Immigrants from China were among the groups most discriminated against. Many laws, starting with the 1790 Immigration Act, kept them from becoming naturalized citizens and denied them the rights of white Americans.1 In 1882, Congress passed The Chinese Exclusion Act—the first significant law restricting immigration into the United States—which suspended Chinese immigration for ten years and declared Chinese immigrants ineligible for naturalization.2
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| Old Chinatown, Los Angeles, scene of the Chinese Riots of 1871 courtesy USC Libraries Special Collection |
Motives for immigration
The “push” to emigrate from China came from natural disasters, internal upheavals, and imperialistic aggressions in China during the 1840’s and 1850’s.
The 1840’s and the 1850’s in China were full of natural calamities. The major ones were a severe drought in Henan Province in 1847, flooding of the Yangtze River in four provinces, and a famine in Guangxi Province in 1849.3
Flood and famine in Guangdong [Kwangtung] gave way to the catastrophic Taiping Revolution (1850-1864), which devastated the land, uprooted the peasantry, and wrecked both the economy and political system. China’s attempts to stop traffic in opium led to two wars that China lost—the first with Great Britain in 1839–42, the second against a British-French alliance in 1856–60.4 The treaties that ended the wars gave the Europeans special trading and territorial rights, which made social and economic conditions worse.
Things were particularly bad in the area in southern China around Guangzhou (Guangdong/Canton) and Hong Kong—the Pearl River Delta—where there was “constant warfare” and the “usual floods and droughts”.5 The natural calamities, wars, and changes in agriculture left many peasants without land to work and few jobs available.6 Not surprisingly, the Pearl River Delta was home to many of the immigrants who left China for the US in the 1850s.
The “pull” to emigrate resulted from the discovery of gold in California and the economic opportunities in the United States.7 News of the discovery of gold in California came to the Pearl River Delta first,8 then spread like wildfire and attracted thousands of gold seekers to California.9 Among them were 325 Chinese “forty-niners.” The number of Chinese in California increased from 2,716 in 1851 to 20,026 in 1852.
To make emigration from China even more attractive, it was often financed by brokers who acted like employment agencies. They used a “credit-ticket” system, in which a borrower was advanced enough money to pay for his fare and small expenses.10 After arriving in the US, the borrower had to repay the loan plus interest within a predetermined span of time. Failure to repay on time led to additional charges, and, unlike the contract-labor system, the creditor wasn’t obliged to find employment for the borrower. This arrangement was similar to that of a pawnshop.11
Demand for labor in some parts of the world was so great that it led to the kidnapping of workers in China. These abductions became known as “Shanghai-ing.” Usually they involved getting laborers, called coolies, to undesirable places where the work was hard or the climate severe, so it really didn’t affect Hawai’i or California.12
By 1882, when the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act ended large-scale Chinese immigration, about 300,000 Chinese were living in the continental United States.13
Help for immigrants
Chinese immigrants were helped by groups called huiguan. Each of these were made up of immigrants who came from the same part of China for mutual aid. {Chinese hui guan or hwee kuan 會館, literally means “meeting hall”}14
The huiguans provided mutual aid, self-protection, and homeland ties. They also worked to improve the social habits of the immigrants. One writer said of the huigans, “They are somewhat like American churches! The buildings furnish beds, fuel, and water to guests who remain for but a short period; also a lodging place and medicines for the infirm, aged or sick. Means are bestowed upon such to enable them to return to China.”15
The huigans were originally benevolent organizations, formed to help the Chinese come from and return to China, to take care of the sick and the starving, and to return corpses to China for burial. The huiguans also smoothed the way of the immigrants by organizing sea passages from China to America and back, negotiating with contractors to supply gangs of laborers, looking out for the interests of their members generally, and, later, protecting the immigrants from white racist hoodlums. The huigans were run by the richer and better educated among the immigrants, in the paternalistic manner typical of 19th century Chinese society.16
Over time, some of the huigans became associated with criminal enterprises, such as the triads—secret societies that became crime syndicates in America—and the tongs—some of which were trade associations and some of which were criminal gangs.
