here. We did hold periodic meetings. But it wasn’t as active an organization as it became after I went on the court, in 19 . . . 

Feldman:  ’49. 
SOLOMON: 1949 I went on the court. Later on in ’50, ’51, ’52 it became a very active organization, and it became much more active in the last few years. One of the reasons why the organization didn’t grow as much as it should have is that we didn’t have any encouragement from the national organization because Roger Baldwin was never interested in a big organization.

Feldman:  Roger Baldwin was the national president? 
SOLOMON: He was the executive director. 

Feldman:  I see.
SOLOMON: It was said that he used to run the organization out of his hip pocket, and that’s what he did. He was not interested in getting a big mass organization. But from time to time we did appear at the state legislature to protest something. We talked about the Japanese. I helped get legislation to repeal the alien land laws. Up until 1946 or ’47 or around there, a Japanese or a Chinese or any Asiatic who was not eligible for citizenship could not own property in the state of Oregon. 

Feldman:  So this was an Oregon law. 
SOLOMON: This was Oregon. Other states had that law, too, I think California. I helped organize groups who would go down and talk to the state legislature, and I appeared before the state legislature, and we finally succeeded in getting that law repealed. 

Feldman:  What year was that? 
SOLOMON: It must have been about ’46 or ’47, around that time. That was an activity in which the ACLU and some of the other organizations participated. 

Feldman:  Let me ask you a little bit about your private life. When were you and Libby married? 
SOLOMON: We were married in 1939. 

Feldman:  How did you meet Libby? And was she Jewish? 
SOLOMON: Yes. Libby’s mother and my mother were friends, and we were almost neighbors, but I never really talked to her. One day I went to a meeting of the Oregon Commonwealth Federation, and I saw her there. Apparently I said, “What are you doing here?” She got very angry at me and walked away [laughs]. 

About six months later I went to another meeting of the Oregon Commonwealth Federation. We were organizing a little group. I remember it was at the old Governor’s Building on Second and Stark Street, which wasn’t in the best part of town. I went down there, and there weren’t very many people there and we had a short meeting. I said to her, “How are you getting home? Have you got a car?” She said, “No.” I said, “You shouldn’t be waiting for a bus. I’ll take you home.” So on the way home I asked her if she wouldn’t have a bite to eat with me. She said, “Yes.” We talked. Actually, we talked until about 10:00 or 11:00 PM that evening. I didn’t call her for a few weeks. 

Then I went to another meeting at the auditorium — and I forgot it was a liberal group — and I saw her there, and I took her home again, and as I often say, I was taking her home ever since [laughs]. We went together about six or seven months, and then we got married in Eugene, Oregon. I had taken her to a basketball game — I used to be a basketball fan — I went down there with Dr. Morton Goodman and Edith. We had introduced them to each other. On the way down, however, they had gotten married, and we were down there . . .

Feldman:  On the way down to Eugene? 
SOLOMON: Yes, they had stopped in Salem and gotten married.

Feldman:  Oh, really? Did they have the license and everything? 
SOLOMON: They got one.

Feldman:  There was a three-day waiting period, wasn’t there? 
SOLOMON: He got that waived because he was married by a Supreme Court justice. Then, when we got married, he signed the certificate for me and Libby.

Feldman:  You got married before the game or after? 
SOLOMON: After the game. Oregon had won. This was the second game, so they had won the championship. The next day we didn’t have anything to do, so we decided to get married. 

Feldman:  [Laughs]  
SOLOMON: In the morning. The courthouses were open on Saturday morning, so we got a license and we got married. We have three sons. I have one son who is . . .

Feldman:  What’s his name? 
SOLOMON: Gerald. He works for the Federal Power Commission in Washington, DC. He’s a statistician and an economist.

Feldman:  When was he born, or how old is he? 
SOLOMON: He was born in July of 1941. Let me tell you that I was prepared to like Libby because — I made a speech on February 17th, 1938. At that time, Helen was in my office, and Helen invited Libby to come along and listen to me talk. I talked about civil liberties. I had been concerned about the use of agents provocateur on the waterfront by Standard Oil Company and others.

Feldman:  What’s an agent provocateur? 
SOLOMON: A person who comes in who is apparently your friend but he’s stirring up trouble.

Feldman:  Oh. 
SOLOMON: I made a talk, S. Stevenson Smith made a talk, Irving Goodman made a talk, and there . . .

