Yellow Peril

Their everyday motto? Survive At All Costs. Then, Prosper.

Figure 5 - San Francisco's Chinatown, 1906.

One could talk hours about the difference between intelligence and cunning, without ever coming to terms with it. The truth is simple. Some misconduct, producing a temporary advantage, is -over time- harmful and detrimental. Selfishness and lack of empathy cause an inevitable damage. If the victim is not prone to forgiveness, the echo of it will widen immeasurably and with certain destructive results. Simply put, an action leads to a reaction. That was the relationship between Uncle Sam and Chinese. That is why the whole New Continent cried out to the Yellow Peril.

Between 1880 and 1882, finding a scapegoat was quite easy. Americans accused Chinese of unfair competition, job theft, and social rivalry. After the first Immigrants Regulation And Restriction, approved in 1861, which banned interracial marriages -even if Chinese abhorred the very thought of connecting with Westerners- there were others. All of them with the purpose of increasingly restraining both human and legal liberties. The Civil Right Act of 1866 declared that, “All persons born in the United States are citizens, without regard to race, colour, or previous condition”. In defiance of it, the legislators excluded Chinese from the regulation, appealing to a subtle legal loop.

The sole issue? Not all Asians are Chinese and one cannot simply classify them. The Civil Rights Act of 1875, in fact, defined the obviousdifference between European and African descent. However, it was not able to make a substantial separation between White and Yellow.

Officially, and it is appalling, it was because Asians had more heterogeneous chromaticity than Black People and less salient somatic traits. As stated, appalling. They were simply Non-White and therefore excluded from any right of citizenship. Hence, any naturalized Chinese-American remained a foreigner.

Previously, other regulations had already limited their freedom in the United States.

In 1858, California enacted a law prohibiting them any access to state careers. Later, in 1879, a new Constitution passed. It declared that the Government had the absolute right to determine the fundamental requirements for residence in the State. Sticking to the quibble of Indeterminacy Of The Race, it denied residence to every single Chinese. Already in 1875, the Congress had blocked the immigration of workers and prostitutes for 10 years. The official reason was, curbing the Underworld and restoring US territory. Between 1856 and 1880, thirty different rulings limited or denied the fundamental rights of Chinese immigrants in the US. It was an evident violation of the Burlingame Treaty, but both Press and General Public did not even blink. Disappointing, but not surprising.

Frustration due to recession drove a wedge, another, between them. The motive? Meagre envy. Chinese people continued to prosper. The audacity.

Targeted by Government and Society alike. Closed in their own communities. Attached to their ancient customs. Last but not least, their disdain of mixing with Whites. They were the perfect Fall Guy. Threats, looting, pranks, tonsuring. They endured everything. Stoically. However, the ice was getting thinner and thinner. Until it degenerated in one of the biggest mass lynching ever happened in the United States. The Chinese Massacre Of 1871.

Figure 6 – Young Mother And Her Two children.

The Chinese massacre of 1871

The Beginning Of The End

The year, 1871. The set, Calle De Los Negros. What happened, one of the darkest episodes ever occurred in Chinatown.

The Ghetto Of All Ghettos would have be remembered also as Negro Alley. A pitiless mirror of that age and time, home of United States’ favourite culprits -Mexicans and Chinese- it casted a terrible shadow on the growing City Of Angels. George Morrow Mayo described it as, “ a dreadful thoroughfare, forty feet wide, running one whole block, filled entirely with saloons, gambling-houses, dance-halls, and cribs.”

The whole area was, basically, drowning in vice.

The residents were predominantly males, due to the laws restricting immigration of Chinese women. However, the Triad achieved to bring worthy representatives of the Fairer Sex in. With a little help of local authorities, of course. In doing so, the number of Chinese in Calle De Los Negros had grown about two hundred times. In just ten years, it prospered wonderfully. Thereby, discontent among Whites was unbearable. Afflicted by the Post-War recession, they were well aware that they could not compete with the low prices and strenuous working hours of Chinese traders. That dissatisfaction soon turned into rage toward those outsiders who have the nerve to be bold enough to have it better than them. Classic.

It is astounding that tragedy broke out only on the 24

of October, 1871, and not earlier.

Figure 7 - Calle De Los Negros , 1880. Until 1882, The District Remained Unaltered. Then, Some Of The Buildings Were Demolished.

