American History Tellers - The Gilded Age | Exclusion | 4
Episode Date: August 12, 2020Amid the glamor and growth of the Gilded Age, racism and anti-immigrant hostility swept the nation. With the end of Reconstruction, white communities across the South stripped African America...ns of their hard-won political rights and economic gains. But a new generation of activists fought the growing wave of discrimination and violence. Booker T. Washington championed black education, and journalist Ida B. Wells waged a fierce campaign against lynching.In the West, labor groups fueled anti-Chinese resentment, building support for the first major federal law limiting immigration. In the mid-1880s, white mobs from Wyoming to Washington descended on Chinese neighborhoods, stoking hysteria and casting immigrants out of their homes.Listen ad-free on Wondery+ hereSupport us by supporting our sponsors!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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Imagine it's November 1883.
You're a city council member in Danville, Virginia, on the state's southern border.
Today, you've gathered for a difficult meeting.
Danville is a majority black town, but tensions have been building ever since you and other black leaders were elected to city office.
Just a few days ago, a scuffle between a black man and a white man exploded into violence, and now five people are dead.
Moments like this make you reflect on
how far you've come. You were born a slave, and now you're helping run your community.
But it's been a tough path, and you feel the heavy burden of responsibility.
You rise to address the room. As we all know, the incident this week has pushed things to
the breaking point. With the election just days away, I'm concerned there might be more violence. So I'd like to propose a few measures to protect our most vulnerable voters.
This seems hardly necessary. All eyes turn to a Democrat on the council. He's a white man you've
been going toe-to-toe with for the past year. You can almost feel his seething hatred from across
the room. I disagree. If this recent street fight is any
indication Danville's black citizens are at risk, I was elected to represent all our people. That's
what I intend to do. We need to ensure a free and fair election. Well, now let's talk about that
street fight. Five people shot dead. If you ask me, we're wasting our time here. We should be investigating what caused the violence.
We'll do that in time.
But there are more important matters at stake right now.
More important than justice.
I've been going around town, and it sounds to me like your people were armed.
Those white folks were just acting in self-defense.
I've heard no such thing.
What's your evidence?
But he ignores you and carries on.
Maybe black people around here wouldn't be acting so defiant
if they weren't getting permission from the party in charge.
Seeing people like you in government must give them ideas.
You can feel rage building in your chest, but you fight to stay calm.
I was elected, just like you, through the vote, by democracy.
If you ask me, you're using this incident to turn the town
against us. Why don't we all just speak plainly? You want to bar black voters from the polls,
don't you? The man smirks and stands up. Let's have a show of hands. Who agrees with me about
who's to blame for that street fight? More than half of the room raises their hands and your
heart sinks. You have a feeling this is only the beginning.
Your presence on this council is an affront to many of the white people in Danville.
The chances you'll keep your seat seem less likely every day.
And the way things are going, you're worried that soon,
Danville's black citizens won't get to vote at all.
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From Wondery, I'm Lindsey Graham, and this is American History Tellers.
Our history.
Your story. In November 1883, a minor street brawl in Danville, Virginia,
escalated into violence that killed four black men and one white man.
White Democrats, who felt threatened by black voters' growing political clout,
exploited the bloodshed to take back control of local government.
With the end of Reconstruction, white supremacists came to power throughout the South.
Soon, they stripped African Americans of their voting rights and the modest economic gains they'd made since emancipation. And whites also pushed out local black leaders who had
been elected to city councils and state legislatures. Black activists fought back
against a rising tide
of discrimination and terror, but despite their efforts, segregation became entrenched and racist
violence increased. During the Gilded Age, industrial expansion and unregulated capitalism
created widening inequality across all levels of society, but no one suffered more than America's
racial minorities. In the South, Black people saw their power and economic prospects destroyed.
And in the West, white labor groups stoked hostility and attacks against the growing Chinese population.
As the nation grew more diverse, prejudice and violence raged,
upending the daily lives of millions of racial minorities
and barring them from the wealth and power that drove the Gilded Age.
This is Episode 4, Exclusion.
In the wake of the Civil War, massive industrial growth brought sweeping changes to the country,
especially urban centers.
But as the North built railroads, expanded their factories, and saw their population skyrocket,
the rural South was largely left behind.
After the Civil War, the South's
plantation economy was shattered. The region had relied on slavery to drive its economy and create
tremendous wealth. With emancipation, that system was abruptly brought to an end. Some elite Southerners
saw an opportunity to reshape the region into something more like the North. They imagined a
bold frontier for industrial expansion.
Influential Southern business leaders,
politicians, and newspaper editors promoted this vision of a new South.
Chief among these boosters was Henry Grady,
the silver-tongued editor of the Atlanta Constitution.
