ARLINGTON, Va. - TelAve -- by  Ed Lengel for David Bruce Smith's Grateful American Book Prize

Seattle's anti-Chinese Riots, February 1886

Although the United States was founded—and thrived on—immigration during its 250-year history, ethnic hatreds have generated numerous grim episodes of violence against it. After the United States acquired much of California at the end of the 1848 war with Mexico, American prospectors rushed to the territory during the 1849 Gold Rush. That move, and the expansion of mining operations and railroads across the Pacific coast in the following decades, also lured thousands of Chinese immigrants who went to work in those industries. Ironically, they were treated as an underclass, even though they were also vital component to the region's economic expansion.

In 1882 Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act which barred further immigration from China and put the Chinese already in the country in danger. Suddenly, they were confronted with even more persecution. The numerous outbreaks of anti-Chinese violence across the west culminated in February 1886, when local chapters of the Knights of Labor—an organization primarily for white American working men—ordered a wholesale deportation of the Chinese—who they believed—were sucking up white workers' factory jobs. Mobs attacked them, everywhere. Washington State's governor tried to restore order, but local authorities and the Knights of Labor ignored him. By the time President Grover Cleveland sent in Federal troops to enforce the peace, the riots had already ended, and hundreds of innocent Chinese had left Seattle. Not until after World War II—during which many Chinese Americans faced hatred from Americans who thought they were Japanese—would their neighborhoods in Seattle and other places—begin to calm.

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For more information about Chinese immigration to America, the Grateful American Book Prize recommends Michael Luo's Strangers in the Land: Belonging, and the Epic Story of the Chinese in America (2025).

History Matters is a feature courtesy of the Grateful American Book Prize. For more book recommendations and information about the annual award visit https://gratefulamericanbookprize.org/.