“Tongs were organizations of former rebels that had fought in or supported a series of uprisings and regional conflicts back in China. When they arrived in America, they switched their focus to the money they could make from facilitating the ‘three vices’ that were associated with Chinatowns in California; prostitution, gambling and opium. The Hip Yee Tong was originally formed with a mission to protect Chinese women from prostitution, but soon became the largest provider of prostitutes when they realized the enormous profits to be made.”17
You may not know about - Race Riots in Los Angeles and Wyoming
In 1871, the huigans in Los Angeles were involved in criminal activities and one night, in the Chinatown section of LA, two huigans got into a fight over a prostitute. The LAPD and a civilian tried to intervene and one cop was wounded and the civilian was killed. An angry lynch mob of Whites charged into Chinatown. Eighteen Chinese were hanged by the mob, equal to more than 10% of all the Chinese living in Los Angeles. None of those involved in the hangings went to jail. It was one of the worst race riots in American history.18
The Los Angeles race riot was not the worst anti-Chinese activity. In 1885 in Rock Springs, Wyoming (then a Territory), Chinese miners were massacred.19 On September 2, white miners, angry because the Chinese were willing to work for less, rioted and then started killing Chinese. By the end of the day, 28 Chinese laborers were dead20 and many others injured. More than 75 Chinese homes were burned down. The attackers were apparently mostly immigrants: A remarkable fact in connection with the butchery is, that but a few, if any, of the mob are citizens of the United States. Cornishmen, Danes, and Poles appeared to predominate.21 No one was punished for the murders. News of the Wyoming riot spread and touched off more anti-Chinese riots in Washington Territory and Oregon in 1885 (Tacoma), 1886 (Seattle) and 1887(Hells Canyon). In the 1880s, Chinese communities were attacked in 34 towns in California.22
The US Library of Congress materials on Chinese immigrants includes this:
“… immigrants from China were forced out of business, run out of town, beaten, tortured, lynched, and massacred, usually with little hope of help from the law. Racial hatred, an uncertain economy, and weak government in the new territories all contributed to this climate of terror and bloodshed. The perpetrators of these crimes, which included Americans from many segments of society, largely went unpunished. Exact statistics for this period are difficult to come by, but a case can be made that Chinese immigrants suffered worse treatment than any other group that came voluntarily to the U.S.”23
You may not know about - Mississippi Settlers
From 1850 to 1864, China underwent the Taiping Rebellion, a massive civil war between the Manchu-led Qing dynasty army and Taiping Christian "Heavenly Kingdom" rebels. Between 20,000,000 and 30,000,000 Chinese died in this war. In one province—Guangdong, near the area where the rebellion began—as many as 1,000,000 people were executed.24
Between 1863 and 1869, the Transcontinental Railroad was extended across the USA, laying tracks from outside Omaha, Nebraska, to Oakland, California. To build the railroad, the Central Pacific recruited Chinese immigrants, who were both interested and available, and employed about 12,000 to 15,000 of them— many from Guangdong province.25
The American Civil War ended in 1865 and the railroad was completed in 1869. At that point, some of the Chinese immigrants went back to China, some stayed in California, and some moved to the Mississippi Delta, responding to cotton planters’ need for a workforce to replace the freed slaves. Chinese laborers, “were cheap, disposable, and politically voiceless.”26
They were paid for their work, and free to leave it, as most of them did when they could, to build their own economic means—largely businesses “serving the black community when the white community wouldn’t.”
The Chinese realized that working on a plantation did not produce economic success, so they turned to opening and running grocery stores. The first Chinese grocery store in Mississippi likely appeared in the early 1870s and some became shopkeepers and landowners.27
By the end of the 1870s, the Chinese had abandoned the plantations and were opening small family-owned grocery stores in many small towns of the Delta. The Chinese were middlemen between blacks and whites, often providing a needed contact point in a segregated society. Most modern Mississippi Delta Chinese are the descendants of Chinese who arrived in Mississippi during this time. Until the end of the 1900s, Chinese-owned groceries could be found in every Delta city and town, serving both white and black customers.28
The huiguans continued to be active in California, but for the Mississippi Chinese, religious organizations, like the Chinese Baptist Church in Cleveland, Mississippi, served as a center for weddings, community service projects, fundraising activities, funerals, and other occasions that brought the extended Chinese community together.29
Steven B. Zwickel, 2021
Notes
1 United States Congress, “An act to establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization” (March 26, 1790). Under this law, naturalization was specifically limited to “free white persons.”
3 Janku, A. “Drought and Famine in Northwest China: A Late Victorian Tragedy?” Journal of Chinese History (2018; v.2 n.2) p. 373-391 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/jch.2018.4
4 “The Opium Wars in China” Asia-Pacific Foundation of Canada https://asiapacificcurriculum.ca/learning-module/opium-wars-china
5 Mei, June “Socioeconomic Origins of Emigration: Guangdong to California, 1850-1882” Modern China (Vol. 5, No. 4 (Oct., 1979), p. 496 Doi: https://www.jstor.org/stable/188841 Dr. Mei notes that in “Guangdong, we find that domestic turmoil and economic decline resulted in the inability of the countryside to provide an adequate means of livelihood for a growing population.” p. 492
6 Mei, June “Socioeconomic Origins of Emigration: Guangdong to California, 1850-1882”
Dr. Mei argues that the main push for Chinese emigration was that, in China, “industrial development was slow and inadequate for a variety of reasons, and the domestic economy could not absorb this "free" labor force” at a time when the US could offer good-paying jobs. p.498
7 Chen, Yong "The Internal Origins of Chinese Emigration to California Reconsidered" Western Historical Quarterly (Winter, 1997, Vol. 28, No. 4.Oxford University Press) Pp. 520-546 Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/969884
Chen offers evidence to show that socio-economic conditions in the Pearl River Delta—the part of China from which most immigrants to the US came—were not significantly worse than in other parts of China. She feels that the pull of the California Gold Rush and economic opportunity in the US were more powerful drivers of emigration than poverty.