Grady believed that sitting out industrialization
would doom the South.
He went on a mission to promote
the region's natural resources,
climate, and growing railroad network. Grady even took his message north,
seeking industrial investors. In an 1886 speech to New York Businessmen, he said,
There was a South of slavery and secession. That South is dead.
But despite the best efforts of propagandists, major roadblocks still stood in the way of
industrial development.
Railroad companies were dominated by northern businessmen. They discriminated against goods manufactured in the south, giving preferred rates to products that originated in the north.
At the same time, the railroads gave discounts on southern raw materials. The south was stuck
supplying northern centers of industry in its struggle to develop its own manufacturing.
This was true even
in industries where the South should have had a competitive advantage, like steel. The area around
Birmingham, Alabama was rich in coal and iron. These raw materials, plus the low cost of labor
in Alabama, should have given Birmingham a leg up. But Pittsburgh steelmakers put pressure on
the railroads to increase the shipping rates on Birmingham steel, stunting its growth. But as steel production faltered, the cotton industry thrived. Southern cotton remained
in high demand following the war, but cotton farmers were tired of shipping their crop north.
So New South advocates sought investors to build up local industry with the slogan,
bring the mills to the cotton. In the 1880s, some northern investors did build new cotton mills in the south,
hoping to take advantage of the region's low wages.
But the wealth they created largely stayed with the landowners,
many of whom were northern and foreign speculators.
But even as businessmen and boosters worked to build up southern industry,
not all white southerners wanted to leave the region's plantation past behind.
As Reconstruction collapsed, many whites would fight to protect their power,
barring black people from economic opportunity and enforcing a rigid racial hierarchy.
With the end of the Civil War, four million enslaved people, men, women, and children,
had become lawfully free.
The Southern economy had been built on their labor,
and that of
generations of enslaved people before them. But most former slaves were starting their new lives
with nothing. To help them gain financial independence and compensate them for the
legacy of slavery, in January 1865, the U.S. Army ordered 400,000 acres of Confederate land to be
redistributed to freed slaves. Each black family would be granted 40
acres of land and a mule. But in the fall of that same year, 1865, Lincoln's successor,
President Andrew Johnson, himself a former slaveholder, reversed the army order. Instead,
land was restored to its original owners, and a new model of economic exploitation evolved,
sharecropping. Under this system, freedmen lacking plots of their own worked for large landowners.
They tilled the soil for a small share of the crop instead of paying cash rent.
So while slavery had officially ended with the Civil War,
sharecropping bound black Southerners again to their former masters,
who were now their landlords and creditors, almost as tightly as the plantation days had.
Many sharecroppers were trapped in a cycle of crippling poverty they found impossible to escape.
Limited educational opportunities made it even more difficult for recently freed people to
improve their lives. Because along with industry, the South also lagged behind the North in education,
and African Americans fared the worst. Before emancipation, most southern states had made it illegal to educate enslaved people.
Even by 1880, only 30% of African Americans could read and write.
In response, northern charities, federal and state governments,
and black communities themselves founded schools.
But still, most black southerners lacked access to a quality education.
A national movement to improve Black education gained momentum,
and soon Booker T. Washington emerged as its leading champion.
Washington had been born into slavery in 1856. He spent his first nine years of his life in a
one-room log cabin on a small Virginia farm. But after emancipation, he set his sights on gaining an education. At age 16, Washington walked 500 miles to Hampton, Virginia to enroll at the Hampton
Normal and Agricultural Institute, a training school for African-American teachers. He arrived
with just 50 cents in his pocket and worked as a janitor to pay his tuition. But he excelled in
his studies, which emphasized vocational skills and black self-reliance.
Washington then left Hampton to take charge of the Tuskegee Institute, a new black teaching school
in Tuskegee, Alabama. The institute, though, got off to a rocky start. Thirty adult students were
taught in a one-room shanty. The shack was in such bad shape that when it rained, one of the
students had to hold an umbrella over Washington while he taught. But still, Washington was determined to make the school a success.
So in the summer of 1881, he worked tirelessly, recruiting students for his new school.
Imagine it's June, 1881, in Tuskegee, Alabama.
You're a teacher, and you're finishing up today's math lesson
in the run-down cabin that serves as your classroom.
As you go to write a multiplication table on the blackboard,
your last nub of chalk breaks in half.
You're lucky to even have a blackboard, really,
but you buy the chalk and erasers yourself.
You can't afford any more until you get paid next week.
So defeated, you turn back to your students.
All right, class, I guess that means you can go home. As you watch your students rush out of the schoolhouse into the
sticky summer heat, an unfamiliar woman knocks on the door. Hello, could I have a moment of your
time? Oh, yes, yes, ma'am. Come in. You can't hide your embarrassment as she gazes around the room.
