Teaching the History of the Chinese Exclusion Era

Here is a short and easy device that can quickly offer students insights into the anti-Chinese venom that led to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, a staple of every immigration law course.  This episode of the podcast The Hidden History of Los Angeles looks at a long-forgotten episode of anti-Chinese violence in Pasadena, now a quiet part of the Los Angeles area that few would think had a violent anti-immigrant, anti-Chinese history.  Los Angeles had its share of anti-Chinese violence, including what is known as the Chinese Massacre of 1871.

Matt Hormann for the Pasadena Weekly (“Night of Terror”) describes a violent Friday night in November 1885:

“The LA Times called it `a sensation which will be read of this morning from end to end of the United States.’ Pasadena’s newspaper referred to it as a `Black Friday.’ One-hundred and thirty years ago this month, a white mob turned Pasadena’s Chinatown into an inferno, obliterating it from the landscape, and, for many years, from the history books as well.

Over the course of 24 hours, enraged racists drove Pasadena’s 60 to 100 Chinese citizens from the city in an ordeal that began with a dropped cigar and culminated in threats of a mass lynching.

Roughly 100 men — nearly one-quarter of the population of Pasadena — participated in the riot, yet no one was ever arrested or charged in the case. To this day, the rioters’ names remain unknown. 

Though historians have long thought it to be a random act of violence perpetrated by a gang of lawless hoodlums, new evidence suggests a coordinated effort between Pasadena’s elite and its underclass. City officials may have even joined in the mayhem.”

A few months ago, I blogged about a similar anti-Chinese outburst in the 1880s in Truckee, California, now a bustling resort town near Lake Tahoe in the Sierras.  Such episodes unfortunately were commonplace during this period and blemish the history of localities throughout the state.

KJ