![]() “In our particular economic system, we tend to use up people a lot, right?” asked Wei, referring to immigrants and people of color. They eventually disappeared from communities like Denver, said Wei. ![]() The Chinese built much of the infrastructure that made expansion into the West possible, enriching the pockets of Gilded Age tycoons and enabling generations of Americans to make the Western half of the US their home, but the Chinese never benefited. Wei pointed out the irony when Congress used the violence as an excuse to pass the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, claiming that barring more Chinese laborers from entry would keep the peace. Anywhere Chinese people were trying to make a living, White and recent European immigrants, often united through unions, threatened and executed them, burned their encampments and at times even packed them up on rail cars destined for ships heading back to Asia. Our study of similar incidents reveals the anti-Chinese fervor spread like wildfire through the West, moving from California to Washington to Wyoming. The anti-Chinese riot of October 31, 1880, in Denver is depicted in this wood engraving first published in November 1880 in Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper. He noted that White people sought to repress Black people, Chinese immigrants and others throughout the nation in the subsequent decades, sparked in part by growing competition for housing and jobs. The South’s response to that loss was that it was going to win the race war,” Capeci told CNN. wrote in a foreword to the “Encyclopedia of American Race Riots.” The racial violence during and after Reconstruction in the South began as Whites sought to maintain their supremacy economically, politically and socially, historian Dominic J. Within a month, their land was advertised for sale at “special bargains” by a Confederate veteran, the Orlando Sentinel found. This result, where White people benefited in the aftermath of violence, repeats itself well into the 20th century in places like Ocoee, Florida, where a successful Black labor broker’s attempt to vote in 1920 sparked a massacre so violent that Black residents abandoned their properties. (Library of Congress/Corbis/VCG/Getty Images) White supremacists burned down Wilmington, North Carolina’s Daily Record newspaper building in their 1898 attempt to overthrow the city’s biracial government. More than 2,100 Black residents fled, and the homes of at least 1,500 Black people were then taken by White residents at low cost. At least 60 members of the city’s Black community were killed, according to the News & Observer, while some have estimated a death toll into the hundreds. White Democrats in Wilmington forced the resignation of the city’s White mayor and local government members of both races in a coup, as well as the removal of Black employees from their municipal positions. It all came to a head just after the November 8 election in 1898. ![]() They were gaining political power, too, having an impact on multiple elections in the 1890s and securing seats in the city government.Īs Black people increased their political and financial capital, many White residents grew increasingly angry and organized to regain control of the city. During the 1870s and 1880s, some Black businessmen and entrepreneurs amassed wealth rivaling that of many Whites, according to a 2006 historical report produced by the 1898 Wilmington Race Riot Commission, which was created by the state’s General Assembly. They formed a building and loan association, built libraries and created baseball leagues. They worked throughout the major port city as professionals, skilled artisans and industrial workers. This dynamic played out in Wilmington, North Carolina, where many Black Americans achieved economic success for several decades in the late 1800s. The front page of the Detroit Free Press on March 7, 1863.
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