She's a black woman about your age, but the fine lace trimming of her collar makes her look far more sophisticated.
You take half a step to the left and cover a hole in the floor with your skirts.
Yes, yeah, it's not much.
No, no, I was just thinking about how difficult this must be for you.
Ah, I should have listened to my mother.
She warned me that I had no business being a teacher.
But anyways, is there something
I can help you with? The woman smiles at you. Yes, as a matter of fact, there is. I'd like to
talk to you about joining me at a new school. You're offering me a job? Not exactly. It's for
training teachers. It's called the Tuskegee Institute. We're getting started at the Butler
Chapel AME Zion Church. You know the place? We're holding class in the
cabin beside it. That old place? It makes even this schoolhouse look good. The woman ignores
your comment. Tell me, what is it that you need here? What would help make you a better teacher?
You hold up the piece of broken chalk. Where do I start? I don't have enough materials. My students
have to share books. I could use some more chairs, too. The woman nods. What else?
And well, to be honest, I sometimes feel like it's the blind leading the blind.
My own schooling wasn't much.
Yes, that's exactly why we're starting this school.
Public education in Alabama is abysmal.
We want to help our teachers catch up so they can do better by their own students.
But I couldn't afford to go to some special school.
We're getting funding from the state. and we're fundraising in the community. This school is
going to be different. It's been created by black people for black people. I don't know anything
like that. It sounds too good to be true. Well, why don't you just come and take a look? In spite
of yourself, you find yourself smiling back at the woman. For the first time in weeks, you feel a sliver of hope.
Slavery may be over, but you know that black people won't truly be free until they get a quality education.
And now you have a chance to give your students a real shot at a better life.
A year after the Tuskegee Institute opened, Booker T. Washington bought a vacant plantation
and set his students to work constructing buildings to expand the school.
In addition to training teachers for segregated black schools,
Tuskegee taught practical skills in farming and manual trades
like brickmaking, building construction, and woodworking.
Washington believed that knowledge of practical trades
was the best way for black people to gain economic security.
He required students
to perform manual labor as part of their curriculum, which he thought would foster pride,
dignity, and self-respect. Washington soon became a famous spokesman for black vocational education.
In 1884, he stood before an audience of 4,000 teachers at a national education conference
declaring, brains, property, and character for the Negro will settle the question
of civil rights. In Washington's mind, it was only through education, self-improvement, and the
development of economic resources that the Black community could prove to white Southerners that
it was worthy of full civil and political rights. But many Northern Black activists, including W.E.B.
Du Bois, criticized Washington for taking this approach.
They claimed he was accommodating white prejudice and dooming African Americans to a life of manual labor and limited opportunity.
As Du Bois saw it, Washington had failed to meaningfully challenge the systemic
discrimination endemic in the South.
Black Southerners were not only suffering from limited economic opportunity, he argued.
They were being denied basic rights,
and only full political power would bring about lasting change.
Reconstruction and the protection it offered African Americans had come to an end when the federal government withdrew its troops from the South in the 1870s.
In the years since, white supremacists and Democratic politicians
had used fraud, intimidation, and violence to suppress the black vote.
In Danville, Virginia, a majority black town where a street fight left five people dead, politicians had used fraud, intimidation, and violence to suppress the black vote.
In Danville, Virginia, a majority black town where a street fight left five people dead,
local Democratic politicians seized on the violence to regain control of the town.
They painted the brawl as a riot. On election day, whites armed themselves with shotguns and controlled the streets to prevent African Americans from voting. The Democrats won a
decisive victory.
Democrats regained power throughout the South and wasted little time in imposing new forms of discrimination, with their restrictions on rights often upheld by federal courts.
In 1883, the Supreme Court struck down the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which had prohibited racial
discrimination in public facilities. The door was now open for state and local governments to pass sweeping laws segregating
schools, housing, and public facilities.
White leaders enacted poll taxes and literacy tests to prevent Blacks from voting.
Known as Jim Crow, these laws legalized discrimination and made Southern Blacks second-class citizens.
Any Black Southerners who dared to challenge the new racial order faced horrific
violence.
Lynching was an old form of mob justice, where only a suspected criminal would be killed without
legal trial, usually by hanging. For years, lynchings mainly took place in western frontier
towns without a justice system, and they mostly targeted white criminals. But starting in the
1880s, white mobs in the South increasingly used violence to intimidate and control black citizens.
Victims weren't just hanged, they were often tortured and mutilated first. Between 1885 and
1900, there were 2,500 documented lynchings, mostly of African Americans in the South.
