San Francisco riot of 1877 facts for kids

Quick facts for kids 1877 San Francisco riots
Illustration by H.A. Rodgers for Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper (March 20, 1880) showing a Workingmen's Party of California anti-Chinese rally on the sand lots near San Francisco City Hall
Location	San Francisco, California, U.S.
Date	July 23, 1877 (1877-07-23)- July 25, 1877 (1877-07-25)
Attack type	Riot, pogrom
Deaths	4
Victims	Chinese community of San Francisco
Assailants	White mobs
Motive	Sinophobia

The San Francisco riot of 1877 was a three-day pogrom waged against Chinese immigrants in San Francisco, California by the city's majority white population from the evening of July 23 through the night of July 25, 1877. The ethnic violence which swept Chinatown resulted in four deaths and the destruction of more than $100,000 worth of property belonging to the city's Chinese immigrant population.

Background

Historian Theodore Hittell wrote about the developing competition between Chinese and Caucasian workers, initially in mining and then in more general work throughout the 1850s: "As a class [the Chinese] were harmless, peaceful and exceedingly industrious; but, as they were remarkably economical and spent little or none of their earnings except for the necessaries of life and this chiefly to merchants of their own nationality, they soon began to provoke the prejudice and ill-will of those who could not see any value in their labor to the country. ... By degrees they began also to branch out into occupations which interfered or were supposed to interfere with the wages of white labor. They not only hired out as servants and laborers; but they became laundrymen and turned their attention successfully to various mechanical branches of industry, which would yield them wages, and in a number of ways picked up money, which would have otherwise gone into white hands." Many of the Chinese immigrants who had come to America to work on the First Transcontinental Railroad were left looking for other employment after its completion in 1869; in San Francisco, Chinese workers were often hired at cheaper rates than Caucasian workers, and the Chinese immigrants were often convenient scapegoats for larger economic inequalities.

From 1873 through the rest of the 1870s a severe economic crisis swept the United States of America known to history as the Long Depression. Economic contraction in the eastern United States proved the motivation for many to pull up stakes and try to re-establish themselves in the West Coast. Indeed, between the years 1873 and 1875 an estimated 150,000 workers made their way to the "Golden State", many of whom settled in the state's only metropolis, San Francisco. By that time, San Francisco had already experienced two cycles of boom and bust: first in the 1850s, as the Gold Rush dried up, and then in the 1870s, after the Comstock Lode had been mined.

By 1877 the depression that had already long plagued the East Coast arrived on the West Coast as well, and San Francisco's unemployment rate skyrocketed to approximately 20% of adult men, coinciding with a downturn in mining stocks. There was no city or state central labor authority, no government provision for unemployed workers, and discontent was rampant. In San Francisco, with approximately 200,000 residents, the Chinese made up approximately 10% of the population; white and Chinese competed for the same jobs, with Chinese labor being decidedly cheaper.

Aftermath and legacy

Denis Kearney, a nativist immigrant from Ireland, was drawn into political activism as a result of the 1877 San Francisco riot.

The July 1877 San Francisco riot's suppression did not mark the end of anti-Chinese activity in the city, but rather the beginning. One of those who had served in the so-called "Pick-Handle Brigade" which had helped to quell the rioting, an Irish wagon-driver named Denis Kearney, was drawn into political activity by the July events.

Kearney first applied for membership in the Workingmen's Party (later known as the Socialist Labor Party of America), but was denied on the basis of his outspoken public views on what he considered the "laziness" and "shiftlessness" of the working class. Stymied from membership in the existing opposition political party, Kearney started a new organization of his own, the Workingmen's Trade and Labor Union of San Francisco, which made use of the mobilizing slogan "The Chinamen Must Go!" This organization changed its name in October 1877 to the Workingmen's Party of California, of which Kearney served as president. The new party retained the anti-Chinese focus and slogans of the earlier organization.

Anti-Chinese sentiment spread throughout the United States, culminating in the effective termination of importation of Chinese workers through passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882.

In media

"Beating the Chinese" (Anton Refregier, 1948), photographed by Carol M. Highsmith in 2012.

• Anton Refregier painted #19: "The Sand Lot Riots of 1870" (also known as "Beating the Chinese"), one of the 27 murals in the Rincon Annex Post Office collectively entitled History of San Francisco, completed in 1948. This painting depicts Chinese immigrants, who were accused of stealing jobs, being beaten by Irish workers.
• A fictional version of the riots was incorporated into the ninth episode of season 2 of the television drama Warrior, first broadcast in 2020.