Los Angeles Chinese Massacre of 1871

Los Angeles the City of Angels has a storied history while today it is the second largest city in the United States with a population of nearly 4 million in 1870 its population was just five thousand seven hundred and twenty-eight and according to the United States Census Bureau of those 179 were Chinese Chinese immigration to the United States began in earnest during the California Gold Rush but the clash between people who had a different appearance and a different culture always resulted in racial tension and one terrible night in 1871 those racial tensions boiled over into what was at the time called Black Tuesday or the night of Horrors but what today is usually called the Los Angeles Chinese Massacre and the victims of that massacre deserved to be remembered early Chinese immigration to the United States began with maritime trade but the first great way began in the middle of the nineteenth century as Chinese immigrants came to work in the California Gold Fields or building the Transcontinental Railroad many were seeking a better life with higher wages to either send back to the extended families they left behind in China or to take back with them when they returned home some were seeking to escape the violence of the bloody Taiping rebellion in 1848 the US census showed a total of 325 Chinese Americans in 1880 that number was 300,000 by the 1860s there was a significant Chinese minority living in the frontier city called Los Angeles and many Chinese families lived on a street called Calais de las Negros Kelly de las Negros in Los Angeles's former Chinatown district was originally named for the Spanish men who frequented the street the colloquial English version of the street name which can be viewed on some of the city's older maps is a racial slur in 1871 it was lined with shops saloons roffels and even the doctor's office though the street itself was only 500 feet long it had a large reputation for violence a Los Angeles Times article talking about the history of the street published in 1898 said that the Kali de los negros had been the wickedest street on earth but it wasn't always such a dark destination and had seen better days the street was once home to wealthy California families that remains of the Spanish landowners in fornia Los Angeles itself was a rough-and-tumble western city for example the first publicly funded building constructed in the city of Los Angeles was a jail it also smelled the ditches around the city served as multi-purpose latrines laundry areas and wallows for hogs the Los Angeles News wrote about the conditions in the city in October 1869 dead dogs and cats with rotten fruit slops and decaying vegetables lie promiscuously about and pass undisturbed through the successive stages of decomposition making a picture of supreme nastiness the dirt roads line the city could turn into swamps after rainstorms in which travelers could sink into mud up to 2 feet deep and Los Angeles could be a dangerous and violent place in the 1850s the city had a homicide rate of 12.4 per thousand people still the record for the highest per capita homicide rate in US history there was an average of a murder a day and the killings Longy took place around the gambling dens and saloons of the calais de los negros often driven by long-standing grudges or gambling disputes it didn't help matters that the Los Angeles Police Department was incredibly small when was first established as a paid rather than a volunteer force in 1869 the department consisted of only six men for a violent city of roughly 6,000 people perhaps because of the small number of police officers California generally had a history of vigilante justice committees would form to take matters into their own hands and those committees could often turn into mobs as they did the night of October 24th 1871 that night police officer a hey sis Bill Doran heard shots coming from the kelie the Los Negros he and his partner has - Ben Sanchez jumped on their horses and rode to the dispute they discovered five or six Chinese men firing at one another in the street bill uhrin tried to break up the fight but then the duelists turned their pistols on him and he was shot in the shoulder Chinese immigrants in Los Angeles were often members of social groups called the we gwyne commonly called companies and the newspapers at the time although that translation is not exactly correct week when were social groups formed to help Chinese immigrants in their new lives in America members would sign up for the Hui Gwyn based on the location they immigrated from in China these groups would help with that everything from finding their members jobs to offering loans and helping care for the sick if the person died the Hui Gwyn would help transport the members body back to his or her family in China the violence started in the Cali de las Negros that evening because of a fight between two Chinese men who were members of different we Gwyn who developed a feud the few to become so heated that one merchant said that the local Chinese residence numbering only around 200 have purchased between forty and fifty pistols from his store in the weeks before the shootout the noise had alerted other citizens of Los Angeles to the fight and they gathered around the called-- a de los negros to see if they could lend assistance Robert Thompson a former saloon owner was among the crowd someone yelled the [ __ ] have shot bill Derain Thompson drew his gun and approached one of the shops where some of the shots were coming from as he fired into the open doorway a shot came from those within and struck him above the heart eyewitnesses later said that Thompson choked out I'm killed he eventually bled to death hours later but the shooting of Thompson and building changed the mood of the watching crowd a mob of an estimated 500 people of different nationalities attacked the Chinese living in the city the general public opinion was driven by resentment and distrust of Chinese immigrants while often portrayed as a working class complaint over jobs the hatred towards the Chinese was a thinly veiled racism against the people who were hated largely because their ways and culture were different newspapers supported the racist attitudes and Los Angelenos blamed the Kelly de