Many more were never recorded. Black people were lynched under a wide range of pretenses.
Some were accused of major crimes.
Others were accused of only minor social transgressions,
such as talking back to a white person.
But in each case, lynchings were public spectacles
designed to spread fear and terror among Southern blacks
and enforce white supremacy.
They were advertised in newspapers
and drew large crowds of white men, women, and children.
Postcards showing lynching victims hanging from trees sold widely,
and few perpetrators faced any punishment.
Black journalist and editor Ida B. Wells
emerged as a fierce anti-lynching crusader.
Wells was born into slavery in Mississippi,
and her parents were active in local Republican Party politics
during Reconstruction.
But when she lost her parents to yellow fever, she moved her siblings to Memphis, Tennessee,
and took work as a teacher.
It was in Memphis that Wells first challenged Jim Crow.
On a September day in 1883, she bought a first-class train ticket and boarded a white
lady's car.
The conductor asked Wells to leave.
She refused, fighting him as he dragged her out of the car.
Wells sued the railroad company, but she lost on appeal.
After this experience, Wells began writing articles for black newspapers,
documenting black disenfranchisement and the poor condition of Memphis' segregated schools.
She later became a co-owner of a newspaper, the Memphis Free Speech and Headlight.
But her attention turned to lynching when, in 1892, three of Wells' friends were murdered.
The men had recently opened a grocery store across the street from a white-owned market.
The rival store owner, angry from the threat to his business,
led a mob in, destroying the store and brutally lynching the men.
Wells was furious.
She took up her pen, writing article after article, exposing the inhumanity and injustice of lynching the men. Wells was furious. She took up her pen, writing article after article exposing
the inhumanity and injustice of lynching. Wells had long assumed that it was carried out only for
heinous crimes like rape. She said that the murder of the Memphis businessman opened her eyes to what
lynching really was, an excuse to get rid of Negroes who were acquiring wealth and property
and thus keep the race terrorized. Wells' campaign
against lynching enraged whites in Memphis. A mob destroyed her printing press and threatened to
kill her, too. She fled the South, carrying her anti-lynching fight to the North and across the
Atlantic. She would eventually help found the National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People, or the NAACP, in New York City. But despite the tireless efforts of activists like Ida B. Wells,
brutal violence, extreme poverty, and rigid Jim Crow segregation
wreaked havoc on Black communities.
The fight for full equality under the law, promised to African Americans by the 14th Amendment,
would continue for another century.
But the Gilded Age also brought pressure on other groups who faced exploitation
and violence, too. Economic and industrial development was transforming the American West.
The railroads, mines, factories, and farms that dotted the region demanded the labor of immigrant
workers who endured fierce white resentment. Mounting hostility towards Chinese workers
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Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. In 1862, President Abraham Lincoln passed the Homestead Act. The law parceled out 160-acre plots of land to settlers,
including newly arrived immigrants, single women, and even some freed slaves.
Hundreds of thousands of Americans took advantage of this legislation
to put down roots across the country's vast plains.
New farming technology increased crop yields,
and the discovery of copper, gold, silver, and other precious minerals
drew settlers west to become prospectors and miners. Meanwhile, the growth of railroads made
it easier and faster to settle the frontier than ever before. Railroad companies advertised land
grants in Europe to promote foreign settlement, and sometimes even offered to transport immigrants
to their farms free of charge. But this relentless expansion had a price. As railroads carried settlers deep into the continent's interior,
they encroached on Native American lands and natural resources.
Settlers plowed prairies, leveled forests, and slaughtered buffalo by the millions,
decimating the food source, clothing, and shelter that Plains Indians depended on.
White settlement was backed by military force, too.
For three decades, the U.S. Army fought the
tribal nations in one bloody clash after another. Defeated tribes were pushed onto reservations,
and in 1887, Congress passed the Dawes Severalty Act. The law dissolved collective ownership of
tribal lands, divvying it up into plots for individual Native American families to farm.
The author of this legislation, Congressman Henry Dawes,
declared that ownership of private property would civilize Native Americans. But it was a direct
assault on Native tribes, who relied on communal management of land and resources. Red Cloud,
chief of the Oglala Lakota, fought bitterly to stop the legislation. He condemned the government
for violating its treaties with tribal nations, declaring,
They made us many promises, more than I can remember, but they never kept but one.
They promised to take our land, and they took it.
Despite resistance, by the turn of the century, Native populations were decimated
and struggling to preserve their centuries-old social and cultural traditions.
By then, Americans had settled 430 million acres in the West.
In 1890, the Census Bureau announced that the frontier was officially closed.
The building of the West relied on supportive government policy,
federal and private investment, and the might of technology and construction.
