The Resilience of Sing Sing Henry
An Americanized Chinese resident of Snohomish, who abandoned traditional dress to escape expulsion, seeks to prove his citizenship.
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.
Sing Sing Henry, a Chinaman who applied to Maj. Harlan for registry yesterday, is a man of considerable distinction. He has been in America a good many years, and when the Chinese riots occurred, six or seven years ago, lived in Snohomish. He had then cut off his queue, assumed the style of clothing that requires the shirt to be tucked under the pants and had taken out citizen papers. In consideration of the fact that he had become Americanized, he was allowed to remain in Snohomish when every other Chinaman was driven out. He has acquired some property and is highly respected by the community in which he lives. Sing Sing Henry wanted to secure title to a residence in the United States because he had lost his citizen's papers, which he says he took out in Seattle about sixteen years ago. He came into the city yesterday, and after hunting in vain for a record of his citizenship, or getting the clerk of the court to hunt for him, applied to Maj. Harlan for registration under the Geary law. He is the only Chinese resident of Snohomish.
This story captures the extreme, coercive measures Chinese immigrants had to adopt to survive the state-sanctioned violence of the 1880s. Sing Sing Henry’s story serves as a stark reminder of the 'Exclusion' era, where survival often required complete erasure of one's cultural identity to satisfy the local white majority.
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