An Anti-Chinese Assault at the Seattle Waterfront
A group of Chinese laborers is attacked while attempting to depart for Portland, highlighting the escalating racial tensions in the city.
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.
There was a Chinese raid from Seattle this morning. The inhabitants have become awakened to the fact that the ends of the pier at the wharf means for them to fire the great guns of about 90 men with clubs and canes on the wharf, and but for the fact that they were crouched from the bystanders, no doubt there would be blood. A bystander kicked the shins of one of the laborers, at which he became indignant and struck at the crowd with a pole which he was carrying, striking the railroad horse-car conductor a good blow over the eye and blackening it nicely. It was a lively time while it lasted. The Chinamen tried to call their comrades but they showed no fight.
“A bystander kicked the shins of one of the laborers, at which he became indignant and struck at the crowd with a pole which he was carrying.”
This incident occurred just months before the infamous 1886 anti-Chinese riots that saw the forced expulsion of Seattle’s Chinese population. Today, the site of the former waterfront wharves is the heart of Seattle's commercial and tourist district, a stark transformation from a place of violent systemic exclusion.
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