- ANTONE PIERUCCI
- Posted On
This Week in History: Race riots and the history of gerrymandering
This week in history is notable for brutal race riots and instances of political corruption.
Feb. 7, 1886
It is a sad irony that a country of immigrants has such a long history of brutality towards those recently arrived.
Few groups in America’s sordid history of prejudice suffered more than the Chinese.
The history of Chinese immigration to America began well before the mid-1860s.
High taxes after the Opium Wars of 1839 to 1842 and 1856 to 1860 had forced many peasants and farmers off their land, and political unrest led to economic desperation in China.
Coupled with several years of severe floods followed by drought, the promise of the “Golden Mountain” in California and elsewhere in the country led to a wave of immigration from China beginning in the 1840s.
Although immigrants would eventually make their way along railroad lines to all corners of the continent, the ports along the western United States were the first points of entry for those recently from China.
The cities of San Francisco, Portland and Seattle developed significant enclaves of Chinese communities that still exist to this day.
Very early on, these Chinese immigrants were forced to the margins of society. Official laws that targeted them directly compounded the personal enmity they experienced from most people.
In California, the new state legislature in 1850 adopted a Foreign Miners License Law, charging all non-U.S. citizens $20 per month.
Although the fee was eventually reduced, the law had served its purpose. When prejudice and xenophobia are made the law of the land, the fearful among us are given free rein to vent their hatred without worry of legal reprisals.
That was certainly the case in Washington, Oregon and California in the 1870s and 1880s as Chinese communities throughout the region were beaten, burned and murdered.
Even isolated Lake County did not escape the racist frenzy of those years.
Lake County in the 1870s had a growing population of Chinese, most of whom worked in one of the quicksilver mines in the area.
The largest concentration of Chinese outside of the mines was in the town of Lakeport, where several Chinese laundromats opened shop.
From the very beginning, anger over these new residents was given voice in the local papers. As the decade drug on, words became actions.
For two weeks at the end of November and beginning of December 1877, one of the Chinese laundromats in town was the scene of regular protests.
Like those similar protests in San Francisco, the ones in Lakeport occasionally turned violent and on a few occasions, bricks were hurled through windows and at the Chinese family living and working inside.
Although certainly violent, these minor protests in Lakeport were nothing compared to the larger riots in cities like Seattle.
On this day in 1886, a mob of several hundred men entered the Chinese quarter of the city. Under the cover of darkness, they bashed in the doors and drug out the occupants of dozens of homes.
Beating and harassing their victims, the mob forcibly removed the Chinese from the city. Some were lucky enough to have money for a fare to San Francisco, but others did not have enough time to collect their belongings before the angry crowd had dragged them from their rooms.
By the time the rest of the city became aware of what was happening, more than 400 Chinese immigrants were homeless.
Rather belatedly, federal troops were called into the city to quell the rioting. When the dust settled, all but a few of what had once been a thriving Chinese community were gone.
Feb. 11, 1812
“If at first you don’t succeed,” so the saying goes, “try, try, try again.”
Or just cheat the system.
That, at least, is what Elbridge Gerry did on this day in 1812. As governor of Massachusetts and a staunch Democratic-Republican, Gov. Gerry feared the growing power of the Federalist Party in his state.
The Democratic-Republican Party was essentially the very first “Republican” party in the United States.
Its champions were Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, who advocated for a decentralized government more in line with a republic than a monarchy.
Their opponents, led by Alexander Hamilton, were the Federalists. Friendly towards Great Britain, believers in a strong central government and opponents to Revolutionary France, the Federalists were the polar opposites of the Democratic-Republicans of the day.
Elbridge Gerry had a long history in American politics by the time he won the governorship of his state in 1810.
A delegate to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787, a U.S. Congressman for several years and a diplomat to Republican France under President Adams, Gerry remained consistently at the forefront of the nation’s politics.
Upon returning to his home in Massachusetts, he unsuccessfully ran for governor four times between 1800 and 1803.
Once he finally succeeded in attaining the governorship in 1810, the Democratic-Republican Gerry was stymied by the Federalist-controlled state legislature and he was unable to achieve much that first year.
When their party finally gained some control in the state Senate in 1811, Democratic-Republicans sought a means to consolidate their power.
In 1812, they devised a system of reorganizing state senate election districts to ensure a greater number of Democratic-Republican seats. On this day in 1812, Gov. Gerry signed the bill into law.
Although by no means the first time district lines had been altered to benefit one political party over another, some of the districts that resulted in the 1812 redrawing in Massachusetts were so tortured and meandering that the political motives behind the move were all too clear.
When mapped, one district in the Boston area was so contorted that it resembled the shape of a salamander.
A political cartoonist of the day was inspired and drew a hideous monster in the shape of the district and labeled his creation a “Gerry-mander” after the last name of the governor and the resemblance of the district to the amphibian.
To this day, the redrawing of district lines remains a common way for one political party to gain supremacy over another.
Unfortunately for Elbridge Gerry, his illustrious career as a founding father has been overshadowed by his one act as governor in the twilight of his life.
Not many people know who Elbridge Gerry was, but every high school civics student is taught about the corrupt practice of gerrymandering.
Antone Pierucci is curator of the Lake County Museums in Lake County, Calif.