But it also depended on the labor of thousands of Chinese immigrants.
Beginning in the mid-19th century, poverty and political turmoil in their homeland led
Chinese immigrants to seek work in California, which they dubbed the Golden Mountain.
The state's thriving gold rush provided jobs, but many new arrivals also took up work in
the garment industry, farming, and railroads.
During the 1860s, as many as 20,000 immigrant Chinese laborers lent their muscle to the
construction of the Transcontinental Railroad. They braved extreme cold and scorching heat,
breaking through stubborn rock with dynamite and pickaxes to lay the countless tracks that
connected east and west. The work was grueling, but Chinese laborers were consistently paid less
than their white counterparts. They toiled for longer hours and performed more dangerous jobs.
When the railroad was completed, many Chinese laborers returned home.
Those who stayed found work in a variety of industries,
especially textiles, shoemaking, and cigar making.
Others worked as cooks, laundrymen, and domestic servants.
Chinatown sprang up throughout America, and especially on the West Coast.
Most Chinese immigrants were single men who struggled to gain a foothold without family ties. As they fought to eke out
a living and establish roots, they endured fierce persecution. As new arrivals to the U.S. skyrocketed
in the 1880s, anti-immigrant sentiment known as nativism flourished. On the East Coast, the
newcomers pouring in from Southern and Eastern Europe sparked widespread resentment and suspicion.
Many native-born Americans feared the new arrivals would corrupt the nation's economic,
moral, and racial character.
But Chinese immigrants in the West faced the most severe hostility.
Most of them labored in the United States to send money home to their families, and
many had to repay loans to the merchants who had funded their passage across the Pacific,
often at high interest rates. These pressures led Chinese immigrants to accept lower wages than most
native-born Americans would tolerate. Language barriers also prevented them from joining unions,
and so they were frequently used as strikebreakers. White workers, many of them immigrants themselves,
accused Chinese laborers of driving down wages and taking away their jobs. As work
became scarce during the economic depression of the 1870s, the Chinese became scapegoats for the
downturn. Their communities were attacked in dozens of West Coast towns. In October 1871,
a mob of 500 white men in Los Angeles swept through the city's Chinatown, killing nearly
two dozen residents. Boycotts and threats of violence forced many
Chinese business owners to close up their shops. Tensions continued to escalate in California,
where 9% of the state population was Chinese. White Californians, both immigrant and native-born,
blamed the Chinese for taking away their jobs. But they also deemed them an inferior race that
posed an existential threat to American society. As economic pressures increased, this would prove an explosive combination.
In the summer of 1877, San Francisco's unemployment rates soared amid a nationwide
economic depression. Railroad strikes erupting across the country electrified San Francisco's
working class. Night after night, unemployed workers held rallies in the sandlots near City Hall. They channeled their anger into
the formation of a new political movement, the Workingmen's Party, demanding an eight-hour day,
the nationalization of the railroads, and taxes on wealth. The Workingmen called for a mass meeting
on the evening of July 23, 1877. Ten thousand frustrated workers gathered at the sandlots.
But speakers were constantly interrupted by people in the crowd
calling for action against the city's Chinese residents.
One man cried out,
What do we care for ballots? It's the Chinamen we're after.
The meeting soon devolved into an anti-Chinese riot.
Crowds went on a rampage that lasted two days.
Bands of men ransacked homes, torched laundries, and stoned a Chinese Methodist church.
California workers who resented the growing Chinese population found a leader in Dennis Kearney.
Kearney was a fierce demagogue who channeled anti-Chinese sentiment into a political campaign.
Born in Ireland, Kearney arrived in San Francisco in 1871
and began building a successful business hauling
dry goods to city merchants. Over the next few years, Kearney became active in his local labor
union and spent as much time as he could at the library reading philosophy and dreaming of a
political career. And after the July riot, Kearney saw his chance. He entered politics attracting
large crowds with fiery speeches attacking corporations who accumulated wealth
at the expense of workers. But he also targeted Chinese immigrants, accusing them of working
starvation wages and trying to take jobs from whites. He formed his own workingmen's party
in August and gained followers under the rallying cry, the Chinese must go. Kerner's followers began
terrorizing Chinese immigrants in the streets. In several instances, they attacked Chinese men,
shearing off their traditional long-braided pigtails.
In October 1877, Kearney marched thousands of protesters
to the wealthy neighborhood of Knob Hill, home to several railroad executives.
There, he gave a ferocious speech, calling on the executives to fire their Chinese workers
and threatening violence if they refused, saying,
The Central Pacific Railroad men are thieves and will soon feel the power of the workingmen.
