Tacoma Chinatown | |
|---|---|
Neighborhood of Tacoma | |
| Coordinates: 47°14′29″N122°27′34″W / 47.24139°N 122.45944°W | |
| Country |  United States |
| State | Washington |
| County | PIerce County |
| City | Tacoma, Washington |
| ZIP Code | 98409 |
| Area code(s) | Area code 253 |
The U.S. city of Tacoma, Washington was once home to a significant historic Chinatown. It was located in Downtown Tacoma near Railroad Street according to a historical record. [1]
In November 1885 disgruntled whites drove out the Chinese population and burned down Chinatown. According to a historical account, many who were driven out fled to Portland, Oregon or Canada. [1] Two days after the Chinese were driven out, Tacoma's Chinatown was burned to the ground. [2] According to another source, as many as six hundred Chinese were dragged out to the street in a raid and escorted to the train station. [3] According to the article "Tacoma Chinese Riots" published by the Tacoma News Tribune, most of the Chinese had arrived at Tacoma looking for labor because the Pacific Railways had been completed and the gold rush era was taking place. [4] In the book "A Narrative of Early Tacoma and the Southern Sound" it explains how after the completion of the Northern Pacific main line the Chinese would flood cities like Tacoma and would have negative impacts on American household incomes. The high population of Chinese labor would drive the wages of Americans down because the Chinese would work harder and for longer periods. [5]
Not only did the Chinese worry about the unemployed Americans they also had to worry about the employed Americans. In the article "Investigating the causes of the Recent Riot" American miners would discuss how unfairly they were being treated in comparison to the Chinese. The Chinese were given the best mining rooms to work in and the mining bosses would use false weights when it came to paying Americans. It was argued that the Chinese had to pay a fee in order receive these benefits. [6] Because of this and many other reasons, Americans wanted to drive out the Chinese from Tacoma. One of America's first Labor Union known as The Noble and Holy Order of the Knights of Labor had gathered many business owners with the Mayor of Tacoma to orchestrate the expulsion of the Chinese. [7]
In the thesis of Robert Mack, it states that the Chinese expulsion was able to happen without interference from local law enforcement for many reasons. The government didn't want to cause violence, individuals who were against the expulsion stopped supporting the Chinese and the people who orchestrated the expulsion had a lot of power. [8]
Recently, a special remembrance garden called the Chinese Reconciliation Park has been built a short distance away. [9] In 2016, the carved granite lion statues located near the Fuzhou Ting pavilion were vandalized when their mouths were smashed and the carved granite balls located inside their mouths were removed. [10]
Kalama is a city in Cowlitz County, Washington, United States. It is part of the Longview, Washington Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 2,959 as of the 2020 census.
Two conflicting perspectives exist for the early history of Seattle. There is the "establishment" view, which favors the centrality of the Denny Party, and Henry Yesler. A second, less didactic view, advanced particularly by historian Bill Speidel and others such as Murray Morgan, sees David Swinson "Doc" Maynard as a key figure, perhaps the key figure. In the late nineteenth century, when Seattle had become a thriving town, several members of the Denny Party still survived; they and many of their descendants were in local positions of power and influence. Maynard was about ten years older and died relatively young, so he was not around to make his own case. The Denny Party were generally conservative Methodists, teetotalers, Whigs and Republicans, while Maynard was a drinker and a Democrat. He felt that well-run prostitution could be a healthy part of a city's economy. He was also on friendly terms with the region's Native Americans, while many of the Denny Party were not. Thus Maynard was not on the best of terms with what became the Seattle Establishment, especially after the Puget Sound War. He was nearly written out of the city's history until Morgan's 1951 book Skid Road and Speidel's research in the 1960s and 1970s.
The Asiatic Exclusion League was an organization formed in the early 20th century in the United States and Canada that aimed to prevent immigration of people of Asian origin.
The Bellingham riots occurred on September 4, 1907, in Bellingham, Washington, United States. A mob of 400–500 white men, predominantly members of the Asiatic Exclusion League, with intentions to exclude Indian immigrants from the work force of the local lumber mills, attacked the homes of the South Asian Indians. The Indians were mostly Sikhs but were labelled as Hindus by much of the media of the day.
