Chinese Massacre of 1871: Victims, Trials, and Aftermath

The Chinese Massacre of 1871 was a mass lynching in Los Angeles on the night of October 24, 1871, in which a mob of roughly 500 people beat, shot, and hanged at least 18 Chinese men and boys along and around Calle de los Negros, a short alley near the city’s Plaza. It stands as one of the largest mass lynchings in American history. Dozens of rioters were indicted, eight were briefly convicted of manslaughter, and every conviction was overturned on appeal. No one served meaningful prison time.

What Set Off the Mob

The pretext for the violence was a shootout between two rival Chinese tongs, mutual benefit associations that also functioned as power brokers within the community. The dispute reportedly centered on the alleged kidnapping of a young Chinese woman named Yut Ho. On the afternoon of October 24, members of the two factions traded gunfire in the middle of Calle de los Negros.

Two Los Angeles police officers, Jesús Bilderrain and Adolfo Celis, responded. A former saloon owner and popular local figure named Robert Thompson came to help them. In the exchange of gunfire, Bilderrain was wounded and Thompson was killed.¹ The shooters retreated into the Coronel Building, a large adobe structure on the alley. Word that Chinese men had killed a well-known white civilian spread quickly, and the crowd that gathered outside the building turned into a mob.

What Happened That Night

Within hours, roughly 500 armed people had surrounded the Coronel Building, about one in ten residents of the city. The mob included both Anglo and Latino men.² More than half of the city’s 172 Chinese residents lived in the adobes along Calle de los Negros, and many were inside or nearby.³

For about three hours, rioters tried to force their way inside. Men climbed onto the roof, chopped holes with axes, and fired pistols down at the people hiding below. One Chinese man who attempted to escape carrying a hatchet was captured, dragged to a nearby gateway, and hanged. That was the first lynching of the night.⁴ Around 9:00 p.m., the mob broke through.

What followed was methodical. Chinese men were pulled from the building and taken to makeshift gallows at three nearby locations: Tomlinson’s corral, John Goller’s wagon shop, and an awning on Los Angeles Street. Seven bodies hung from the crossbar of Goller’s portico. Three more hung from the side of a freight wagon.³ One victim was killed by being dragged over stones with a rope around his neck. When Goller protested that the hangings were happening in front of his children, a rioter pressed a gun to his face and told him to be quiet. Bystanders who tried to intervene were threatened with death. Rioters looted and destroyed Chinese-owned homes and shops throughout the quarter.

By morning, 17 bodies had been collected in the jail yard. One additional victim had been buried during the night, bringing the confirmed toll to at least 18. That number was roughly 10 percent of the entire Chinese population of Los Angeles.¹ Historians believe only one of the dead had any connection to the original tong shootout.

Who Was Killed

The names and occupations of all 18 victims have been preserved. Most were working-class men — cooks, laundrymen, and laborers — with no involvement in the tong dispute.

Dr. Chee Long (“Gene”) Tong, a physician and herbalist, was the most prominent member of the community among the dead. He pleaded for his life in both English and Spanish before being hanged, and a rioter cut off his finger to steal his rings.⁴
Chang Wan, Tong’s housemate.
Wong Chin, a storekeeper.
Ah Loo, a teenager.
Joung (“Johnny”) Burrow, a laundryman.
Tong Wan, a cook and musician.
Ah Cut, Ah Long, Ah Waa, Ah Wing, Ah Won, Day Kee, Ho Hing, Leong Quai, Lo Hey, Wan Foo, Wa Sin Quai, and Wing Chee. They were liquor makers, cigar makers, hotel workers, and predominantly cooks.¹

What Happened to the Killers

A coroner’s inquest identified about 100 people as participants. A grand jury later handed down 49 indictments containing over 150 names for various felonies, including murder.⁵ Very few of those cases ever went to trial.

The first proceeding involved Yo Hing, a tong leader accused by Gene Tong’s widow of inciting the riot. The grand jury declined to return a true bill, and he was released in December 1871. Richard Kerren, charged with assault for shooting at Chinese women, was acquitted in January 1872.

The main case was People v. Mendel et al., in which nine defendants stood trial together for murder. Judge Robert M. Widney presided; he had personally tried to stop killings during the massacre and led a “Law and Order” committee afterward. On March 27, 1872, the jury convicted seven of the nine — Louis Mendel, A.R. Johnson, Charles Austin, Patrick McDonald, Jesús Martínez, Refugio Botello, and Esteban Alvarado — of the lesser charge of manslaughter. The other two were acquitted.⁶ L.F. “Curly” Crenshaw was tried separately for the murder of Gene Tong and also convicted of manslaughter. In total, eight men received prison sentences ranging from two to nine years.⁵

The convictions did not stand. The California Supreme Court reversed the manslaughter verdicts, citing technical deficiencies in the indictments — specifically, questions about whether they properly conformed to the Criminal Practice Act. When the cases returned to Judge Widney’s court, District Attorney Cameron M. Thom declined to retry any of the defendants. All were freed by late spring 1873, having served about a year.⁵

Why the Law Failed the Victims

The absence of accountability was not just a procedural fluke. In 1854, the California Supreme Court had ruled in People v. Hall that Chinese individuals could not testify against white defendants in criminal cases.¹ That rule denied the Chinese community basic legal protection. Crimes against Chinese residents could be committed with near-impunity so long as no white witness chose to speak.