The official cause of that lynching was, in fact, the regular A-Foreigner-Dared-To-Lay-A-Finger-On-A-White-Person excuse. Dying was a regular and unsurprising event, in Chinatown. The week before the accident, for instance, forty-four people passed away in those alleys. Four of them were police officers, as the victim of that infamous night.

Why such fury, then? What was the difference? Easy. The first victims’ killers were Legal White Residents. Whereas Officer Robert Thompson -owner of the notorious Blue Wings, loan shark, no saint- died in a gunfight with some Asian Mobsters.

That death was the perfect excuse to unleash ghastly wrath of the crowd towards twenty random innocent Chinese.

Kidnapped. Tortured. Mutilated. Hanged. Those were their fate.

Eight people prosecuted, initially accused of manslaughter - which is plain ridiculous- were then fully acquitted. However, many a witness indicated those and thirty more as responsible for that massacre. And Police heard none of them. Typical. Unexpected is not the correct word one should associate to that event. As stated in Scott Zesch’s The Chinatown War, a specific episode happened. A few days earlier, Yo Hing -boss of one of the various clans of Chinese Mob- had ordered the kidnapping and subsequent ransom of one of the very few married women in Chinatown. A great beauty called Yut Ho.

Yo Hing had close relationships with local administrations, who were more than glad to ignore the misdeeds. For a profit.

The rival faction, led by merchant Sam Yuen, did not take it well. Therefore, together with a heavily armed gang of Tong warriors, landed in San Francisco.

On the night of the 23 rd of October, said gang -headed by Ah Choy, the kidnapped woman's brother- opened fire on Yuen. Still, Ah Choy ended up mortally wounded and left to die in one of the alleys.

Figure 8 - Chinatown,1870. Tea Houses, Stores, And Brothels Made It Into A Little San Francisco.

With solid support of local Police, and that of whoever was behind it , Yo Hing reported Yuen as the instigator of that attempted murder.

With bail set at $2000 -an abnormal amount, both for that time and for a Chinese- Yo Hing aimed to let his rival rotting in jail for the time necessary to butter up judges and lawyers. Soon after, he would have him sentenced to death and finally took over his territory. Yuen, on the other hand, realised the setup right away and declared that he was able to pay. Some police officers, at that point, accompanied him home and found out money hidden in the trunk of a tree. A lot of money. An enormous wealth resulting from clandestine trafficking. Something that involved many constables as well.

One of them was Jesus Bilderrain, known for being racist and rapacious. There have been several complaints against him for stealing and gambling. Together with his brother Ignacio, he had controlled and organized -on behalf of the, then conservative, Democratic Party- several election blocks against Los Angeles’ Latin Community. Precluding, on purpose, the minority from voting.

Judge, Jury, and Press considered such a man a key witness.

He stated that, late on the 24th of October, he had gone to Negro Alley because he had heard gunshots. Later, he entered a backstreet. Wounded, he called for Officer Thompson. Who was then killed by Yuen. That cold-blooded murder was the drop that made Whites riot. Soon, it turned into lynching. Although atrocious, the Press talked about it in terms of common madness generated by a climate of discontent against Chinese and dismissed it. Not without a plethora of Fake News to condone every All-American Americans’ action. No matter how cruel and inhuman.

Figure 9 - An Opium Den, 1890. Opium, In China, was Used For Therapeutic And Religious Purposes. It Was Only After The Fall Of The Qing Empire And The Anglo-Chinese Wars That It Was Deliberately Distributed By English Among Chinese. The Reason was, Mainly, To Increase The Monopoly. Field Were Needed For It, Field That Were Used For Agricolture And Sustainment. China, Of Course, Tried To Stop This Madness. To No Avail. Such Vice And The Trade That Followed Were Approved -And Managed- By Both The Triad And The US Government.

Apparently, Chinese plunged the city into depravity. They did it oh-so terribly, that even fantastic figures stepped into the scene. The Mandarin himself requested all that hidden money, in order to take over California. Legit.

It was, somehow, the very same hoax used at the Gold Rush time. A Let-Them-Eat-Cake kind of situation. Better known as, One-That-Never-Happened. Unfortunately, no Chinese could testify in a trial against a White person. No wonder it ended very quickly.

H.M. Mitchell, reporter of LA Star, absolved the whole city as, “ Victim of a horrendous trade and the climate of violence perpetrated by Chinese Mob.”

