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Adobe building constructed in the 1870s by Chinese workers living in the railroad-adjacent mining town of Dutch Flat. The ruling effectively made white violence against Chinese Americans unprosecutable, arguably leading to more intense white-on-Chinese race riots, such as the 1877 San Francisco riot. The Chinese living in California were with ...
After slavery was abolished in the United States, Chinese laborers were imported to the South as cheap labor to replace freed Blacks on the plantations.Many of the early Chinese laborers came from sugar plantations in Cuba and after the transcontinental railroad was completed, California also contributed to the labor supply.
The main historical record for the Chinese Labor Strike of 1867 has come from a Stanford University initiative called the Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project. [6] This repository covers the Chinese Labor Strike of 1867 and includes research materials, [ 7 ] a bibliography , [ 8 ] a digital materials repository, [ 9 ] exhibits ...
Chinese immigrants were particularly instrumental in building railroads in the American West, and as Chinese laborers grew successful in the United States, a number of them became entrepreneurs in their own right. As the numbers of Chinese laborers increased, so did the strength of anti-Chinese attitude among other workers in the US economy.
A diligent worker could save over $20 per month after paying for food and lodging—a "fortune" by Chinese standards. A snapshot of workers in late 1865 showed about 3,000 Chinese and 1,700 white workers employed on the railroad. Nearly all of the white workers were in supervisory or skilled craft positions and made more money than the Chinese.
The gold rush ended and the Chinese laborers sought work. While enduring a rugged terrain and challenging winter conditions, over 50,000 Chinese laborers built the railroad and over 1,000 died before it was finished in 1869. [7] [24] After railroad work dried up, the Chinese dispersed throughout the nation, taking on various jobs with low pay.
Chinese workers made up 90% of the West Coast railroad workforce, but their contributions are often “rendered invisible,” former state Sen. Richard Pan said.
But as Wong notes, the railroad is an ambivalent symbol for Chinese Americans, since it represents both the American dream of mobility, luxury and power but also the historical difficulties of the Chinese workers, who often had no choice but to take railroad jobs and who were never allowed the sort of mobility the railroad offered to Anglos.