April 29, 1876: Antioch Chinese Pogrom

April 29 1876, a white mob in Antioch forcibly evicted all Chinese residents from the town after rumors proliferated that Chinese sex workers had spread venereal diseases to a handful of men. The next day, after Sunday services, Antioch’s Chinatown was burned down.

As early as the late 1840s, hundreds of Chinese migrants had taken up residence in a couple square blocks of downtown Antioch abutting the delta, creating one of many California Chinatowns. In little time, Anti-Chinese sentiment had been practically baked into the town charter.

By 1851, the year Antioch received its name, a local statute was passed to ban Chinese residents from walking the streets after sundown. To get home from work, a series of tunnels were built connecting the business district to the waterfront where many Chinese lived on houseboats.

This racial segregation and violence was part and parcel of white settlement of California. The burning of Antioch’s Chinatown was a pivotal moment amid a wave of pogroms and massacres committed against Chinese workers throughout the west coast from the 1850s to the 1880s.

The events in Antioch were widely celebrated throughout California and served as an inspiration for the 1877 founding of Dennis Kearney’s Workingmen’s Party of California. The party’s members, with their infamous slogan “The Chinese must go!” escalated attacks on Chinese workers.

Anti-Chinese violence in California and throughout the country was codified in 1882 when Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act. By that time, over 30 towns in California had seen their Chinatowns destroyed or their Chinese communities attacked.