Feldman:  This was an ACLU meeting? 
SOLOMON: No, a labor meeting. The Oregon Committee for the Defense of Democratic Rights. That’s what they called it. So The next day when I came down to the office Helen told me that Libby said that my speech was the very best. So I knew that Libby was a bright girl, and so when I saw her I was disposed to take her home. And that was in between the first time, when I had asked her what are you doing at this meeting, and the second time when I invited her to take her home. 

Feldman:  You started to tell me about your sons.
SOLOMON: My sons. I have one boy who was born in July of 1941.

Feldman:  This is your oldest. 
SOLOMON: Yes.

Feldman:  And his name is? 
SOLOMON: Gerald.

Feldman:  Je.. [spells out]? 
SOLOMON: No. Gerald [spells out]. Then I have another son by the name of Phil, Phillip.

Feldman:  One L? 
SOLOMON: Two Ls. 

Feldman:  Two Ls.
SOLOMON: He lives in Los Angeles, and he’s a certified public accountant. He was born in July of 1943. Then I have my youngest son. His name is Dick, and he was born . . .

Feldman:  Richard? 
SOLOMON: Richard. He was born in March of 1946. He is also a certified public accountant, and he lives in Florida.

Feldman:  You say that all three of your boys married non-Jewish girls. 
SOLOMON: That’s right.

Feldman:  Do you have grandchildren? 
SOLOMON: Yes. My boy Phil has two grandchildren.

Feldman:  Two children. 
SOLOMON: Two children, yes. Two girls. And my son Richard has one boy. I might say that all of the girls converted to Judaism before they got married.

Feldman:  Oh, they did. Would you give me the names of the wives of your sons? Their maiden names.
SOLOMON: My oldest son married a girl by the name of Cathy with a “C” Dennis [spells out]. That’s Cathy’s name. My second one . . .

[Other person]: What name did you give her?
SOLOMON: Dennis.

[Other person]: What’s her first name?
SOLOMON: Cathy.

[Other person]: This is important. 
SOLOMON: Her name is Kathleen? I’ll look it up. The second one married a girl named . . .

Feldman: That’s Phillip.
SOLOMON: Carol Larson? Lawton? No. Helen?

Feldman:  Your oldest son’s wife’s name is Kathleen with a “K,” right? 
SOLOMON: Yes.

Feldman:  Judge Solomon, what has made you such a fiery liberal? 
SOLOMON: Well, I don’t know whether I’m a “fiery liberal” or not. In fact, many people think that I’m a conservative. I think I have sympathy for other people, particularly people who have been discriminated against. Perhaps as a result of my experiences as a young man, when I felt discrimination — and I didn’t really feel any discrimination until I went to college — and then I realized that Jews were treated separate and apart from other people. That’s not exactly true. I recall that when I was a small boy I went to a Hebrew-language school, and on the way to school we had to pass through a strong Italian district. And some of the kids explained to me that I was a “Christ killer,” and that’s where I learned to run as a young man. Either you had to run or to fight, and usually you had to fight a number of other fellows who were much bigger and many of them. But I have always believed in liberal things. As I often say, I’m a liberal in economics and a liberal in politics, but I’ve never been liberal with other people’s money, and that’s why I’m regarded as a conservative.

Feldman:  Judge Solomon, I would like you to read into the tape a speech that you gave to the Stanford Law School Class of ’29 Reunion dinner on April 12, 1969. OK?
SOLOMON: As a prefatory remark, I merely want to say that I had received a request from one of my classmates to make a short statement on my philosophy of the law and whether it had changed from the time that I went to Stanford Law School. This is what I wrote:

Since I graduated from Stanford, I have been too busy to engage in any soul searching about my philosophy of the law. I was not confronted by the problem until I received [Len’s?] letter. I realize that there may have been great changes in the last 40 years. There have been great changes in the last 40 years. I must confess that I don’t understand the dancing and music of young people or their strong belief that they should pick the faculty and select the courses in the schools that they attend. It may sound provincial and smug to say that my philosophy of the law has not changed since I graduated. I’m not trying to emulate Justice Felix Frankfurter, who pointed out that his philosophy did not change, but that the world really caught up with him. At Stanford I was critical of a student whose great ambition was to become president of a large corporation, or a partner in a law firm with an excellent corporate practice. I believed then, as I do now, that governments exist for all the people, and that governments must be alert to protect those who are least able to protect themselves. I believe that everyone, regardless of his color or religion, has rights which cannot be taken away from him, and that everyone, regardless of wealth, is entitled to the services of a lawyer in both criminal and civil cases. I believe that this country’s great natural resources should be used for the benefit of all the people.