Hostile legislation extended well beyond the courtroom. California had tried to ban Chinese immigration outright in 1858, and although the law was ruled unconstitutional, it remained on the books until 1955.⁷ San Francisco’s 1870 Cubic Air Ordinance, requiring 500 cubic feet of space per resident in lodging houses, was enforced almost entirely against Chinese tenants, and thousands were jailed under such public-health pretexts between 1873 and 1886.⁸

The Road to the Chinese Exclusion Act

The massacre drew national condemnation. It did not produce protections. Political momentum ran the other way. Los Angeles saw the formation of an “Anti-Coolie Club” in 1876 that counted prominent citizens among its members.³ The Panic of 1873 sharpened economic anxiety, and labor leader Denis Kearney’s Workingmen’s Party rallied around the slogan “The Chinese Must Go.”⁹ California’s 1879 constitution prohibited any corporation from employing Chinese or “Mongolian” workers.⁷

At the federal level, the shift moved from open immigration to full exclusion within a decade. The Burlingame-Seward Treaty of 1868 had guaranteed unrestricted Chinese immigration. The 1880 Angell Treaty allowed the U.S. to “regulate, limit, or suspend” the entry of Chinese laborers.¹⁰ The Page Act of 1875 barred almost all Chinese women by empowering officials to reject any Asian woman they deemed “lewd and immoral.”¹¹

The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 followed. It suspended immigration of Chinese laborers for ten years and required Chinese travelers to carry identification certificates. It was the first federal law to impose broad immigration restrictions by nationality.¹⁰ The Scott Act of 1888 barred Chinese laborers who left the country from returning. The Geary Act of 1892 renewed the exclusion for another decade. The ban on Chinese laborers eventually became indefinite and remained in force until partial repeal in 1943. Broad Asian immigration exclusion did not fully end until the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965.¹² Anti-Chinese violence continued during this period, including the 1885 Rock Springs massacre in Wyoming and the 1887 Hells Canyon massacre in Oregon.

How the Massacre Was Erased and Rediscovered

For more than a century, the massacre was minimized and largely forgotten. In 1887, the adobes along Calle de los Negros were razed and replaced with brick structures, and the street was later renamed Los Angeles Street.¹³ Union Station was eventually built over much of the site of Old Chinatown.¹ The stretch of Los Angeles Street where the killings occurred now sits between El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument and Union Station.

The history returned to public attention through the work of Chinese American activists and scholars. Two books drew sustained attention: Scott Zesch’s The Chinatown War: Chinese Los Angeles and the Massacre of 1871 and John Mack Faragher’s Eternity Street: Violence and Justice in Frontier Los Angeles.³ Zesch argued that what ended Los Angeles’s era of mob justice was improved law enforcement, not any moral awakening among its citizens.¹⁴

Apology and Memorial

Official recognition did not come until 2001, when a small bronze plaque was installed on the sidewalk of Los Angeles Street. Twenty years later, on the 150th anniversary, formal acknowledgment arrived on several fronts. On October 24, 2021, Mayor Eric Garcetti issued a public apology during a commemoration at the Chinese American Museum. “I’m sorry for the unchecked violence that happened that took the lives of 19 of our fellow Angelenos,” Garcetti said.¹⁵ The California State Legislature and the Los Angeles City Council both passed commemorative resolutions that year. The legislature adopted Assembly Concurrent Resolution 55, authored by Assemblymember Ed Chau, designating October 24, 2021, as the 150th anniversary of the massacre.¹⁶

The state allocated $2 million toward a memorial garden at the Chinese American Museum, and the city added $250,000 to launch a design competition.¹⁵ In 2023, artist Sze Tsung Nicolás Leong and writer Judy Chui-Hua Chung were selected as the winning team.¹⁷ Their design, “Petrified Grove,” calls for 18 stone tree sculptures modeled on ficus trees and fabricated from Sierra granite, each representing one of the victims. A fallen branch honors unidentified victims, and a silvery full tree symbolizes hope. The primary site is the sidewalk outside the Chinese American Museum, with additional markers planned at Union Station and at Broadway and 7th Street, where a judge reportedly hid individuals fleeing the violence.¹⁸ Paving inlays will describe the massacre chronologically alongside poems and remembrances of the victims.¹⁹ The total project cost is estimated at $3.6 million, with a stated goal of installation by summer 2026.

1
Britannica. Los Angeles Chinese Massacre of 1871
2
Zinn Education Project. LA Chinatown Massacre
3
Los Angeles Public Library. Forgotten Los Angeles History: Chinese Massacre of 1871
4
Columbia University. 1871 Chinese Massacre Thesis
5
California Supreme Court Historical Society. Chinese Massacre Full Text
6
Homestead Museum. Trials Following the Chinese Massacre of 24 October 1871
7
Library of Congress. The Chinese Exclusion Act, Part 1: The History
8
National Library of Medicine. Chinese Immigration and Public Health
9
PBS SoCal. Exclusionary Laws and the Chinese American Experience
10
U.S. Department of State. Chinese Immigration and the Chinese Exclusion Acts
11
Federal Judicial Center. Chinese Immigration Restriction
12
Library of Congress. The Chinese Exclusion Act, Part 2: The Legacy
13
PBS SoCal. Calle de los Negros: L.A.’s Forgotten Street
14
Los Angeles Times. Reflecting on the Los Angeles Chinatown Massacre After Atlanta Shootings
15
LAist. 1871 Massacre Apology and Memorial
16
California Digital Democracy. ACR 55: The 150th Anniversary of the Chinese Massacre of 1871
17
City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs. 1871 Memorial Project
18
LAist. Chinese Massacre 1871 Memorial Winning Design
19
Urbanize LA. Updated Look at LA’s Memorial to the 1871 Chinese Massacre