Great Plains Studies, Center for
Date of this Version
Winter 2002
Document Type
Article
Citation
Great Plains Quarterly Vol. 22, No. 1, Winter 2002, pp. 23-33.
Abstract
Wichita's war on the Chinese began in 1886. Although a small war in comparison to other anti-Chinese outbursts in the American West, the persecution and violence against the city's small Asian population was nonetheless terrifying and significant to those who were the focus of the racist demonstrations. In an attempt to follow the national anti-Chinese trend of the late nineteenth century, which the Chinese called the "driving out time,"1 groups such as the local assemblies of the Knights of Labor and the Women's Industrial League in Wichita, Kansas, organized a boycott against Chinese businesses. Citizens attacked the "yellow peril" on the streets while the Wichita Beacon condemned them in black and white.
Kansas in the nineteenth century, including Wichita, was considered a social barometer for the United States on issues such as women's rights, prohibition, populism, and innovative industry.2 The conflict between labor and Chinese Americans, however, was an issue in which the state was less progressive. Although violence against immigrants was not as severe as in other states because of lower Asian population densities and a conspicuous absence of significant economic competition, the people of Wichita nevertheless played a part in the widening hostility of the 1880s. The nineteenth-century anti-Chinese sentiment and ouster attempt in Wichita is not only a reflection of local racist sentiment in the city, but a dark example of the influence of national trends on the normally progressive and individualistic "Peerless Princess of the Plains." Labor groups and city leaders decided to employ a preemptory strike against the small and unobtrusive Chinese population in the city. The infiltration of Asian labor and influence so prominent elsewhere, argued the Wichitans, would not occur in their city. Therefore, they had to strike against the few Chinese already inhabiting Wichita before the city became yet another mecca for migrating Asians in the American West. In effect, the city of Wichita, which was exposed to extensive and influential national newspaper coverage of anti-Chinese activities, became a "slave" to the influences of widespread yellow peril.
At first, white Americans identified the Chinese as simply another group set apart from themselves, similar to American Indians and African Americans. Whites assigned innate characteristics to Chinese men similar to those imposed upon black men. They were thought to be heathens, morally inferior, childlike, lustful, sensual, and a sexual threat to white women. Unlike black men, however, the Chinese were also viewed as intelligent, quiet, and peaceful. After the emancipation of the slaves, many whites believed that Chinese agricultural workers should be used as "models of discipline" to help reform black laborers "spoiled" by freedom. Others, however, despaired at the thought of giving the South and West over to the Chinese after the Indians had finally been contained on reservations. Some even talked of establishing similar reserves for the Asian immigrants.3
Comments
Copyright 2002 by the Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln