24 окт 1871 г. - Chinese Massacre

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The Chinese massacre of 1871 was a race riot that occurred on October 24, 1871, in Los Angeles, California, when a mob of around 500 white and mestizo persons entered Chinatown and attacked, robbed, and murdered Chinese residents. The massacre took place on Calle de los Negros (Street of the Negroes) also referred to as “Negro Alley”. The mob gathered after hearing that a policeman had been shot and a rancher killed by Chinese.

An estimated 17 to 20 Chinese immigrants were hanged by the mob in the course of the riot, but most had already been shot to death. At least one was mutilated, when someone cut off a finger to get his diamond ring. Ten men of the mob were prosecuted and eight were convicted of manslaughter in these deaths. The convictions were overturned on appeal due to technicalities.

Discrimination had been rising against the increasing number of Chinese immigrants living in California. It has been described as a root cause of the massacre.[3][page needed] White and mestizo residents of Los Angeles resented the expansion of the Chinese population, considering them an alien group. In 1863 the state legislature had passed a law that Asians (defined as Chinese, Mongolian, Indian, etc.) could not testify in court against whites, making them vulnerable to abuse and injustice, and putting them beyond reach of the law.

In Los Angeles in the few days preceding the riot, two Chinese Tong factions, known as the Hong Chow and Nin Yung companies, had started a confrontation from a feud over the alleged abduction of a Chinese woman named Yut Ho (also documented as Ya Hit), who was announced in the paper as having married. Most women in the community served as prostitutes and had essentially been sold into sexual slavery. Previously the police department had assisted the Tongs in keeping their confrontations over the women internal to the community, and sometimes capturing and returning women who had escaped, in exchange for payment by the Tongs, but in this case, things got out of hand. Two Chinese men were arrested for shooting at each other, and were released on bail, but the police kept watch on the Chinatown neighborhood. It had developed along Calle de los Negros, which was named in the colonial period.

As Los Angeles police officer Jesus Bilderrain was patrolling Calle de los Negros, an altercation broke out in which he was wounded and so he blew his whistle for reinforcements. Some civilians came to his aid, including rancher Robert Thompson, an ex-saloon keeper who pursued a Chinese man up to the door of a house in the alley, despite warnings from others. He was fatally shot there, dying about an hour later at 6 pm at a nearby drugstore.

Law men, including chief of police Francis Baker, came and went as a larger crowd gathered along the edges of Chinatown, acting as a guard to prevent any Chinese from escaping. Informed of the growing crowd, three-term Mayor Cristobal Aguilar, a longtime politician in the city, also surveyed the situation and then left. When news of Thompson's death passed through the city, along with the rumor that the Chinese in Negro Alley "were killing whites wholesale", more men gathered around the boundaries of Negro Alley.

By the end of the riot the dead Chinese in Los Angeles were hanging at three places near the heart of the downtown business section of the city; from the wooden awning over the sidewalk in front of a carriage shop; from the sides of two "prairie schooners" parked on the street around the corner from the carriage shop; and from the cross-beam of a wide gate leading into a lumberyard a few blocks away from the other two locations.

The mob ransacked practically every Chinese-occupied building on the block and attacked or robbed nearly every resident. A total of 17 to 20 Chinese immigrant men were hanged by the mob.

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