More than 150 years ago, a great injustice against Chinese-born residents of Los Angeles made headlines, in part because of the sheer brutality it demonstrated. But today, many Angelenos are unaware it even happened.
“I didn’t know, to be honest,” said Dr. Gay Yuen of the Chinese American Museum in downtown LA. Growing up in LA’s current Chinatown neighborhood, she said doesn’t recall learning about the “Chinatown Massacre of 1871” at all in school.
It happened on the evening of Oct. 24 of that year and, when the smoke cleared and the ropes were cut down, 18 men and boys had either been hanged or shot to death – most or all completely innocent of wrongdoing.
Some historians call it one of the worst mass lynchings in US history.
“Los Angeles at the time had the reputation of the ‘wildest of the wild west,’” Yuen said. Of the growing city’s population of 6,000, only about 200 Chinese-born people lived in a neighborhood not far from modern-day Plaza de Los Angeles.
Populated by brothels, saloons and gaming parlors, the area housed immigrants who were looked down upon and villainized by newspapers as “inferior” or “immoral,” she said, “and these were the ones escaping the law from San Francisco.”
Still, most of them were minding their own business that afternoon when a fight broke out between two Chinese men on the street. During the scuffle, a white ranch hand who had tried to intervene was shot to death and a former Latino policeman lay wounded.
But then, the story spread like wildfire.
“What went out was ‘The Chinese are shooting white men,’” said Yuen.
By the time people were settling in to eat dinner, a mob of about 500 angry men had descended on the area, hungry for vengeance. No one with a Chinese face or name was safe.
“Lynching, shooting, stabbing. Children, women.” Yuen describes the violence as vicious and uncalled for, because so many of the people who were hurt or killed had nothing to do with the fight that started it all or the injuries sustained by the two non-Chinese gunshot victims.
Later, out of an estimated 500 primarily white or Latino rioters, a grand jury returned only 25 indictments. Then, only 10 men actually stood trial.
“Even though there were witnesses (to the lynchings) at the time, none of the white people were willing to be witnesses against their own people,” Yuen said.
Then, to make matters worse for the victims’ families, “There was a law saying that those of color – not just Chinese but those of color – cannot testify against a white person.”
“No one was convicted,” said Yuen.
Yuen and others in LA’s Chinese American community say this story should be told and re-told, especially in today’s political climate where anti-Asian hate incidents continue to happen around the country and politicians villainize China specifically for its trade policies and immigrants generally for just being here.
“It’s a matter of: When something triggers the violence, and then how that violence is dealt with,” she said. “Of course it could happen again.”
