The Los Angeles Chinese Massacre of 1871: The Largest Mass Lynching in American History

The World the Massacre Destroyed

In 1871, Los Angeles was a small, dusty city of approximately 5,728 people. Its Chinese community — numbering 172 by the 1870 U.S. Census, or roughly three percent of the total population — lived primarily along Calle de los Negros, a short, unpaved alley running 500 feet from the intersection of Arcadia Street to the plaza in the city's original Spanish quarter. The street had once been home to early Californio settlers of mixed Spanish, Native American, and African heritage; by the 1860s it had deteriorated into the city's vice district, lined with saloons, gambling parlors, and brothels. Despite the surroundings, the Chinese quarter maintained an internal community structure, including two competing merchant associations — known as Tongs — called the Hong Chow and the Nin Yung companies.

The Triggering Incident

In the days preceding October 24, 1871, a dispute between the two Tong factions had escalated over the alleged abduction of a young Chinese woman named Yut Ho, whose announcement of marriage had sparked a dangerous rivalry. On the evening of October 24, the conflict erupted into gunfire on Calle de los Negros. Police Officer Jesus Bilderrain and his brother attempted to intervene and were both shot. A deputized citizen named Robert Thompson was shot and killed when he attempted to help the officers. Word spread immediately — and inaccurately — through the city that the Chinese were massacring white people.

The Mob

Within minutes, a mob had formed. By the time the night was over, an estimated 500 people — representing ten percent of the entire population of Los Angeles — had participated in or witnessed the attack. The mob broke into Chinese homes and businesses on Calle de los Negros, shooting people through doors and windows, dragging residents into the street, and hanging them from improvised gallows including a wagon wheel and a gate of Tomlinson's Corral. Chinese residents were robbed of their jewelry and possessions while the violence was still ongoing. The mob attacked without distinction — the victims ranged from merchants to laborers to a physician named Gene Tong, who was stripped and hanged despite pleas from white bystanders who vouched for his character.

The Dead

When it was over, eighteen Chinese residents lay dead, including one who had participated in the original gunfight. The others were innocent of any crime. The ages of the victims ranged from young adults to middle-aged men. The next morning, seventeen bodies were laid out in the jail yard. The eighteenth had already been buried. Ten percent of the Chinese population of Los Angeles had been killed in a single night. It stands as one of the largest mass lynchings in American history and, by number of victims as a proportion of a targeted ethnic group's local population, one of the most catastrophic acts of racial violence in the nation's history.

The Failure of Justice

A grand jury returned 25 indictments for murder. Ten men were tried. Eight were convicted of manslaughter — not murder. Those convictions were subsequently overturned on a legal technicality, and the defendants were never retried. No one served a single day in prison for the deaths of 18 people. The local newspapers made no mention of the massacre in their year-end recaps of major events. The incident was effectively buried.

Legacy and Remembrance

The massacre was a harbinger of anti-Chinese violence that spread across the American West in the following decade, culminating in the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 — which prohibited nearly all Chinese immigration and declared the Chinese ineligible for citizenship, a law that remained in effect until 1943. Calle de los Negros was renamed as part of Los Angeles Street in 1877 and obliterated in its original form in 1888. The community that was attacked eventually relocated across Alameda Street, where it remained for five decades until the construction of Union Station displaced them again in the 1930s. A memorial was established at El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument. The event is now recognized by the Britannica Encyclopedia, the Zinn Education Project, the Los Angeles Public Library, and the Los Angeles City Historical Society as one of the most significant and long-suppressed events in the city's history.