I will lead you to the city hall, clean out the police force, hang the prosecuting attorney,
burn every book that has a particle of law in it. Two weeks later, he was arrested for inciting a
riot, though the charges were dropped after Kearney promised to tone down his language.
Instead, that fall, Kearney's rhetoric grew more
incendiary. By year's end, he declared that, when the Chinese question is settled, we can discuss
whether it be better to hang, shoot, or cut the capitalists to pieces. All across California,
the Workingmen's Party was gaining strength. In January 1878, the party held its first statewide
convention. Its platform condemned the government for falling
under the sway of capitalists and urged an end to Chinese labor. Meanwhile, legislation restricting
Chinese immigration was becoming more popular. An 1879 referendum showed that more than 99%
of California voters favored Chinese exclusion. That year, Kearney and the Workingmen's Party
began calling for a new state constitution to regulate the railroads and repress Chinese immigrants.
Voters responded by approving the new state constitution that barred the Chinese from voting,
owning land, or working for the state government.
The next spring, crowds of unemployed men descended on factories and workshops in San Francisco,
demanding the firing of Chinese workers.
Imagine it's February 1880.
You're the manager of a shoe factory, and you're going over paperwork in your office.
All of a sudden, you hear the machine stop.
You look up at the clock on the wall, confused.
There's still a half hour left on the workday.
Walk out of your office to find your employees crowded around the windows.
Hey, get back to work. Your shift's not over yet.
Please, sir, don't give in.
It's Li, one of your best workers.
He's been with you going on five years now since he immigrated from China.
You take in the fear on his face and push past him to look out the window.
Outside, 100 men have gathered at the factory doors. Some are carrying torches. All of them are yelling, fire the Chinese, send them home.
Okay, all of you get back to the machines. Away from the windows.
You rush to the factory door and check the deadbolt. The lock may keep the mob out,
but you know it won't stop them from torching the building. As you weigh your options, Lee appears beside you, a determined look on his face.
Sir, I need this money to send home to my family. We all do.
You won't find harder workers than us. We work long hours, we've been loyal, and we don't ask for much.
I know you're good workers, and these men know it.
Let's just wait a few hours, sir. They'll calm down.
But you know they won't.
As much as you hate to fire your men, you won't stand by and let the mob destroy your business.
No, I'm sorry. I have my factory to think about.
You remember what happened in 77?
Don't think they won't burn this building to the ground.
So go get the others, line up, and I'll hand out the last of your wages.
Quickly, too, because you better get out of here.
You move down the line, handing out stacks of cash.
Li doesn't say anything to you as you give him his money.
He just looks you in the eye.
Li, all the factory owners in this city know you're hard workers.
You'll be employed again in no time.
But even as you say it, you know you're lying.
The way things are now, you can't think of one factory owner
who will hire Chinese workers. But there's a more immediate danger. You just pray he and the others will be
safe when they head out to meet the crowds. In 1880, when confronted with mobs of unemployed
white workers, many factory owners complied with their demands, laying off 1,000 workers.
By the end of that year,
the Workingmen's Party as a political unit collapsed amid infighting, but their anti-Chinese
movement continued to gain traction on a national level. In February 1882, California Senator John
F. Miller introduced a bill to exclude Chinese immigrants from the United States altogether,
declaring that Chinese people were a degraded and inferior race that
threatened to corrupt America. Just two months later, the Chinese Exclusion Act became federal
law. The legislation permitted Chinese businessmen, students, temporary visitors, and their spouses to
enter the country, but ordinary laborers were banned. For the first time in its history, the
United States had closed its borders on the basis of race. They would stay shut to most Chinese immigrants for another 60 years. For the Chinese people
already in the United States, the Exclusion Act effectively marked them as outsiders from
American life. Across the West, members of the nation's most powerful labor organization fueled
hatred and violence. White mobs would continue to channel their economic and racial resentment into vigilante action, ravaging Chinese communities from Wyoming to Washington.
But Chinese activists and community groups would fight back,
demanding equal rights and asserting their place in American life.
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Stream free on Freeview and Prime Video. By the mid-1880s, the largest union in the United States was the Knights of Labor.
Philadelphia garment workers had formed the organization in 1869 as a secret society.
Members swore oaths and used secret passwords and handshakes to hide their activity from employers.
During the 1870s, the Knights grew under the motto,
an injury to one is the concern of all. The group sought to organize workers into one big brotherhood as opposed to separate unions. It was radical for its time, welcoming both skilled and
unskilled workers, men and women, and white and black members. The only occupations barred from
membership were those deemed unethical—gamblers, speculators, saloon keepers, lawyers, and bankers.
In a time when workdays stretched 10 hours or more,
the Knights pushed for an eight-hour workday as well as health and safety codes.
