The Violent Expulsion of Chinese Workers from Tacoma
While Seattle officials debated the law, a vigilante mob in Tacoma took matters into their own hands, forcibly ejecting Chinese residents from 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.
The people of Tacoma and Seattle have found a way to solve the Chinese problem. Instead of going about shouting that the Chinese must go, they tenderly but firmly take them up bodily and set them down out of town. This plan was consummated at Tacoma yesterday, and worked to a charm. The Chinese were put out of town with one day's provisions, and are now testing the walking in the direction of Portland. The expulsion of the Chinese from Tacoma, in Washington Territory, on Tuesday, by the combined action of citizens, is a very striking incident in the anti-Chinese crusade. At the Coal Creek mines, twenty miles from Seattle, the lodging houses of the Chinamen were burned and their inmates driven into the woods. At the Newcastle coal mines a masked mob expelled the Chinese. Meetings in Washington Territory have asked committees everywhere to notify the Chinese to move away from the region at a fixed date.
“Instead of going about shouting that the Chinese must go, they tenderly but firmly take them up bodily and set them down out of town.”
This 1885 report documents the shameful 'Tacoma Method' of ethnic cleansing, where residents were forcibly driven from their homes. Today, the site of the former Chinese settlement in Tacoma is commemorated by the Chinese Reconciliation Park, a place dedicated to healing and recognizing the systemic violence that shaped our region's early labor and housing history.
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