Oral history interview with Ellen Goldberg

Collection

Identifier: SR 11235

Staff Only

Oral history interview with Ellen Goldberg

Go to file

Scope and Contents

This oral history interview with Ellen Goldberg was conducted by Annica Eagle and Spencer Trueax on February 24, 2011. Eagle and Trueax conducted the interview for the Gay and Lesbian Archives of the Pacific Northwest as part of Professor Pat Young's senior capstone class on LGBTQ history at Portland State University.

In this interview, Goldberg discusses her involvement in the founding of the Mountain Moving Cafe, a collective-run coffeehouse, in Portland, Oregon; talks about how she and other people in the collective ran it as an “anti-profit” business; and speaks about events held at the cafe. She discusses the cafe’s association with gay and women’s groups and talks about life in the collective. She speaks about her activities since leaving the collective, particularly her involvement in gay and women’s rights activism. She closes the interview by talking about the poem that inspired the cafe’s name, “The Day the Mountains Move” by Yosano Akiko.

Dates

Creation: 2011 February 24

Creator

Goldberg, Ellen, 1949- (Interviewee, Person)
Gay and Lesbian Archives of the Pacific Northwest (Sponsor, Organization)
Eagle, Annica (Interviewer, Person)
Trueax, Spencer (Interviewer, Person)

Conditions Governing Access

Collection is open for research.

Conditions Governing Use

Copyright for this interview is held by the Oregon Historical Society. Use is allowed according to the following statement: Creative Commons - BY-NC-SA, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/

Biographical note

Ellen Goldberg was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1949. She attended Barnard College in New York. In 1971, she came to Portland, Oregon, to teach at Jefferson High School. She was a co-founder of the Mountain Moving Cafe, a collective-run coffeehouse in Southeast Portland. She was later involved in the Women Center in Portland.

Extent

774 Megabytes (1 audio file (WAV, 1 hr., 16 min., 44 sec.) + transcript (21 pages))

Language of Materials

English

Additional Description

Abstract

Oral history interview with Ellen Goldberg conducted by Annica Eagle and Spencer Trueax on February 24, 2011, for the Gay and Lesbian Archives of the Pacific Northwest. Goldberg, a lesbian activist, discusses her role in founding and operating the Mountain Moving Cafe in Portland, Oregon, as well as her later activism.