In 1879, an Irish-American named Terence Powderly became Grand Master Workman of the Knights.
At first glance, Powderly did not look the part of a stereotypical labor leader. He was slender and had a droopy blonde mustache with pale blue eyes
behind his glasses. Powderly had dropped out of school at age 13 to operate switches for a small
railroad, but he eventually rose to become mayor of Scranton, Pennsylvania. He brought his political
skills to the Knights, traveling throughout the country to recruit new members. He accused
millionaire businessmen of laying the foundation for their colossal fortunes on the bodies and
souls of living men. Powderly imagined a worker's paradise in which laborers owned the nation's
mines, factories, and railroads. But for all Powderly's ideas, he struggled with execution.
He discouraged strikes as a tactic. He preferred to put pressure on employers through boycotts and arbitration. But his control over the knights was limited. Powderly was a stronger
speaker than a leader, and ultimately, workers were more interested in practical strategies
than utopian dreams. He failed to stop members from carrying out several successful strikes
during the 1880s. But the Union's biggest victory came in 1885, when workers for the Wabash Railroad walked off the job.
The Wabash was owned by the notorious Jay Gould, one of the most hated railroad tycoons in America.
With his railroad line shut down, Gould gave in to the workers' demands,
and membership for the Knights mushroomed from just over 100,000 members in 1885
to nearly three-quarters of a million workers just a year later.
The strike against Gould boosted the Knights' popularity, but so did their attacks against
Chinese workers in the West. Despite the Knights' official tolerance, the organization championed
the Chinese Exclusion Act. The Knights depicted Chinese workers as tools of corporations who
undermined wages and were inherently inferior to whites. The Knights' seething hostility against Chinese workers
came to a head in the small mining community of Rock Springs, Wyoming.
The Union Pacific Coal Mine there employed 500 workers,
two-thirds of whom were Chinese.
The rest were white European immigrants who had joined the Knights of Labor.
The Chinese had first been employed as strikebreakers,
and white resentment toward them festered for years.
Then on September 2, 1885, a fight broke out between Chinese and white miners when both groups
wanted to work the same part of the mine. The white workers brutally beat two Chinese men until
a foreman arrived and ended the violence. But later that day, more than 100 white miners fetched guns,
hatchets, and knives and marched toward Chinatown. The mob looted and
burned all 79 houses belonging to Chinese residents. As the Chinese fled the flames,
many were shot in the street. Others burned to death in their cellars. When the slaughter ended,
28 Chinese people had been killed and another 15 wounded. Hundreds more were driven out,
leaving a destroyed Chinatown completely empty. No one was prosecuted
for the crimes, though the identities of the perpetrators were widely known.
The massacre in Rock Springs, Wyoming inspired a wave of mob violence against Chinese people
throughout the West. More than 150 towns and cities expelled or tried to expel their Chinese
residents. In the Washington Territory, an organizer for the Knights of Labor named Daniel
Cronin saw how hatred of the Chinese could unify whites.
He realized that mobilizing whites against local Chinese worker could help boost his
recruiting efforts.
So on Halloween night in 1885, he led a mob into Tacoma's Chinatown.
The men rounded up the Chinese residents and marched them out, burning their homes and
businesses to the ground.
Two months later, members of the Knights of Labor in Seattle would adopt what is now known as
the Tacoma Method. Mobs fanned out throughout Chinatown with one goal,
round up Seattle's Chinese residents and cast them out.
Imagine it's February 1886. You're in a Seattle courtroom, the last place you expected to be today.
You're exhausted and sore.
Last night, an angry mob hauled you out of your house and took you down to the docks.
They tried to force you onto a steamer bound for San Francisco,
but at the last minute, a judge blocked the ship from leaving.
Now you and dozens of men and women are waiting for him to announce your fate.
You turn to your business partner, nervously tapping his foot beside you.
Well, our future is in his hands now.
Nodding at the justice who had just appeared.
May I have the attention of the court?
You look up at the justice, who is peering down at you and your neighbors through steel-framed spectacles.
I'm here to inform you that you have the legal right to remain in Seattle.
You raise your eyebrows at your business partner.
Neither of you were expecting this.
You need not fear.
All the power of the Washington Territory and of the United States stands ready to defend you.
Those of you who remain will be safe.
You feel a sense of relief wash over you.
But the judge isn't done speaking.
But let me be clear.
The general sentiment of the community is against the Chinese staying here.
Now I'm going to ask you all to line up.
One by one, please inform me whether you intend to stay or go.
You feel sick to your stomach as you and your partner fall into line.
You're surprised to see him smiling.
What are you so happy about?
You heard the judge. He says they'll protect us.
