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News // San Francisco History

The Bay Area town that drove out its Chinese residents
for nearly 100 years
Katie Dowd, SFGATE
Updated: April 7, 2021 10:44 a.m.

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 In the 1800s, Antioch's Chinatown consisted of homes and stores on both sides of First and Second
streets, from G to I streets, as highlighted in red on the map.
Antioch Historical Society & Museum

Before the white residents of Antioch burned down Chinatown in 1876, they banned
Chinese people from walking the city streets after sunset.

In order to get from their jobs to their homes each evening, the Chinese residents
built a series of tunnels connecting the business district to where I Street met the
waterfront. There, a small Chinatown and a cluster of houseboats made up the
immigrant settlement. If they ever felt safe there, it was eeting. Above the tunnels
and outside their doors, the threat of violence was simmering.

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"The citizens of Antioch have been endeavoring to rid themselves of the Chinese for
some time,” the Sacramento Bee wrote in the spring of 1876.

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 When the Palace Hotel was demolished in 1926, workers discovered secret tunnels underground
used by Chinese residents to commute after sunset. According to an 1851 statute, Chinese residents
were not allowed to be on the street after dark.
Antioch Historical Society & Museum

The excuse they were waiting for came on April 29, 1876. According to newspaper
reports, a doctor in Antioch made public the knowledge that a handful of young
men he treated showed signs of venereal disease. The doctor pointed the nger at
Chinese sex workers; he knew what he was doing.

Outrage ripped through the town. A mob quickly formed. Some urged murdering
the women, but “better counsels prevailed,” a wire report recounted. Instead, the
swarm of four dozen angry white men went door to door in Chinatown, telling the
occupants they had until 3 p.m. to leave town — no exceptions. Young, old, men,
women, healthy and deathly ill had just hours to pack up and depart.

It must have been an eerie sight: a crowd of frightened Chinese immigrants, their
belongings knotted up into kerchiefs, standing silently in line at the dock, awaiting
ferries to San Francisco and Stockton.

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"The lightning of Caucasian wrath upon Mongolia has struck," the Mercury News
wrote. But the spark it ignited had only just started to burn.

---

In the decades following the Gold Rush, no immigrant group was as loathed as the
Chinese. That hatred became endemic to California, planted and nourished by
politicians, city leaders and the media. Their xenophobic talking points will sound
familiar today: outrage over “low skill” laborers taking jobs from white people,
complaints that Chinese people failed to integrate into American society (while
simultaneously barring them from schools, social gathering places and even public
streets) and accusations of “an
“an invasion.”
invasion.”

"Anti-Chinese sentiment is right, patriotic, and in every sense American,” the Los
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A g l H ld d l d i 1876
Angeles Herald declared in 1876.

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By the 1870s, California had moved from local ordinances, like Antioch’s street ban,
to creating entire anti-Chinese political parties. San Franciscan Denis Kearney,
himself an immigrant from Ireland, formed the Workingmen’s Party of California. Its
stated goal was to eradicate Chinese workers and its infamous slogan was: “The
Chinese must go!” The state constitution rati ed in 1879 had only one article that
addressed a racial or ethnic group. Entitled “CHINESE,” it banned corporations
from hiring “Chinese or Mongolian” people and speci ed "no Chinese shall be
employed on any State, county, municipal, or other public work, except in
punishment for crime." Three years later, the federal Chinese Exclusion Act would
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bar all Chinese laborers from immigrating altogether.

It was in this hateful, volatile atmosphere that white Californians began setting
arson res in Chinatowns. It was easy to burn down entire settlements because
laws often restricted what parts of town they could live in, clustering everyone in
the same few blocks.

The day after Antioch’s Chinatown was emptied, it was physically eradicated. As
churchgoers left Sunday services, rumors began to spread that some Chinese

residents had returned home. No one now living can reveal what exactly happened
next. But by 8 p.m., someone had set Chinatown on re.

A crowd of onlookers and the local re brigade looked on as ames engulfed homes
and buildings. “Very little was done to stay the progress of the re,” a wire report
noted, although crews must have gone into action at some point to prevent white
homes and businesses from being damaged. "The Caucasian torch," wrote the Bee,
"lighted the way of the heathen out of the wilderness."

By morning, all but two of Chinatown’s buildings were razed. The news was met
with enthusiasm throughout the state.

"The actions of the citizens of this place will, without doubt, meet with the hearty
approval of every man, woman and child on the Paci c coast," the Chronicle
cheered, "and will go a long ways toward convincing the people of the Eastern
States that the Chinese nuisance on our seaboard has assumed such vast
proportions that it is beyond the pale of political issues and has come to be a
disgrace that must be wiped out."

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A few newspapers cautioned that legislation, not arson, was the preferred way to
eliminate Chinese people from their communities. The only prominent voice
against the Antioch violence was San Francisco’s famed Emperor Norton, although
his grievance was also colored by economic concerns.

"The Antioch riot is a disgrace to Americans," he wrote in an Oakland Tribune op-

ed. "Now, therefore, We, Norton I., Dia Gracias Emperor, do hereby command the
Grand Jury of Contra Costa County to indict the anti-Chinese leaders and have
them brought to justice, and thereby protect the Americans and other foreigners
and commerce in China."

For their part, the citizens of Antioch were largely unrepentant. The Antioch Ledger
blamed the Chinese residents for the arson attack, writing, "had the women not
returned, the property would have remained intact." A few days later, they lied
again.

“A large number of Chinamen quietly pursue their avocations in our midst,

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l t d ” th t “N Chi h b i t f d ith "
 unmolested,” they wrote. “No Chinaman has ever been interfered with."

---

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A photograph for a business license, dated March 1895, belonging to Antioch resident Tang Hoy Gun.
Chinese residents required a business license proving at least $1,000 of net worth (noted on the stamp in
the image).
Antioch Historical Society & Museum

The events of 1876 had a century of rami cations for the demographics of Antioch.
Although some Chinese people did eventually return to do business in the area,
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almost none felt safe permanently settling there again. Nearly 100 years later, the
1960 census recorded a little over 17,000 people living in the town; 99.6% were
white. Just 12 residents were Chinese.

That nally began to change, however, in the '80s and '90s as Antioch’s population
boomed. The Contra Costa County town, ideal for commuters who couldn’t afford
San Francisco real estate prices, grew and changed. Sixty-two thousand people
lived there in 1990 and 3,043 identi ed as AAPI.

The 2010 census showed white people had become the minority for the rst time;
10% of the population is Asian American.

Below the waterfront part of town, some of the tunnels were occasionally
resurfaced by construction work. They were remarkably sturdy with entrances
framed in brick. During Prohibition, they were supposedly used by rum runners.

They were built, it seems, for centuries of use.

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Written By
Katie Dowd

Reach Katie on

Katie Dowd is the SFGATE Managing Editor.

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