In observance of the 150th anniversary, local groups have been commemorating the race riot, which resulted in the murder of roughly 20 Chinese Americans — among the largest mass lynchings in American history. - NBCAsianAmerica
“It was definitely a place where no one wanted to live, and that’s where they put the Chinese,” one professor said.
“Remembering both the accomplishments and achievements of different groups in society is as important as remembering the tragedies,” Karen Umemoto, director of the Asian American Studies Center at UCLA, one of the universities involved, told NBC Asian America. “That can help us figure out what it is we need to put in place as a society so that we can all thrive equally.”
“Both of them shot first … but once Robert Thompson was killed, then all hell broke loose because people were running around saying ‘the Chinamen are killing white people by wholesale,’” Huang said. “It was very opportunistic violence.” Huang explained that in the late 1800s, Los Angeles had not yet developed into the metropolitan center it is today. The town was small and its Chinese American community, largely made up of immigrants who were brought over to work on the transcontinental railroad, amounted to about 200 in the entire L.A. region. About half lived in the city’s segregated area along what was known as the Calle de los Negros, where Chinatown sat.
“Very quickly white workers start to basically come to a consensus that Chinese workers are different in a threatening way,” Wu said. “And a big part of that assumption, that they’re threatening, is that they are our new embodiment of unfree labor.”
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