pages 139-177 of Naruta 2006
Previous Excavations ………………………………………143
Missed Opportunities in Compliance Archaeology.…..……145
The San Pablo Avenue Chinatown………………………….151
Creating Whiteness in
Conclusion…………………………………………………..175
Chapter 4: Oakland Chinatowns: Previous Archaeology and New Data
Like the other California cities discussed in this dissertation, Oakland has had more than one Chinatown. Historical sources show mainstream white businessmen and politicians subjected Chinese Oaklanders to multiple episodes of dislocation. Emerging evidence indicates that in each instance, the white businessmen and politicians advocating removing the Chinatown hoped to economically benefit from the redevelopment of the Chinatown’s real estate. To build support for the dislocations, these mainstream white businessmen and politicians employed the group-definition processes Bell (2005) identifies as internal definition and external differentiation. In a process of internal definition, these mainstream white business and political leaders emphasized an idea of white racial identity that linked whiteness with preemptive rights to land and economic opportunities. To create an idea that dislocating Chinese Oaklanders for redevelopment was justified, these white political and business leaders emphasized a racialized definition of Chinese as outsiders whose presence was a blight on the city. In this way, the white businessmen and politicians attempted to assert the dislocations and redevelopment were a long-awaited reordering that organically arose from inherent racial differences. In doing so these businessmen and politicians attempted to build support for the dislocation of a portion of the city’s population, and mask the very tangible profit motives they had for so rearranging the layout of the city.
Multiple historians have researched and preserved significant information about Oakland’s Chinese heritage (Lowe 1943; Chew 1952; Fong-Torres 1972; Chow 1974; Chann 1976; Ah-Tye 1981, 1999; Ma and Ma 1982; Bagwell 1982; Ma 2000; Wong 2001, 2004, 2005; see also Thompson 2004). Historical geographer Willard T. Chow (1974) conducted a detailed study of how residential segregation and other discriminatory measures of the white-controlled city government influenced the formation and development of the area today most closely identified with Oakland’s long-established Chinatown. Chow (1974: 118; Ma and Ma 1982: 32) developed a map showing how this Chinatown, centered in the City’s downtown, at Eighth and Webster Streets, both had predecessors in other areas of the city, and in the late nineteenth century was one of multiple Oakland Chinatowns.
Figure 4-1 plots the known historic Chinatowns of Oakland’s central city, and Table 4-1 lists the Chinatown locations, their estimated date of establishment, and the sources that allowed the area’s identification. A possible first Chinatown of the 1860s, identified by Ma and Ma (1982: 32; also Ma 2000: 29) as having been located at Fourteenth and Washington Streets, is further discussed below in connection with a compliance archaeology project at that site. Shrimp camps in the vicinity of Fourth and Clay Streets formed another 1860s site, according to Ma and Ma (1982: 32; also Ma 2000: 26). The 1860 and 1870s saw the formation and dislocation of a number of Chinatown sites in the core of today’s downtown, and I discuss these sites later in this chapter. They include the first “official” Chinatown (Chew 1952), established in the 1860s on the east side of Telegraph Avenue near Seventeenth Street (Chew 1952; Chow 1974: 116; Ma and Ma 1982: 32; Ah-Tye 1984), the official Chinatown’s late 1860s relocation site on San Pablo Avenue near Twentieth Street (Oakland Tribune, 13 March 1875; Baker 1914: 203-4; Hinkel and McCann 1939: 744; Chew 1952; Chow 1974: 116; Ma and Ma 1982: 32), a further dislocation to the area of San Pablo and West Grand Avenues (1880 federal census; Baker 1914: 203-4; Hinkel and McCann 1939: 744, 747-749; Chew 1952; Chow 1974: 116). Some residents of the San Pablo Avenue Chinatown in 1872 were “consigned” to move to the central city’s southern waterfront (Oakland Transcript, 9 May 1872), and a Chinatown was identified in the area of First, Second, Castro, Grove (now Martin Luther King Jr Way), Brush, and Market Streets from 1872 through 1889 (Oakland Transcript, 9 May 1872, 15 May 1872; Oakland News 18 May 1874; Oakland Tribune, 9 June 1885; 1889 Sanborn map). The Chinatown centered at Eighth and Webster Streets was established by 1870 and continues at the same site today (1870 federal census; Oakland Transcript, 15 May 1872; Oakland Times, 9 June 1879; 1889 Sanborn map; Wells, Fargo & Co. 1882; Chow 1974: 114-119, 205; Ma and Ma 1982: 32; Ah-Tye 1984). Chinese businesses were also established in the downtown area west of Broadway (e.g. Oakland News, 15 September 1873), including a multi-story Victorian structure at Eighth and Washington Streets, which the 1889 Sanborn map labeled “Oriental Block.” An 1888 newspaper article, complaining of “the Chinese who occupy the first Chinese quarters on the lake,” alludes to multiple sites having been established on the shores of Lake Merritt (Oakland Enquirer, 9 May 1888).
