Rock Springs Massacre - September 2, 1885

On this day in 1885, white miners killed Chinese miners and looted and burned their homes in Rock Springs, Wyoming. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class is a production of I
Heart Radio. Hello, Welcome to this Dan History class, where
we dust off a little piece of history every day.
Today is September two. The day was September two. White

(00:27):
miners murdered Chinese miners in Rock Springs, Wyoming, after a
dispute over the location where they were working. Anti Chinese
sentiment was high in the US at the time, with
the Rock Springs massacre occurring just three years after the
Chinese Exclusion Act put a ten year moratorium on Chinese

(00:50):
labor immigration. Though the Rock Springs massacre was not the
only instance of anti Chinese violence in this climate, it
was us one of the more brutal occurrences. Chinese miners
had been in the United States at least since the
California Gold Rush in eighteen forty nine. Even though the

(01:11):
work they were doing, like farming and building railroads, was
physically demanding, difficult, and dangerous, they stayed because they could
make much more money in the US than they could
in China, and because they kept their expenses low. They
often took low paying jobs. White workers began to view

(01:32):
Chinese immigrants as competitors who were taking their jobs, and
they made it clear that the Chinese were not welcome.
Violence against Chinese people was not uncommon in California, Arizona,
and Nevada. But even though Congress limited Chinese immigration into
the United States, Chinese people continued to work in the

(01:54):
Western US. The railroad company Union Pacific had at coal
mines across Wyoming that provided the fuel for trains. When
it ran into financial trouble and needed to save money,
the company cut miners pay. On top of this, Union
Pacific required workers to shop for food, clothes, and tools

(02:17):
at the company's stores so it could pocket more money.
The company's miners went on strikes against these working conditions,
and they tried to unionize, but the company did not
concede to the strikers demands and even resorted to firing
strikers and hiring people who were more compliant. After one

(02:38):
eighteen seventy five strike, Union Pacific hired Chinese miners who
were willing to work for low wages. By five, there
were about six hundred Chinese miners and three hundred white
miners working at the coal mine in Rock Springs, Wyoming.
The white miners, largely Scandinavian, Welsh, and English immigrant lived

(03:01):
in downtown Rock Springs. The Chinese miners lived in what
the white miners called Chinatown. Though the two groups worked
side by side, they maintained their own cultures and languages,
and white workers were still unhappy with their pay, which
remained low, so they joined a union called the Knights

(03:21):
of Labor, where they could voice their grievances. Many white
miners wanted to send the Chinese out of Wyoming territory.
Threats and violence against Chinese workers in Wyoming were an issue.
This tension was the backdrop for a fight that broke
out between Chinese and white miners in the Number six

(03:42):
mine in Rock Springs on the morning of September two.
It was a high yield mine and getting a good
part of the mind was important for miners since they
were paid by the ton. One Chinese miner was hit
in the head with a pick and died in the fight.
A foreman broke up the violence, but the white miners

(04:04):
escalated the fight, getting weapons and gathering in the nights
of Labor Hall. As miners from other minds joined the
commotion and it became clear that violence was imminent. Saloons
closed for the day by that afternoon, between a hundred
and a hundred and fifty armed white men, mainly miners

(04:24):
and railroad workers, had assembled near the Number six mine.
Women and children joined them. The mob surrounded Chinatown. The
mob shot and killed Chinese people and looted and burned
their houses. They went to their Union Pacific bosses and
demanded they leave town. Territorial Governor Francis E. Warren called

(04:50):
for federal troops and told Union Pacific to run a
slow train that would pick up stranded Chinese miners and
give them food, water, and blankets. Many Chinese people who
had been threatened or faced violence were sent to Evanston,
west of Rock Springs. When some of the Chinese workers

(05:11):
requested railroad tickets out of Wyoming and the back pay
they were owed, the company refused. Union Pacific even refused
when white residents in Evanston requested the Chinese be paid
off so they could leave Wyoming. On September nine, the
Chinese people in Evanston were put on box cars and
told they were headed to safety in San Francisco. Instead,

(05:35):
they were taken back to Rock Springs so they could
go back to work. Of course, they met more antagonism
from white miners. Who blocked them from entering the mines,
and many Chinese people left Rock Springs, but Union Pacific
declared that they would fire anyone who was not back
to work by one, and so the miners went back

(05:58):
to work. Sixteen white miners were arrested and released on bail.
People cheered for them upon their release. Union Pacific fired
some of the white miners who took part in the massacre,
but no one was convicted of robbery, rioting, arson or murder.
In the end, twenty eight Chinese people were killed, fifteen

(06:21):
were wounded. In all, seventy nine of the shacks and
houses in Rock Springs Chinatown were looted and burned. Damages
were estimated at about a hundred and fifty thousand dollars,
which is the equivalent of about four million dollars today,
and Congress ended up compensating the miners for their loss.

(06:42):
Federal troops built Camp Pilot Butte between downtown Rock Springs
in Chinatown to prevent further violence, and they stayed there
until the Spanish American War broke out in eight I'm
Eve jeffco and hopefully you know a little more about
history today than you did yesterday. We love it if
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(07:06):
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(07:30):
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