It’s hard to tell a city’s story. In many cities, there’s a tension between pointing with pride and bowing in shame.
Los Angeles—where I have lived and worked for most of my life, including my years as an elected official—has long preferred the civic booster side of its identity, promoting itself as a city of the future. But L.A. also struggles to face the dark, violent, and racist episodes in its past.
One of the bloodiest nights in Los Angeles history took place 150 years ago, on October 24, 1871, when at least 18 Chinese (about 10 percent of L.A.’s Chinese population at the time) were slaughtered by an angry mob of Angelenos. Why does almost no one know about it today? Why didn’t I, the first Asian American on the L.A. City Council, know this history until less than a decade ago?
Los Angeles was an unremarkable Far West town of about 5,700 residents in 1871, overshadowed by its larger and more sophisticated neighbor to the north—the Gold Rush center of San Francisco. Yet despite its small population, L.A. already had a mix of ethnic and cultural origins and influences, with Spanish and Mexican settlers, newer arrivals of European origin including French, Germans, Italians, and Irish, some African Americans, and Indigenous peoples who preceded everyone else.
In 1871, L.A. had about 172 Chinese residents, mostly single men who fled famine and social disorder in southern China in hopes of making money in mining and railroad construction jobs. The wages earned by Chinese workers—doing arduous, extremely dangerous jobs—tended to be much lower than the pay for white workers. After the mining jobs disappeared and the transcontinental railroad line was completed in 1869, Chinese workers fanned out across the West. Some ended up in Los Angeles, taking low-paying jobs as cooks, vegetable peddlers, laundrymen, or houseboys. Other Angelenos looked down on the Chinese, who were scapegoated for problems ranging from sanitation to low wages.
L.A. was considered the most lawless town west of Santa Fe. And Calle de los Negros, a one-block-long alley just north of present-day Civic Center, near Olvera Street and Union Station, was the worst part of one of the worst towns in the West. Amidst the bars, gambling and opium dens, and brothels of Calle de los Negros were the homes and businesses of L.A.’s Chinese pioneers.
In the late afternoon of October 24, 1871, a gunfight broke out on Calle de los Negros between two gunmen from rival Chinese factions, injuring a police officer and a white rancher and former bar owner. The rancher, Robert Thompson, died of his wounds. As word of the shootings and the fatality spread across the town, about 500 vigilantes converged on Calle de los Negros to seek revenge.
By the end of the night, at least 15 Chinese were hanged and three Chinese were shot to death. Chinese-owned businesses were vandalized and looted, resulting in estimated losses of $40,000 (around $1 million in 2020 dollars). Eight rioters were found guilty of manslaughter, but all the convictions were later overturned.