The history of Chinese Americans or the history of ethnic Chinese in the United States includes three major waves of Chinese immigration to the United States, beginning in the 19th century. Chinese immigrants in the 19th century worked as laborers, particularly on transcontinental railroads such as the Central Pacific Railroad. They came not only for the gold rush in California, but were also hired to help build the First Transcontinental Railroad. They also worked as laborers in mining and suffered racial discrimination at every level of society. Industrial employers were eager for this new and cheap labor. This resulted in many white people losing their jobs and were stirred to anger by the "yellow peril." Despite provisions for equal treatment of Chinese immigrants in the 1868 Burlingame Treaty, political and labor organizations rallied against immigrants of what they regarded as a degraded race and "cheap Chinese labor."
The Rock Springs massacre, also known as the Rock Springs riot, occurred on September 2, 1885, in the present-day United States city of Rock Springs in Sweetwater County, Wyoming. The riot, and resulting massacre of immigrant Chinese miners by white immigrant miners, was the result of racial prejudice toward the Chinese miners, who were perceived to be taking jobs from the white miners. The Union Pacific Coal Department found it economically beneficial to give preference in hiring to Chinese miners, who were willing to work for lower wages than their white counterparts, angering the white miners. When the rioting ended, at least 28 Chinese miners were dead and 15 were injured. Rioters burned 78 Chinese homes, resulting in approximately US$150,000 in property damage.
The Tacoma riot of 1885, also known as the 1885 Chinese expulsion from Tacoma, involved the forceful expulsion of the Chinese population from Tacoma, Washington Territory, on November 3, 1885. City leaders had earlier proposed a November 1 deadline for the Chinese population to leave the city. On November 3, 1885, a mob that consisted of prominent businessmen, police, and political leaders descended on the Chinese community. The mob marched Chinese residents to a railroad station and forced them to board a train to Portland. In the following days, the structures that remained in the Chinese community were razed. The event was the result of growing anti-Chinese sentiment and violence throughout the American West.
In Oregon, mobs drove Chinese workers out of small towns and workplaces territory-wide in the Winter of 1885 and Summer of 1886. Many of the Chinese expelled across Oregon made their way to Portland, where they settled in the city's Chinatown. In Portland the Chinese were tolerated in part because of its close commercial shipping ties to China.
The Seattle riot of 1886 occurred on February 6–9, 1886, in Seattle, Washington, amidst rising anti-Chinese sentiment caused by intense labor competition and in the context of an ongoing struggle between labor and capital in the Western United States. The dispute arose when a mob affiliated with a local Knights of Labor chapter formed small committees to carry out a forcible expulsion of all Chinese from the city. Violence erupted between the Knights of Labor rioters and federal troops ordered in by President Grover Cleveland. The incident resulted in the removal of over 200 Chinese civilians from Seattle and left two militia men and three rioters seriously injured.
There were at least several incidents of anti-Chinese violence in Washington, a United States territory and later, a U.S. state, which occurred during the 19th, 20th and 21st century. In the 19th century, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 created hostile attitudes towards the Chinese people residing in the U.S. The act sparked a wave of anti-Chinese riots and murders occurring in Washington, such as the Tacoma Riot of 1885, the Rock Springs massacre and the Hells Canyon massacre in 1887. There were riots and mob actions in Issaquah and Seattle which resulted in at least four people being killed and extensive property damage. Anti-Chinese violence continued throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, particularly in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Chinatowns are enclaves of Chinese people outside of China. The first Chinatown in the United States was San Francisco's Chinatown in 1848, and many other Chinatowns were established in the 19th century by the Chinese diaspora on the West Coast. By 1875, Chinatowns had emerged in eastern cities such as New York City, Boston, and Philadelphia. In 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act, which barred Chinese immigration to the United States, was passed into law. In 1943, the Magnuson Act repealed the Chinese Exclusion Act, and the population of Chinatowns began to rise again. In the 2010s, the downturn in the U.S. economy caused many Chinese Americans to return to China.
The San Francisco riot of 1877 was a three-day pogrom waged against Chinese immigrants in San Francisco, California by the city's majority white population from the evening of July 23 through the night of July 25, 1877. The ethnic violence which swept Chinatown resulted in four deaths and the destruction of more than $100,000 worth of property belonging to the city's Chinese immigrant population.
