#jean pfaelzer

[california-slow-take]

By looking west to California, Jean Pfaelzer shifts our understanding of slavery as a North-South struggle and focuses on how those who were enslaved in California fought, fled, and resisted human bondage. In unyielding research and vivid interviews, Pfaelzer exposes how California's appetite for slavery persists today in the trafficking in human beings who are lured by promises of jobs but who instead are imprisoned in sweatshops or remote marijuana fields, or are sold as nannies or sex workers.

Pfaelzer relates the history of slavery in California across its entire spectrum, from indentured Native American ranch hands in the Spanish missions, children sent to Indian boarding schools, Black miners, kidnapped Chinese prostitutes, and convict laborers to the victims of modern human trafficking, and she argues that California owes its origins and sunny prosperity to slavery. Spanish invaders captured Indigenous people to build and farm the chain of Catholic missions. Russian otter hunters shipped Alaskan Natives down to the California coast—the first slaves to be transported to California. The Russians also launched the Pacific slave trade with China. Southern plantation slaves were marched across the plains to help their owners mine during the Gold Rush. San Quentin Prison was the incubator for California’s carceral state. Kidnapped Chinese girls were sold to caged brothels in early San Francisco. And Indian boarding schools supplied farms and hotels with unfree child workers. 

Pfaelzer's provocative history of slavery in California could rewrite people's understanding of the settling of the West, and redefine the actual paths to eventual freedom for many Americans.

[chinatownstreetscape]

Fresno Chinatown, c. 1880. Photographer unknown.

The Armed Chinatown of Fresno

For this short roadtrip away from San Francisco, this brief paragraph from the Stockton Independent newspaper of September 15, 1879, mentioning “guns, pistols and daggers” illustrates the seriousness with which early Chinese Americans in Fresno, California, and other rural Chinatowns addressed external threats to their lives and livelihoods. This included threats from the then-surging Workingmen’s Party, led by notorious demagogue, xenophobe and racist agitator Denis Kearney.

from the "Valley Items" column published in the Stockton Independent newspaper of September 15, 1879.

In the 1870s Kearney began denouncing Chinese immigrants as the cause of white workers’ economic woes. By 1878, he frequently gave violent speeches against Chinese at San Francisco’s Sandlot forum, blaming them for white labor problems. His movement propelled his party to the 1879 California Constitutional Convention where various anti-Chinese laws, including a ban on employing Chinese laborers, were enacted. Kearney also took credit for nationalizing the debate over Chinese immigration to the US, culminating in the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.

Dennis Kearney (1847-1907), Irish-American political leader, influential in the passing of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.

As recounted in more detail by author Jean Pfaelzer in her book, Driven Out: The Forgotten War Against Chinese Americans, (pub. Random House) rural Chinatowns throughout California became targets of economic boycotts and vigilante violence. Fresno’s Chinatown, established during the construction of railroad lines after the Transcontinental Railroad’s completion in 1869, was not immune from persecution by white agitators. Despite it’s the residents arming themselves, possibly for deterrence, the community faced vigilante violence in the next decade.

The Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882 did little to calm rural California and its unemployed white workers. In 1886, an anti-Chinese economic boycott movement began in Truckee. Fresno’s local anti-Chinese club set up a whites-only employment office, attracting four hundred men. However, during the early spring planting season near Fresno, vineyard and fruit growers in the Fresno area rejected the boycott, stating that it was “absolutely impossible” to obtain white labor. The troubles in Fresno represented a symptom of the violence and roundup of Chinese Americans throughout California during the latter half of the 19th century, when Chinese were literally driven out rural areas to concentrate in the state’s cities, particularly San Francisco.

A map showing more than 200 incidents of rounding up Chinese in California for expulsions during 1849 to 1906.

Rather than calm the hostility by whites against Chinese, the congressional enactments of the 1882 Act and its 10-year extension, the Geary Act of 1892, seemed to foment more anti-Chinese boycotts, violence, and expulsions.

In Fresno, anti-Chinese violence peaked in the summer of 1893, when deliberately-set fires in Fresno destroyed several mills and packinghouses, not all of which employed Chinese workers. White workers demanded that merchants fire their Chinese workers. Fearing the mob, several packinghouse and vineyard owners complied and fired their Chinese workers. Many Chinese field-workers sought protection in Fresno’s Chinatown, which continued to provide refuge from mob violence.

Detail from Fresno Chinatown's main street, c. 1880.

