Hatred, especially racial hatred, was, like greed, a powerful force in the West of 1871. Scott Zesch reminds us in The Chinatown War of a massacre of Chinese by whites in as shameful an atrocity as Arizona’s Camp Grant Massacre or Utah’s Mountain Meadows. Los Angeles, still a dusty cowtown in 1871, tolerated a Chinatown of only 179 individuals, almost all men. Motivated by a false rumor of Chinese killing whites, a mob, posing as vigilantes, shot three Cantonese to death and lynched 15 mo
Already Signed Up? Log in here.
Read this article now for Free!
Ready for a third free article? Create a free account by entering your email address and a password below.
— OR —
Sign Up Now for $29.95 a year and have immediate access to all of True West content, including the complete True West Archives dating back to 1953!