There is no doubt that various Political Powers influenced and determined the dismissal. The same ones that later used the bloodbath to impose the infamous Chinese Exclusion Act, approved in 1882.

The truth, as usual, is much bitterer. Even trivial, if compared to such slaughter. Scraping deep into the narrow-minded racist soul of that time false moralists, there is only greedy larceny and nothing more. The outrage that followed it highlighted how cruel the instigators were. The evidence proved the frequent sharing of favours between Hing, the Mobs, and the local Police. Immediately afterwards, oddly, all the documentation was archived and the whole affair swept under the carpet. They would only come out many years later, thanks to the strenuous research of historians and some favourable condition known as, China-Is-Now-A-Great-Economic-Power-And-We-Gotta-Behave. But that is another story and shall be told another time.

Figure 10 - Back Of A Store In Chinatown, 1880. American Police Has Always Had Close And Ambiguous Liasons With The Triad. An Exclusive Control Was Exercised Not Only On Opium And Spices, But Also On Labourers And Commodities (Both Official And Illegal) That Were Imported At Very Low Cost. It Obviously Affected The Economy, Which Collapsed Soon After. Entrepreneurs, Especially Those Who Dealt Whith Railroads That Received Huge Government Subsidies, Were Deeply Interested. Chinese Were Preferred To Americans And Europeans Because Of Their Low Cost -Of Course- And Worked Twice As Hard. During The Era Of The First Trade Unions, Chinese Were Used As Strikebreakers By The Very Same Employers To Block The Claims Of The Working Class. Such Smear Campaign Ruined Chinese Reputation With Disastrous Consequences.

No need to clarify, Bilderrain went to Negro Alley to steal the gold. It was an errand requested by Hing himself, in order to retaliate for Yuen’s hostilities. Hing alliance and protection, however, were not enough to save him from the gunfire of the other one’s henchmen. Bilderrain was, in fact, not a certified Sheriff. He was a Vigilante , authorized by Police itself to maintain order in the Ghetto. That explains why they ignored the private agreements between them and Chinese Mob, while encouraging illegal traffics and assassinations. On the other hand, Law Enforcement perceived a large part of every income. They controlled all the events, due to a large network of informers, knowing everything in advance. Including what was about to happen that night. Their only task was to observe, let them act and -if necessary- clear the field of possible obstacles. The same Marshal Frances Baker, chief of Police, dealt regularly with the Mob. His specialty was to retrieve Chinese slaves who managed to escape and embark illegally to Europe. The motivation? Mere greed. The one driving force who tied every Crooked Cop to a gang or the other. Usually, the one who paid the most.

According to Yuen’s statements, Bilderrain and Hing were together in that alley. The two factions headed for a reckoning. Remain neutral was everything officers had to do.

For that to happen, Emil Harris and George Garde were the experts on field. They had already distinguished themselves in difficult actions during many Mexican riots, such as the capture and killing of Tiburzio Vasquez. Their orders were to stick around without getting involved, no matter what. In front of the angry crowd, they not only did not lift a finger but also threatened those who tried to prevent any lynching. They never appeared in court. On the other hand, they got a promotion. Seems fair, right?

As stated, it was officially a spontaneous event. But the astonishing extreme speed at which all those people randomly organized themselves -five hundred moved as one man, each with a specific task, with the common climax of killing- had premeditated tattooed all over it

And many admitted it. For instance, the already mentioned H.M. Mitchell. Reporter of the Star, former County Sheriff, part of the wealthy Glassel family, future Mayor, he was leader of the -as stated, then conservative- Democratic Party. All mainly due to his notorious article about the massacre. And he never bothered to deny any discriminatory feeling.

Next, the rich merchant J.H. Weldon. After the lynching, blood stained from head to toe, he went for a drink. Once there, he bragged, “ I am satisfied now. I have killed three Chinamen.”

What about one of LA most successful businessperson, Harris Newmark? He said that he saw Thompson on the floor and went home to celebrate. It is unknown what, exactly. However, the man had close relationships with officers Celis and Kerren. Both of them suspected of shooting their colleague and abandoning him in the alley where several Mobsters holed up.

Police Chief Francis Baker stated that, after the fires in the building, where those thugs hid, he decided to leave the city at the mercy of the crowd and simply went to bed.

Like nothing happened.