Michael Luo
Executive editor
Only one man’s face is clearly visible in the photograph. He is wearing a brimmed hat, an oversized coat, and boots. He seems to be mid-stride, with one foot in front of the other, as though he’s walking out of the frame. He’s staring straight at the picture-taker, his mouth slightly agape, in what appears to be a grimace. The photograph was taken after one of the most gruesome episodes of racial terror in American history. On September 2, 1885, white rioters killed at least twenty-eight Chinese miners in Rock Springs, Wyoming, and burned down the town’s Chinese quarter. The rest of the Chinese population fled. About a week later, several hundred Chinese miners returned, guarded by federal troops. The photograph is a tableau of that moment, when those who came back set up camp next to the railroad tracks. My eyes are invariably drawn to the man in the hat. I wonder about his story.
My piece in this week’s issue is an account of the tragedy in Rock Springsand of the effort today to uncover what happened. (It is drawn from my book, “Strangers in the Land: Exclusion, Belonging, and the Epic Story of the Chinese in America,” which will be published on April 29th.) The massacre was the opening act of a harrowing—yet under-examined—period in American history that became known as “the driving out,” when dozens of communities expelled their Chinese residents. Part of what I was trying to understand in my book is how fury about an entire people can spill over the way it did against Chinese immigrants at the end of the nineteenth century. Today, we’re once again in a moment when anger toward immigrants is coursing through the country. They’re seen as strangers, making them an easy target for politicians on the right and left. Their stories also deserve to be told.