On August 15, rioters invaded vineyards near Fresno, and another white mob raided the Fracher Creek Nursery, capturing Chinese workers, stealing their money and belongings, and bludgeoning one man to death. The mob marched the Chinese nursery workers toward Fresno in the valley heat until the sheriff intervened and released them. That same week, Chinese packers at the nearby Earl Fruit Company were forced onto a train to Fresno and given five days to leave the county. Gangs forced more Chinese men out of local vineyards and destroyed their tent camps. Hundreds of unemployed white workers and vagrants milled around Fresno’s streets, watching the Chinese depart. The roundups and expulsions of Chinese workers did not solve the massive unemployment crisis. Even after the purges, few jobs were available for whites. Hunger exacerbated the riots. By late August, Fresno’s Presbyterian church was providing eight hundred meals nightly to white men, some of whom had not eaten for days. The city council’s plan to give meal tickets to “idle men” for cleaning alleys failed due to a lack of funds.

The roundups and expulsions of Chinese did not solve the crisis of massive unemployment. Even after the purges, there were few jobs for whites. Hunger exacerbated the riots. Toward the end of August, Fresno’s Presbyterian church was nightly providing eight hundred meals to white men, some of whom had not eaten for days. The city council’s plan to give meal tickets to “idle men” for cleaning alleys failed when it ran out of money. The supervisors moved some of the “tramps and ruffians” out of town by forming them into chain gangs to clear roads or do field work.

The temple in old Fresno Chinatown, c. 1880. This detail from a larger photo appears to depict the Chee Kung Tong temple at 939 G Street, which was built in the early 1880's with contributions from the tong. The temple housed a wooden altar reportedly carved in 1869 in China. The two-story brick structure contained a meeting hall on the first floor. Lodgings wer located next door. The joss house was closed to the public in 1936 and later used by the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Society. The structure no longer exists.

The purge of Chinese workers from California’s fields, citrus groves, and orchards worsened the economic situation. Fresno’s labor bureau had over six hundred men seeking work, but farmers and nurserymen knew their crops would perish if unskilled laborers replaced the skilled Chinese workers, such as fruit tree "budders." Banks closed, and local stores went out of business.

Roundups of Chinese residents continued into the following year, often with judicial sanction. In May 1894, the Del Rio Rey Vineyard in Fresno replaced its white employees with Chinese workers. Within days, dynamite bombs were found under the bunkhouses. The new Chinese workers fled in response to the terrorism, but no arrests were made. Today’s diaspora communities across the US could learn from these pioneers who, contrary to passive stereotypes, were prepared to protect themselves by any means necessary. This was just one small railroad Chinatown arming itself in difficult times.

New Year's celebration and parade in Fresno, California, c. 1900. Some researchers have speculated that the dragon shown in this photo was the well-known Marysville Chinatown dragon which appeared all over California during this period.

Lessons from these small Chinatowns of the past regain relevance today. Asian American communities should recommit to self-defense where local governments fail to provide basic public safety.

[ausetkmt]

An August poll by UC Berkeley found that most Californians oppose paying cash reparations to the descendants of the enslaved.

As a supporter of reparations, I found the results disappointing. But not surprising. Most of the state’s 40 million residents probably don’t know our dark history of enslavement. The poll didn’t provide that context, making it hard for people to feel responsible for something that happened long ago.

I grew up thinking mistakenly there was no slavery in California.

I got that impression in the fourth grade, the time when California students study our state’s history. My 1963 textbook, “California: Story of Our Past,” presented an idealized version of the conquest of California, with Indians delighted to meet the “kind and brave captain,” Juan Cabrillo, the first European to explore the coast. There was no mention of the deliberate killing of Native Americans or how they were forcibly kept at the 21 missions.

Fortunately, students today learn a more nuanced view of California history, including how Native Americans resisted colonization.

But the history of African Americans in California is not widely taught. And that is influencing public policy.

California was admitted to the union in 1850 as a free state, one where slavery was illegal. But slavery was integral to California’s origins, as two new studies, the recently released report by California’s Reparations Task Force as well as “California, A Slave State” by Jean Pfaelzer, illustrate.

As many as 1,500 people were enslaved in California, brought by their Southern enslavers to work in the gold fields. When some miners went bust, they sold off the men they enslaved. A June 17, 1852, notice in the San Francisco Herald advertised a “Negro for Sale” for $300, according to Pfaelzer.

California not only neglected to enforce the state’s slavery ban, it also passed harsh laws curtailing the rights of African Americans. The first governor of the state tried to ban African Americans from settling here. California’s version of the Fugitive Slave Act was more onerous than the national law.

I am a fifth-generation Californian who has written two books on the state’s history, but I didn’t learn about its slave-holding past until I read the task force’s report in June.

The lack of knowledge of the harm government did to Black residents may account for the poll, which shows that 59% of those queried oppose cash payments, even though 60% believe that Black Californians are still affected by the legacy of slavery.

A main reason for the opposition is “it’s unfair to ask today’s taxpayers to pay for wrongs committed in the past.”

But the poll didn’t detail the “wrongs committed in the past,” leaving respondents to rely on information they had already acquired.

One of the important aspects of the task force’s report is its exploration of how harms to Black Californians continued long after the Civil War. Government policies denied African Americans access to homes and loans through redlining, segregated them in substandard schools, and over-policed them.

