The Violent Expulsion of Seattle's Chinese Community
In November 1885, following the forced removal of Chinese residents in Tacoma, a tense public meeting at the Seattle Opera House debated the 'Chinese Question' while labor leaders and city elites sought to avoid the bloodshed that defined neighboring towns.
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.
Yesterday afternoon a committee from the Knights of Labor met with Mayor Yesler, ex-Mayor Leary, and Mr. Phillips Gately to confer regarding the Chinese question. These gentlemen sent for Gee Hee, Wong Choo’s partner, and four or five other leading Chinamen, and explained the situation to them. The Chinamen agreed that they were aware of the feeling against them here and that they would send off the laborers as soon as they could settle up their business affairs. The committee, being practical business men, regarded this a peaceful solution.
By 8 o'clock there were six or seven hundred persons, principally laboring men, in the Opera House. The meeting was called to order by J. C. Haines. Judge Thomas Burke was the final speaker. He said: 'It was the judgment of thoughtful men that a meeting where false statements might be pierced by the keen point of truth could be conducive of good. Three or four hundred armed men at Tacoma went around and packed up the Chinese, bag and baggage, and marched them through the streets and eight miles out to Lakeview, where they were left on the prairie all night, exposed, without shelter, to a drenching storm, and two died from exposure. The Mayor of Tacoma is a foreigner, and can hardly speak the English language. I have read how the Germans turned up against the Jews and drove them from their homes. What am I to think that only thirty miles from where I stand, in the Republic of the United States, such atrocities have been committed?'
“Three or four hundred armed men at Tacoma went around and packed up the Chinese, bag and baggage, and marched them through the streets and eight miles out to Lakeview, where they were left on the prairie all night, exposed, without shelter, to a drenching storm, and two died from exposure.”
This article documents the lead-up to the violent 1886 expulsion of the Chinese population from Seattle. It highlights a recurring tension in the city's history: how economic anxiety and xenophobic labor movements often collide with civic authority, creating a 'resonance' with modern debates over gentrification and displacement.
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