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Long before Trump, politicians on the country’s West Coast mobilized a white working-class base through violent hate of Chinese and Japanese immigrants.
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Gum Shan. Gold Mountain. That was what the people in Guangdong Province called the faraway land where the native population had red hair and blue eyes, and it was rumored that gold nuggets could be plucked from the ground. According to an account in the San Francisco
Chronicle, a merchant visiting from Canton, the provincial capital likely soon after the discovery of gold at Sutter Creek, in 1848 wrote to a friend back home about the riches that he had found in the mountains of California. The friend told others and set off across the Pacific Ocean himself. Whether from the merchant’s letter, or from ships arriving in Hong Kong, news of California’s gold rush swept through southern China. Men began scraping together funds, often using their family’s land as collateral for loans, and crowding aboard vessels that took as long as three months to reach America. They eventually arrived in the thousands. Some came in search of gold; others were attracted
The Bay Area town that drove out its Chinese residents for nearly 100 years
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In the 1800s, Antioch s Chinatown consisted of homes and stores on both sides of First and Second streets, from G to I streets, as highlighted in red on the map.Antioch Historical Society & Museum
Before the white residents of Antioch burned down Chinatown in 1876, they banned Chinese people from walking the city streets after sunset.
In order to get from their jobs to their homes each evening, the Chinese residents built a series of tunnels connecting the business district to where I Street met the waterfront. There, a small Chinatown and a cluster of houseboats made up the immigrant settlement. If they ever felt safe there, it was fleeting. Above the tunnels and outside their doors, the threat of violence was simmering.
S.F. had its own demagogue who capitalized on racist grievances
Gary Kamiya
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Denis Kearney, a San Francisco politician and activist known for his anti-Chinese bigotry in the 1870s and ’80s, in an undated photo./ The Chronicle
Almost 150 years before Donald Trump harangued a mob that invaded the U.S. Capitol, San Francisco had its own demagogue who rose to prominence by capitalizing on the rage of disaffected working-class voters, demonizing minorities and promising to drain the swamp of corrupt officials.
The difference between Denis Kearney and the 45th president of the United States is that Kearney not only incited his followers to storm the citadels of power, he personally led them there.