Wyoming city honors Chinese massacre victims 140 years later

[Judi Lynn]

By Carl Samson
4 hours ago

Wyoming city honors Chinese massacre victims 140 years latervia Erik Hamm / YouTube
Carl Samson
By Carl Samson
4 hours ago

Descendants of Chinese miners killed in an infamous massacre in Rock Springs, Wyoming, in 1885 joined archaeologists this summer to excavate a site where their ancestors once lived. Last week, their efforts culminated in a memorial ceremony that honored the victims of one of America’s most violent anti-Chinese attacks.

What happened: A mob of white miners and railroad workers converged on Rock Springs’ Chinatown on Sept. 2, 1885, killing 28 Chinese migrant workers and burning tens of homes to the ground. The violence stemmed from labor tensions in Union Pacific Railroad’s coal mines, where the company had hired Chinese workers as strike-breakers after European miners walked off the job. This occurred three years after the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act had restricted Chinese immigration and fueled anti-Chinese sentiment nationwide.

“It was instigated,” Laura Ng, an Iowa-based archaeology professor who led the dig, told the Cowboy State Daily last month. “It started as a fight in the coal mine, but it was pre-planned by two white coal miners.” Despite the mob’s actions being widely known, no one was ever indicted.

. . .

Interestingly, the research has highlighted parallels between historical and contemporary immigration tensions. Speaking to KHOL, Rock Springs Mayor Max Mickelson noted the irony that his town still relies on migrant labor while Sweetwater County has strengthened partnerships with ICE under the current administration. “As someone who is a descendant of immigrants that came to this country from Europe, I find it very frustrating that as a country we have decided to take an anti-immigrant stance,” he said.

More:
https://nextshark.com/wyoming-rock-springs-chinese-massacre-memorial

[markodochartaigh]

1. We should remember that "labor tensions"

were rooted in the corporations' power over the workers. Certainly at this time all minorities were not welcomed into most unions. And certainly the unions would have been much stronger had all workers been included. But the root cause was the corporations/owners refusal to pay a fair wage.

Thankfully the violence has been left behind, but the greed of the corporations/owners has not been. I worked for a major hospital corporation who for a decade considered all registered nurses to be management and paid us straight time instead of time and a half and paid us nothing for the first hour we worked over our shift. Of course they were unable to staff the hospital with US nurses after this and brought in nurses from India, Nigeria, and other countries who made up more than half of the nursing work force.