8 Chen, Yong "The Internal Origins of Chinese Emigration to California Reconsidered” p.541
“Legend has it, for example, that a man named Chun Ming, who had come to California as a merchant earlier and became a successful gold miner during the Gold Rush, was among the first to break the news to people back in Canton from overseas. (Liu, Boji Meiguo Hua jiao Shi, {“A history of the Chinese in the United States of America, 1848-1911”} (1982, Taipei: Liming Cultural Business).p.36. ) Based on such news that they learned one way or another, local Chinese formed their image of California: during the very first years of Chinese emigration, they knew California as "Jinshan" (meaning "Gold Mountain" or "the Country of Gold" in Chinese). Indeed, gold was what most early emigrants had in mind when going to California. A Chinese-language article in the San Francisco-based The Oriental stated that "most of the Chinese arriving in this city are gold-miners," and few came for other reasons.(The Oriental, San Francisco; 15 February 1855)”
9 Chen, Yong "The Internal Origins of Chinese Emigration to California Reconsidered" p. 522
10 wikipedia.org entry for “Credit-ticket system” citing Cloud, Patricia and David W. Galenson. “Chinese Immigration and Contract Labor in the Late Nineteenth Century,” Explorations in Economic History 24.1 (1987): p. 26.
11 Mei, June “Socioeconomic Origins of Emigration: Guangdong to California, 1850-1882” p.499
12 Mei, June “Socioeconomic Origins of Emigration: Guangdong to California, 1850-1882” p.478
13 “Chinese Immigrants: Push-Pull Factors”; https://immigrationtounitedstates.org/425-chinese-immigrants.html
14 wikipedia.org entry: “Kongsi” {a southern Chinese term for company or corporation}
15 The Oriental: or, TUNG-NGAI SAN-LUK. SAN FRANCISCO, THURSDAY, JANUARY 25, 1855: “THE CHINESE COMPANIES THEIR MEMBERS, NUMBERS, AND PROPERTY”
16 “The Six Companies: Historical Essays”; Dr. Weirde & Kevin J. Mullen’s Chinatown Squad; https://www.foundsf.org/index.php?title=The_Six_Companies
17 Edwards, Christopher “Homeland Comfort in an Alien Land: The Role of the Huiguan in Exclusion Era Los Angeles” Toro Historical Review; https://thetorohistoricalreview.org/2019/04/16/homeland-comfort-in-an-alien-land-the-role-of-the-huiguan-in-exclusion-era-los-angeles/
18 Zesch, Scott. The Chinatown War: Chinese Los Angeles and the Massacre of 1871. New York, NY: Oxford Press, 2012.
19 wikipedia.org entry for “Rock Springs massacre” Other sources describing the massacre include:
◆ Storti, Craig The Incident at Bitter Creek: The Story of the Rock Springs Chinese Massacre (1990, Iowa State Press) ISBN-13: 978-0813814032
◆ Milner, Clyde A. II, Butler, Anne M., and Lewis, David Rich eds. Major Problems in the History of the American West 2nd Ed “Miners and Cowboys: Chinese Accounts of the Killings at Rock Springs, 1885” (1997, Houghton Mifflin Co.; Boston/New York) ISBN: 9780669415803 Pp. 316-319
20 Bromley, Isaac H. The Chinese Massacre at Rock Springs, Wyoming Territory, September 2, 1885 (1886, Boston, Franklin press and 2018, Sweetwater County Museum Foundation; Green River, WY) ISBN-13 : 978-1986672238 According to Bromley, the riot left 22 dead and another 26 presumed dead p. 91
21 Bromley, Isaac H. The Chinese Massacre at Rock Springs, Wyoming Territory, September 2, 1885 p.53
22 National Park Service “A History of Chinese Americans in California: the 1880s” https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/5views/5views3e.htm
23 “Intolerance” https://www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/immigration/chinese/intolerance
24 wikipedia.org entry for “Taiping Rebellion”
25 Hua, Vanessa ”Golden Spike Redux" National Parks Conservation Assn; https://www.npca.org/articles/2192-golden-spike-redux?s_src=g_grants_ads&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIk-rZjvC76wIVAtvACh2E3gRPEAAYASAAEgKhu_D_BwE
26 Jones, Josh “Learn the Untold History of the Chinese Community in the Mississippi Delta”;<http://www.openculture.com/2017/09/learn-the-untold-history-of-the-chinese-community-in-the-mississippi-delta.html>
27 Wilson, Charles Reagan Mississippi History Now “Chinese in Mississippi: An Ethnic People in a Biracial Society” http://www.mshistorynow.mdah.ms.gov/articles/86/mississippi-chinese-an-ethnic-people-in-a-biracial-society
28 wikipedia.org entry for “Chinese Americans in the Mississippi Delta”
29 Wilson, Charles Reagan “Chinese in Mississippi: An Ethnic People in a Biracial Society” Mississippi History Now