But he also made it obvious that we are not wanted here.
I vote we go.
But we've spent years building up our store.
You want to just abandon it?
Of course not.
It makes me sick to think of what we're giving up.
But if we stay, we're going to be living in fear of them coming and destroying it.
Your partner squares his shoulder.
I'm ready to fight for our home.
Be reasonable.
Think of the numbers here.
Once the other Chinese go and they're sure to, we'll lose most of our customers. Besides, I don't want to
endure another night like last night. Your partner studies your face and the slump of your shoulders.
Finally, he nods. You're probably right. You've advanced to the head of the line. It's your turn
now. Your partner nods at you and you approach the judge, who waits to mark down your decision. We're leaving. As you say the words, you feel relief,
immediately followed by fear. You realize you have no idea where you'll go,
and who's to say that wherever you land next, things will be any different?
At daybreak on February 7, 1886, the Knights of Labor members posing as city health inspectors
spread through Seattle's Chinatown and hauled more than 300 residents and their belongings
into wagons. They drove them up to the wharf, where a steamer was docked. But the captain of
the ship refused to let the Chinese on board until their fares had been paid. Few had the money,
but many white residents were all too happy to contribute to the funds to help expel their Chinese neighbors. They gathered enough to buy passage for some of
the Chinese. But the Chief Justice of Washington Supreme Court of the Washington Territory issued
an injunction to prevent the ship from leaving. The judge was sympathetic to the Chinese and
distrustful of organized labor. He ordered all expelled Chinese to his courtroom and told them
they had the legal right to remain in Seattle. But he also warned them that the city was united against
them. The Chinese understood they were not welcome, and most decided to leave. Still,
Chinese immigrants did not just accept discrimination and violence. They fought
the 1882 Exclusion Act through the courts, and they relied on robust organizational networks.
Community leaders established social groups to provide political and financial support to immigrants,
challenge discriminatory laws, and protect immigrants from exploitation.
One of the leading advocates for Chinese political and civil rights
was a sharp-tongued activist named Wang Qinfu.
He first came to the United States as a 17-year-old student.
In the early 1880s, he started New York's first Chinese-American newspaper,
and a year later, he founded New York's first Chinese American newspaper,
and a year later, he founded the nation's first Chinese American Voters Association.
Wong published essays attacking the Exclusion Act and the anti-Chinese sentiments in popular magazines. In a letter published in the Pittsburgh Dispatch, he declared himself
a man without a country, kicked out of China, disowned by the United States. He went on to ask,
Has the federal government of the United States the right to make a law
to strip me of my citizenship and franchise?
Then, when Irish labor leader Dennis Kearney visited New York in 1883,
Wong challenged him to a duel, sarcastically offering him his choice of weapon,
chopsticks, Irish potatoes, or Krupp guns, a type of cannon.
Four years later, he finally got his chance to take down Kearney in a debate.
His cool head prevailed against Kearney's hot temper.
Newspapers across the country declared Wong the victor.
In 1886, Chinese immigrants were continuing to mobilize against racism and discrimination,
even as the Knights of Labor had become the most powerful labor group in the country,
partly by riding the wave of anti-Chinese hysteria.
But all of that would soon change.
Across the country,
America's workers were rising up
to challenge industrial greed.
Their desperate cries for basic rights
were changing the fate of American workers.
But on a rainy May evening,
a fatal bomb blast at a Chicago labor rally
would ignite mass panic.
The deadly explosion would tarnish the
reputation of the Knights of Labor and cast a shadow over its utopian dreams. Still, workers
refused to give up the fight for fair wages and safe working conditions. From the nation's steel
mills to its factories and mines, they would channel their anger into collective action,
building a movement to battle the power of big business.
Next on American History Tellers,
as the nation nears the turn of the century,
conflicts between labor unions and corporate owners intensify.
More than 300,000 workers strike across the nation,
demanding an eight-hour workday.
A lockout at Andrew Carnegie Steel Mill in Homestead, Pennsylvania
turns into a deadly battle,
and President Grover Cleveland faces a national crisis
when Pullman railway workers paralyze the country's rail traffic.
From Wondery, this is Episode 4 of The Gilded Age for American History Tellers.
If you like American History Tellers, you can binge all episodes early and ad-free right now
by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music.
And before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery.com slash survey.
American History Tellers is hosted, edited, and produced by me, Lindsey Graham, for Airship.
Audio editing by Molly Bach.
Sound design by Derek Behrens.
This episode is written by Ellie Stanton,
edited by Dorian Marina.
Our executive producers are Jenny Lauer Beckman
and Marshall Louis,
created by Hernán López for Wondery.
How did Birkenstocks go from a German cobbler's
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