From the time that I left Stanford Law School, I tried to put these beliefs into practice. I helped organize the first legal aid society and the first chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union in Oregon. I volunteered my services in criminal cases. I handled the appeal of De Jonge v. Oregon, one of the first great civil rights cases, which established the right to call and hold public meetings for all people, regardless of the unpopularity of the causes which those who called it espoused. I handled the first cases in Oregon under the minimum wage laws for women and the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. I handled the case which established the constitutionality of the Oregon people’s utility district laws. That case was In re Tillamook People’s Utility District.

Feldman:  In Ray? 
SOLOMON: In re [spells out] Tillamook People’s Utility District. 

[Continuing from speech:] And I helped organize districts and cooperatives to distribute hydroelectric power. I helped organize the committee to help bring back Americans of Japanese ancestry to their homes and their farms after those dark days when Americans, solely because of their color and ancestry, were placed in concentration camps in the United States. When I organized these groups, espoused these causes, and handled these cases, I was called a socialist, an anarchist, and a communist. I was vilified in other ways, and my family and I were threatened. Now bar associations point with pride to their leadership in organizing legal aid societies. State and federal laws have been enacted to provide poor people with lawyers when charged with crime. And several public and private agencies have funded projects to provide legal aid for poor people in civil cases. Large Wall Street investment bankers have financed utility districts with tax-exempt bonds approved by Wall Street lawyers, among them the present attorney general of the United States. [Solomon adds to speech:] That attorney general happened to have been John Mitchell, under the Nixon administration. [Returns to reading:] And now private and public groups have joined together to build great dams and regulate the flow of the Columbia River from Canada. High government officials, including presidents of the United States and members of the Supreme Court, have publicly admitted that the treatment of Americans of Japanese ancestry during the war was one of the blackest marks in American history. Recently, my court has been picketed and I have been vilified because of my conservatism. Even some of my law clerks are critical of my views about young people who engage in violent acts and who create situations to get television coverage. 40 years from now, and probably much sooner, the things which these young people are doing and the things which they espouse may be just as acceptable as those which I championed while in law school. The world is moving much more rapidly than ever before. It is difficult for people in our age group to keep up. I feel compelled to run faster and faster just to remain in the mainstream of American life. 

Feldman:  Thank you very much. Is there anything else you’d like to add? 
SOLOMON: No. 

Feldman:  This is the end then. 

[Recording is paused then resumes]

SOLOMON: In spite of my Jewish background, and Jewish looks and Jewish name, I did not participate in many Jewish activities until I was in my early 30s. In fact, I was somewhat concerned that people did things solely because they were Jews. I was against Hitlerism and Nazism because they were against human rights for all persons. This was somewhat of the same type of attitude which these young radicals are taking now and did particularly seven, eight years ago, the Abbie Hoffmans and the Jerry Rubins. But in the early ’30s I began to realize that everyone should know who he is, and that it is important that a person who is born a Jew should know who he is, and that it is only by knowing who one is that you can live a satisfied life, or at least you are not — I can’t think of a word — not a feeling of inferiority. And from that time on, I have tried to participate in Jewish activities. The organization in which I’ve been most active is the American Jewish Congress, which was organized by Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, but I’ve also organized . . .

Feldman:  When did you join? 
SOLOMON: I joined the American Jewish Congress and tried to organize here in the early ’40s. I’m one of their oldest members. I was a national vice president. 

Feldman:  What do they do? What are their purposes? 
SOLOMON: There are many different activities in which they engage. They believe in civil rights for all persons. They have strong ties to Israel. They have led the fight against discrimination. They have been strong for the separation of church and state. It’s often been called the Jewish ACLU, but I don’t think that’s an apt description, I believe that the American Jewish Congress takes pride in its heritage, and they publish books or magazines like Judaism and the Congress Biweekly, which tells of Jewish heritage. In addition to all these things for Jews, the American Jewish Congress has stood for equality for all persons. They have been very staunch in their fight for equal rights as far as the Blacks are concerned. 