The task force recommends numerous remedies, not just cash payments, to repair this harm, such as easy access to home loans, free education, and community-based health and cultural centers. None of these options were mentioned in the poll.

In 2019, Gov. Gavin Newsom apologized to Native Americans for the state’s role in nearly obliterating them. It’s time for California to acknowledge the harms it did to its Black residents.

So far, Newsom has been mostly mum on the task force’s recommendations. He may be waiting until January when the Legislature will address the report.

But that is too late. If an important part of repair is shedding light on historical harms, officials must educate voters about California’s dark history. Only then will people realize that reparations are not handouts, but a debt owed for past harms. And without that fundamental realization, support for reparations will remain low.

[almackey]

California, A Slave State

In this discussion, Professor Jean Pfaelze discusses California’s history as a state with slavery in it. The video’s description reads, “Author Jean Pfaelzer discussed the history of forced labor in California and argued that California owes its origins and prosperity to slavery. The Commonwealth Club of California hosted this event.” https://www.c-span.org/video/?529798-1/california-slave-state

[bunkie2021]

From Bread and Roses 1912 - 2012 In the early 1870’s the United States was in a long, deep recession. Solidarity among workers failed. In San Francisco, Denis Kearney (1847 – 1907), an Irish immigrant, helped form the “Workingmen’s Party”, (image is WP poster) focusing its anger on the Chinese, who worked for lower wages than white workers. Rising anti-Chinese feelings among workers resulted in a number of violent outbursts. At French Canal and in Nevada City, white workers forcibly expelled the Chinese from the work camps associated with the mines. On October 23, 1871, whites in Los Angeles invaded Chinatown, and sacked the Chinese quarters, killing a score of Chinese in the process. Kearney started every speech with the ringing phrase, “The Chinese Must Go!” This phrase was shouted in sandlots and union halls all over California. In 1882 the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed by Congress and there was organized violence against Chinese communities up and won the West Coast. For more: Ronald Takaki, A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America; Jean Pfaelzer, Driven Out: The Forgotten War Against Chinese Americans. #laborhistory

[gr-main-blog]

Hanging out is good historical methodology.

Jean Pfaelzer

[california-slow-take]

Jean Pfaelzer thought she knew what injustice looked like. A longtime professor of American studies at the University of Delaware, the L.A. native forged her political consciousness at UC Berkeley in the ’60s, joined civil rights and justice access movements and wrote several works of history including 2007’s “Driven Out: The Forgotten War Against Chinese Americans.”

But it wasn’t until she was researching that book that Pfaelzer began glimpsing another neglected history. Studying a photograph of a young Chinese woman shackled in a brothel in San Francisco in the 1870s, she was struck by the fact that this kind of slavery existed at all. ��I kept looking at the picture of the Chinese girl, thinking, ‘What happened to the 13th amendment?’” Pfaelzer, who lives part-time in Humboldt County, says during a phone interview. “How could this be happening?”

Some years later that image, and those questions, came flooding back when she read a newspaper story about a 15-year-old who had escaped from forced labor on a marijuana farm in Northern California, where she had been kept in a box and abused with a cattle prod. Pfaelzer’s creeping epiphany became a full-blown thesis: California, cemented in the American mind since at least the Civil War as the beacon of freedom and opportunity, was — and remains — a slave state. “It’s not like I didn’t really know,” she says. “But I didn’t know this.”

[bunkie2021]

From Bread and Roses 1912 - 2012 For the record, hatred and violence directed against immigrant populations is nothing new in the U.S.; it is, one could argue, as 'American as apple pie'. Here's an example: On July 23, 1877, anti-Chinese nativist agitators at a huge outdoor rally in San Francisco about the economic depression and unemployment organized by the Workingmen’s Party of the United States incited a two-day riot of ethnic violence against Chinese workers, resulting in four deaths and the destruction of property. Five years later, President Chester Arthur signed the federal Chinese Exclusion Act, prohibiting immigration of Chinese laborers. The back story: In the early 1870’s the United States was in a long, deep recession. Solidarity among workers failed. In San Francisco, Denis Kearney (1847 – 1907), an Irish immigrant, helped form the “Workingmen’s Party”, focusing its anger on the Chinese, who worked for lower wages than white workers. Kearney started every speech with the ringing phrase, “The Chinese Must Go!” This phrase was shouted in sand lots and union halls all over California. In 1882 the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed by Congress and there was organized violence against Chinese communities up and down the West Coast. Anti-Chinese feelings among workers resulted in a number of violent outbursts. At French Canal and in Nevada City, white workers forcibly expelled the Chinese from mine work camps. On October 23, 1871, whites in Los Angeles sacked Chinese neighborhoods, killing a score of Chinese in the process. For more, Ronald Takaki, A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America; Jean Pfaelzer, Driven Out: The Forgotten War Against Chinese Americans, Random House, 2007. #laborhistory