s*********5
发帖数: 5637 | 1 历史啊，让我们不要忘记。。。
前几天，80年代那个和警察起种族冲突被警察虐待的黑人刚刚去世。其实洛杉矶的第一
次种族冲突时和华人的，而且死了18个中国人。。。
The History Page: City of Demons
http://www.thedaily.com/page/2012/05/10/051012-opinions-history
In Los Angeles’ first race riot, a hate-filled mob kills 18 Chinese men
By Scott Zesch Thursday, May 10, 2012
Chinatown in Los Angeles dates back to the Gold Rush.
Image
PHOTO:USC Digital Archive
The riot that struck Chinatown in 1871 came after editorials calling the
Chinese “animals.”
Los Angeles has given us three of the country’s most jolting racial
eruptions of the last century: the Zoot Suit Riot in 1943, the Watts Riot in
1965 and the Rodney King Riot in 1992. Indeed, Los Angeles — if it can be
so expressed — practically has a tradition of race riots. The first one
dates back all the way to 1871, and its victims were Chinese immigrants.
At that time, the City of Angels was an obscure, Wild West town of only 6,
000 residents. Its thoroughfares were dusty lanes, its first three-storied
building had just been completed, and its police department was only two
years old, consisting of six officers. The town’s diverse population
included a tiny Chinese community that had been there since 1850, when
Chinese prospectors who had come to California during the Gold Rush ventured
beyond the mining camps to try their luck in more stable occupations,
mainly the laundry trade and domestic service. Throughout the state, Los
Angeles had a reputation for its high murder rate and its citizens’
periodic lynchings of suspected criminals. However, few Americans outside
California had ever heard of it. That would soon change.
Shortly before sundown on Oct. 24, 1871, a gun battle broke out on the
streets of Chinatown. This fight was the culmination of a yearlong power
struggle between two Chinese factions, exacerbated by the abduction and
forced marriage of a woman named Yut Ho. Local lawmen and curiosity-seekers
rushed to the neighborhood to see what was happening, but the Chinese gunmen
disappeared into nearby adobe buildings before they could be captured. One
Latino officer was wounded when he tried to make an arrest, and a teenage
boy was shot in the leg. A white rancher, ignoring police warnings to stay
away, discharged his revolver into a Chinese store where some of the feuding
people were holed up. He was killed by return fire.
Within an hour, hysterical rumors had spread by word of mouth that the
Chinese were “killing the white men by wholesale,” even though the
shooting had subsided without further casualties. As darkness fell that
evening, an angry mob of about 500 Anglo and Latino men surrounded and
trapped the Chinese inside their homes and shops. Some of these rabble-
rousers were toughs and petty criminals, but others were reputable business
owners and tradesmen, including a city council member and a well-known
hardware merchant. The police, determined to apprehend the Chinese
gunslingers who had killed the white rancher, made little effort to disperse
the unruly spectators and even deputized some known hooligans to help
prevent any Chinese escaping the neighborhood.
After a three-hour standoff, the police were no longer able to restrain the
crowd. The mob broke into the sprawling, single-storied adobe building where
many Chinese lived and ransacked their apartments. The ringleaders seized
random Chinese, beating and robbing them. Then they placed ropes around
their necks and dragged them through the streets to the town’s principal
business district, where they would be hanged. One victim was a popular
doctor, Chee Long “Gene” Tong, who vainly offered his captors his entire
savings in exchange for his life. Another was a 15-year-old house servant,
Ah Loo, who had arrived from China just a week earlier. The mob murdered a
total of 18 Chinese men, only one of whom had taken part in the gun battle
that afternoon. Later that night, their killers celebrated in the saloons of
downtown Los Angeles, bragging and joking that “some of the long-tails”
had “gone up.”
Within days, Americans were hearing about a place called Los Angeles for the
first time, as newspapers across the country condemned the massacre. The
New York Tribune lambasted the people of the “misnamed ‘City of the Angels
’” who had demonstrated the “peculiar principles of civilization affected
in Southern California.” Although historians still debate whether the root
cause was economic insecurity, general lawlessness or pure racism, the path
leading to that terrible night appears clear in hindsight. The tragedy of
1871 was certainly not inevitable. Chinese immigrants had resided peacefully
in Los Angeles for two decades beforehand, and non-Asians had generally
taken a tolerant attitude toward them. Many households relied on Chinese
launderers, cooks and vegetable peddlers. Some affluent Angelenos even
consulted Chinese physicians.
In 1869, however, things changed noticeably when a Los Angeles newspaper
launched a series of vitriolic editorials denigrating Chinese immigrants as
“animals” in “dens,” “filthy and disgusting,” “an inferior and
idolatrous race,” and “a foul blot upon our civilization.” Shortly
afterward, violent, unprovoked attacks on Chinese residents rose sharply. A
white man severely thrashed a Chinese passerby, proclaiming that he had “a
great antipathy to the Chinese race.” Young boys pelted Chinese pedestrians
with stones. Only three months before the massacre, one local readily
admitted that he “hit a Chinaman on the head because I wanted to.”
Even more disturbing, the citizens who deplored these hate crimes remained
silent while the attacks continued unabated. No one wrote letters to the
editor protesting the Chinese- bashing in the press or the escalating
assaults on the streets. Local business leaders, teachers, lawyers, clergy
and elected officials chose not to speak out. The “good guys,” through
their inaction, helped foster an atmosphere of indifference in which the mob
could carry out its crimes.
It might seem natural to draw parallels between the Los Angeles riot of 1871
and recent, racially-tinged tragedies such as the shooting of Florida
teenager Trayvon Martin. But the Chinese massacre teaches a more focused
lesson. The victims were targeted not so much because of their race as
because they were widely seen as people who didn’t matter. Their killers
thought they could get away with it, for they felt sure no one would raise
much of a fuss over the fate of these expendable foreigners. In the end, the
assumption of the Chinatown killers turned out to be wrong. Los Angeles
juries convicted eight of the perpetrators, prompting one gratified local to
remark that the verdict “asserts that Chinamen are human beings” who “
are entitled to protection under the laws.”
Today, digital technology and social media have made it easier than ever for
anyone to speak out against hate talk. Angelenos of 1871 may have helped
pave the way for the Chinese massacre through their apathy, but society’s
not bound to repeat their mistakes.
Scott Zesch is the author most recently of “The Chinatown War: Chinese Los
Angeles and the Massacre of 1871” (Oxford, 2012). | r*****e
发帖数: 4598 | 2 让斑竹把这个加精吧 洛杉矶华人应该给自己的历史一席之地
【在 s*********5 的大作中提到】
: 历史啊，让我们不要忘记。。。
: 前几天，80年代那个和警察起种族冲突被警察虐待的黑人刚刚去世。其实洛杉矶的第一
: 次种族冲突时和华人的，而且死了18个中国人。。。
: The History Page: City of Demons
: http://www.thedaily.com/page/2012/05/10/051012-opinions-history
: In Los Angeles’ first race riot, a hate-filled mob kills 18 Chinese men
: By Scott Zesch Thursday, May 10, 2012
: Chinatown in Los Angeles dates back to the Gold Rush.
: Image
: PHOTO:USC Digital Archive
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