Los Negros for crime in their city it did not take much to incite a mob against the residents there between the sheriff city marshal and police officers there were only nine lawmen available that night to control the crowd they deputized some of the citizens in ordered everyone to keep the Chinese from leaving the Kelly de Los Negros particularly the Coronel apartments named after their owner of former Los Alamos mayor at California State Treasurer and Tanya F Coronel you wouldn't call the Coronel apartments a nice place to live Chinese immigrants who lived on the calendar lost Negros in the Coronel adobe apartments live there because it was all they could afford the men who had started the gun fight in the street fled the scene and the inflamed mob descended on the innocent Chinese families some of whom were sitting down to dinner in the Coronel when the mob couldn't get to the people the Adobe building they cleaned up down the roof and dug holes to where they could shoot down at their helpless victims one man a man named Al winged panicked and tried to run away the mob ran him down and lynched him from the gate of a lumberyard meanwhile back in the Kelly de las Negros the mob had grown impatient there was talk of setting fire to burn the Cornell to the ground but that idea was set aside only two weeks before that night the city of Chicago had experienced a devastating fire that had burned out of control and destroyed a large part of the city Los Angeles did not want to suffer the same fate using a large stone the mob eventually broke down the doors and went through the building apartment by apartment dragging the Chinese people out into the street the violence and brutality was terrible one of the victims was dr. Jing tog who was a popular Chinese physician dr. thanh swore to the crowd he had nothing to do with the earlier gunfight and promised to give his life savings to the mob if they let him go they shot him through the mouth and then hanged him eyewitnesses to the violence claimed men were pouring into the cat lady de los negros from the suburbs of Los Angeles bearing rifles shotguns and pistols in some quarters the mood was almost a celebration with one man dancing as he pulled the rope another report had a young boy clamoring for more victims while helping the older man pull the innocent ones to their death three of the victims two men and a Chinese boy of only 15 years old were returning from their jobs to their homes in the Cali de los negros when they were caught by the mob they didn't even know a shooting had taken place when they were lynched from an awning outside of a wagon shop while the killings were going on looters ransacked the homes and chops of the Kelly de los negros there was a rumor that one of the shops contained a chest full of gold that was untrue but looters ripped through possessions in a fury trying to discover it when the evening was over nearly 10 percent of Los Angeles's Chinese population was shot to death or lynched experts argue that the more than 18 people who were killed in the 1871 riots and lynchings were killed largely because they didn't have a voice being marginalized members of society chillingly members of the mob seemed to think that the violence against the Chinese was fun to be fair not everybody in Los Angeles participated in the riots to shame the mob into stopping and others hid Chinese people in their homes to keep them safe one man named William H gray hid several people in his home and he said for years thereafter he would receive anonymous gifts and thanks for what he had done despite the killing no charges of murder were brought nine men were eventually tried and found guilty of manslaughter for their roles in the lynchings and murders and sentenced in between two and six years but their sentences were eventually overturned by the California Supreme Court on a technicality when news of the night of Horrors was published in newspapers and places like New York and Chicago it was the first time that many of the citizens of those cities had ever heard of the tiny city of Los Angeles editorials skewered the city saying there was nothing angelic about it city leaders were so embarrassed by the publicity that they took steps to implement effective law and order and among those steps in 1877 was to rename the infamous Calais the Los Negros calling it instead Los Angeles Street the massacre in Los Angeles took place more than ten years before the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 a federal law that prohibited the immigration of Chinese laborers this law was one of the first restrictive immigration into the United States the Chinese Exclusion Act highlighted racial tensions at the time would not be repealed until the 1960s the exact number of people killed by the mob that night is still unknown after an initial burial in the United States the bodies of the victims were returned to their families in China the cemetery where they were initially buried doesn't exist anymore many of their names are lost to history in the tensions that can turn a crowd into a mob still exist today the city of Los Angeles has a long history of racial violence 34 people were killed in race riots in Los Angeles in 1965 and another 62 were killed in race riots in 1992 you I hope you enjoyed this episode of the history guy short snippets a forgotten history between 10 and 15 minutes long and if you did enjoy please go ahead and click that thumbs up button if you have any questions or comments or suggestions for future episodes please write those in the comment section I will be happy to personally respond be sure to follow the history guy on Facebook Instagram Twitter and check out our merchandise on teespring com and if you'd like more episodes on forgotten history all you need to do is subscribe [Music]

Channel: The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered

Views: 521,951

Keywords: History, the history guy, los angeles, US history, california, race riot, chinese massacre, american history

Id: nauaIbOXaYo

Length: 11min 29sec (689 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 17 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/elnots]

Also recommend this channel's other videos as well, very interesting history

[u/[deleted]]

The Tulsa Race Riot of 1921