Feldman:  You say that you’re an officer in this organization? 
SOLOMON: I used to be a national vice president. Libby has been on the national board and so have I. I have gotten out of the organization because of the rules governing the judiciary. The ethics committee doesn’t want me to belong to that or to the Anti-Defamation League or the American Jewish Committee because we participate in cases. For example, the American Jewish Congress was one of the first organizations to develop the idea that the Department of Labor and administrative boards can get injunctions against employers who discriminate against Jews and Negroes. They were the ones who fought the Aramco case because they violated the New York law in refusing to hire Jews for overseas.

Feldman:  What does Aramco stand for? 
SOLOMON: Aramco. American Arabian Oil Company [actually Arabian-American Oil Company]. It’s a conglomerate of a number of big American oil companies and some Arab oil companies. 

But I think it’s important for young people to know who they are. A couple of years ago I went back to Romania. My father was born in Romania, left there when he was 14 years old.

Feldman:  I know. He was born in Hesh, wasn’t he? 
SOLOMON: Hoosh. 

Feldman:  Hoosh. 
SOLOMON: Yes. But I felt that it’s important to go back. 

Feldman:  To know where your roots are. 
SOLOMON: To know where one’s roots are. And I feel good for having gone back there, even though I don’t admire the government of Romania very much, or at all. I have accomplished some things. I’ve lived through 69 years, and when you repeat what you’ve accomplished in an hour or so, it sounds like I’ve been active all the time. Actually, it hasn’t been such a continuous activity for the good cause. I’ve had many intervals of years in which I did very little. But if I have accomplished a great deal and fought the good fight, I’m just sorry about all the other people who haven’t done as much as I’ve done. I have done a few things, and I think I mentioned the fact that I’ve often said that one person can make a difference and everyone should try. I had thought that as a judge you can’t really do too much to change the course of events, but I found out that’s not true, even as far as administration is concerned. I have been in charge, for about 15 or 20 years, of naturalization, and I think that I have changed the tone of these naturalization services. I think that . . .

Feldman:  How? 
SOLOMON: When I came on the court, for some time before that there was a judge here who thought that people who wanted to become citizens of the United States were trying to get something to which they really weren’t entitled, that the United States was bestowing upon them a big benefit, and that they were always asking for things for their own selfish purposes, particularly if you didn’t come from England or France or the Scandinavian countries. He had different rules for people who were born in Italy or Poland or Romania or Russia.

When I became the chief judge here, I let it be known that I thought that everyone — we don’t have any preferred citizens. All the people are preferred citizens, whether they come from China or India or England or France, and that people have the right to feel pride in the country from which they came. That was true as far as the people from Italy were concerned. The sons of Italy had just as much opportunity to be proud of that relationship as the sons and daughters of the British Empire or of the French alliance. As a result of my attitude, I changed the attitude of the people in the Immigration and Naturalization Office. Over a period of years I learned that the person on top sets the tone, and if he believes that these people are worthy, [then] the people who are charged with the duty of the processing of them change their attitude. I remember there was a man by the name of Sidney Gerber in Seattle who was appointed head of their division on discrimination, and he once told me that when he . . .

Feldman:  Whose division of? 
SOLOMON: The State of Washington. The anti-discrimination group.

Feldman:  A state agency? 
SOLOMON: A state agency. He was a wealthy man; he didn’t have to do that work, and he was donating his time. The first day he came to work the people told him, “Oh, these troublemakers, these Blacks and these Poles and these Italians, are all the time doing things, and we’ll give them some sort of a hearing. Here’s a way you could do it rapidly.” He said, “We’ll have none of that. Now just remember that if it weren’t for those people you would be without a job. You are here because of them. Everybody’s entitled to have their grievances settled in a normal and decent fashion.” And Gerber told me that he changed the whole attitude of that office. Those were their clients now. 

Feldman:  And you did the same thing here. 
SOLOMON: I did the same thing in connection with the naturalization. When the man told me, “We’ll get this over in a couple of minutes,” I said, “Nothing doing. We’ll give it all the time that it deserves.” That’s why we have a different attitude here now, that pervades the whole state, than we had 34 years ago.

Feldman:  When did you become chief judge? 
SOLOMON: I became chief judge in 1950. But even before that time, I took over naturalization because the chief judge wasn’t around and he didn’t like naturalization. 

Feldman:  Thank you.