An Indignant Patron
A Chinese man refuses a segregated ticket policy at a local circus.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The other night a spruce looking Chinaman walked up to the ticket office of a circus and laid down a dollar. The ticket seller handed him a pit ticket and fifty cents. John indignantly shoved back the change and ticket, and proceeded to relieve his overburdened feelings as follows: 'What for you gib me four bitty ticket, eh? Me no four bitty man! Four bitty man all same dam nigger. Me pay one dollar, all same Melican gentleman.'
“Me pay one dollar, all same Melican gentleman.”
This brief account highlights the casual but systemic racial stratification of 19th-century public life, where entertainment venues routinely enforced segregated or inferior seating. It serves as a reminder that the fight for equal access to public accommodations and the dignity of the individual was a daily struggle for Chinese immigrants in the Pacific Northwest long before the era of formal civil rights protections.
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