The Vancouver riots occurred September 7–9, 1907, in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. At about the same time there were similar anti-Asian riots in San Francisco, Bellingham, Washington, and other West Coast cities. They were not coordinated, but instead reflected common underlying anti-immigration attitudes. Agitation for direct action was led by labour unions and small business. No one was killed but the damage to Asian-owned property was extensive. One result was an informal agreement whereby the government of China stopped emigration to Canada.
Greater Seattle has had a Chinese American community almost since its founding in 1851. Chinese workers arriving in the 1860s were welcomed, because the Seattle area was sparsely settled and workers were needed; within a few decades, however, newly arrived white settlers resented the Chinese workers, and there were several anti-Chinese riots as the whites attempted to expel the Chinese from the area. Chinese settlement persisted, with the immigrants settling in a well-defined Chinatown where they maintained their culture through family groups, associations, and churches. In the mid-20th century Chinese Americans joined with other immigrant groups to oppose racial discrimination. In 1962 a Chinese American became the first person of Asian ancestry to hold elective office in the state of Washington.
The history of Chinese Canadians in British Columbia began with the first recorded visit by Chinese people to North America in 1788. Some 30–40 men were employed as shipwrights at Nootka Sound in what is now British Columbia, to build the first European-type vessel in the Pacific Northwest, named the North West America. Large-scale immigration of Chinese began seventy years later with the advent of the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush of 1858. During the gold rush, settlements of Chinese grew in Victoria and New Westminster and the "capital of the Cariboo" Barkerville and numerous other towns, as well as throughout the colony's interior, where many communities were dominantly Chinese. In the 1880s, Chinese labour was contracted to build the Canadian Pacific Railway. Following this, many Chinese began to move eastward, establishing Chinatowns in several of the larger Canadian cities.
Chinatown in Denver, Colorado, was a residential and business district of Chinese Americans in what is now the LoDo section of the city. It was also referred to as "Hop Alley", based upon a slang word for opium. The first Chinese resident of Denver was Hong Lee arrived in 1869 and lived in a shanty at Wazee and F Streets and ran a washing and ironing laundry business. More Chinese immigrants arrived in the town the following year. Men who had worked on the construction of the first transcontinental railroad or had been miners in California crossed over the Rocky Mountains after their work was completed or mines were depleted in California.
Chinese Americans in the Pacific Northwest have been around since as early as the 1850s. Chinese Americans arrived in the Greater Seattle area in as early as 1851. Oregon had also seen an influx of Chinese Immigrants as early as 1851, because of mining opportunities. Idaho saw an influx of Chinese Immigrants in the late-19th century, and by 1870 saw a population of around 4,000 Chinese immigrants. The influx of Chinese immigrants in the Pacific Northwest and the rest of the Western United States led to retaliation by whites, leading to anti-Chinese sentiment in the United States. These sentiment then led to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which expelled many Chinese Americans in the Pacific Northwest. Chinese exclusion is also driven by the failure of restriction. The United States had passed the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 to slow immigration, and mend Sinophobia in the west. However, the enforcement of the exclusion act was lackluster. The United States Department of Treasury had found itself with no money to enforce this law. Thus, nullifying the purpose of the exclusion act. Additionally, under the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, Chinese people could migrate to the United States if they were return immigrants. Consequently, Chinese immigrants began claiming that they were return immigrants so that they could work in the United States. This also made the Chinese Exclusion Act 1882 useless. This led the United States government to pass the Scott Act of 1888. This excluded all Chinese immigration because it was cheaper, and it appeased the racial tensions in the west.
Anti-Chinese violence in California includes a number of massacres, riots, expulsions and other violent actions that were directed at Chinese-American communities during the mid and late 19th century. The attacks on Chinese were often sparked by labor disputes. In the 1880s alone, Chinese communities were attacked in 34 towns in California, often resulting in the local Chinatown being looted and burned by a white thugs.
1885 Chinese expulsion from Eureka was an ethnic cleansing event that took place in Eureka, California on February 7, 1885.
People of Chinese descent have lived in Colorado since the mid-nineteenth century, when many immigrated from China for work. Chinese immigrants have made an undeniable impact on Colorado's history and culture. While the Chinese moved throughout the state, including building small communities on the Western Slope and establishing Chinatown, Denver, the presence of Chinese Coloradans diminished significantly due to violence and discriminatory policies. As of 2018, there were 45,273 Chinese Americans living in Colorado.
 | This Pierce County, Washington state location article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |