Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month 2023 - Day 29

On the 29th of April, 1876 Antioch, a Bay Area town drove out its Chinese residents and burned down Chinatown.?"Anti-Chinese sentiment is right, patriotic, and in every sense American,” the Los Angeles Herald declared in 1876.

In a 1851 statue, Chinese residents were not allowed to be on the street after dark.?In 1876, a mob of four dozen angry white men told the occupants of Chinatown to leave town.?The day after Antioch’s Chinatown was emptied, it was physically eradicated.?Chinatown was set on fire.

The events of 1876 had a century of ramifications for the demographics of Antioch.?Although some Chinese people did eventually return to do business in the area, 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.

On 4/14/21, the Mayor of Antioch apologized?and recognized the history of Chinese in Antioch.

Antioch is back in the news this year. Antioch sits in the middle of a storm of scandal after the release of violent, racist, homophobic and sexist text messages by the city's police officers. History repeats itself when lessons are not learned.

January 1, 1937 was the LA Premiere of?The Good Earth.?Chinese characters were played by white actors made to look Asian through yellowface.?Pearl Buck, the author of The Good Earth, wanted to cast the film with actors of Asian descent, but once Paul Muni was chosen for the lead male role, Wang Lung, the role of his wife would be played by white actress as the Hays Code's anti-miscegenation rules required the actress who played Wang Lung’s (played by Paul Muni) wife to be a white woman.?MGM refused to cast Chinese-American star Anna May Wong as O-Lan, the main female lead in the film.??Anna May Wong?was one of the era’s first breakout performers of color but was so unfairly treated and disrespected by the same industry that also made her a star that she quit acting for a year.

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“How can we grow as a society unless we take a brutal and honest look at our collective history of discrimination in America?”?asked Lucy Lui.

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On March 29, 2021, an Asian male was?repeatedly punched and then put in a chokehold until he became unconscious on the subway.?No one helped him.