Post 👆🏾 begins 🧵 on another terrible episode in U.S. history. Union Pacific Coal hired Chinese miners at lower wages than white workers would accept. #OTD in 1885, white miners killed 28 Chinese miners, injured more, burned 78 homes. No one was prosecuted for the murders or burning entire town.
I saw an exhibit called “Archive and Autobiography” with project by Chinese MFA grad Zuofu Wang on treatment of Chinese workers on Florida citrus farms, in N.E. factories & during construction of U.S. railroads where many died. 20,000 workers, yet they were excluded from famous Golden Spike photo.
I feel like this needs to be taught in every High School because then you start seeing the patterns in oppression
Yes, and it can be taught via art. Via art, I learned how many of the 20,000 Chinese workers who built the railroads died. And how no Chinese workers were included in Golden Spike photo that documentated joining of east & west lines for posterity. And how reenactments reproduce original erasure.
It is amazing how those Chinese workers were brought over basically to be used as a cheap labor to build a wedge between groups. It's always the same song.