Discoveries made in the course of this research underscore that the full sequence of development of early Oakland Chinatowns is not yet understood. One example of a Chinatown location not previously identified comes in a historic photo of a massive building near the waterfront, at Jackson and Second Streets, which the Oakland Tribune of December 29, 1906, announced to be part of “Oakland’s New Chinatown” (Figure 4-2). A recent study (Fong 2005a) demonstrated how much new information could be derived from three primary source materials, the 1889 Sanborn map of Oakland, the 1882 Directory of Chinese Business Houses (Wells, Fargo & Co. 1882), and the National Archive’s listing of the business partnership files generated in enforcing the Chinese Exclusion laws (Greene, Glass, and Nealand 2004). Fong’s maps, a representative sample of which are reproduced in Figures 4-3, 4-4, and 4-5, highlight that many Chinese Californians lived and worked outside of established Chinatowns (see also Naruta 2005c), and expand current knowledge of Chinatown locations.
To date, no archaeological excavations have sampled deposits related to any of Oakland’s historic Chinatowns. Compliance archaeology excavations have recovered remains related to Chinese Oaklanders outside of a Chinatown area, as discussed below. Limited excavation of a portion of a city block associated with a historic Chinatown found deposits related to Chinese residents’ French-Canadian immigrant neighbors, and demonstrated the remainder of the block is likely to contain intact archaeological remains. Two compliance archaeological projects archaeologically evaluated areas associated with nineteenth-century Chinatowns. However, in failing to conduct the primary source research necessary to develop an adequate assessment of potential archaeological resources, these latter projects may have seen the destruction of unique and significant archaeological remains.
New research on a historic Chinatown site, the San Pablo Avenue Chinatown, shows the processes by which members of the mainstream white business and political community employed assertions about whiteness and Chineseness in arguments for white group identity and entitlement when their goals were personal profit. In the final sections of this chapter, I discuss how these major Anglo-American businessmen and politicians shaped the city’s physical and economic infrastructure to their advantage while claiming Chinese Californians, fellow immigrants to the Pacific Coast, were fundamentally antagonistic to white Californians and had to be eradicated from the population.
previous excavations
Compliance archaeology projects have studied a number of sites associated with early Chinese Oaklanders. In West Oakland, the Cypress Freeway Replacement Project excavations included the site of a historic Chinese laundry that operated between the late 1880s and the first decade of the twentieth century at 1813 Seventh Street (Yang 1999; Praetzellis and Praetzellis 2004: 249). An extensive thesis by archaeologist Yang (1999) provides a thoughtful investigation of issues involved in interpreting the experiences of people absent any biographical detail, and explores how interpretation of the archaeological data can be extended to provide inferences about the laundry workers’ lives.
The same project encountered “a mystery” on a parcel historically occupied by Irish and German immigrants (Praetzellis and Praetzellis 2004: 247; 2001: 319-322). Archaeologists discovered the remains of an individual who had been buried underneath a backyard cottage sometime between 1895 and 1910 (Praetzellis and Praetzellis 2004: 247). Archaeologists concluded the individual was likely of Asian descent, as the incisor teeth were observed to exhibit a slight degree of the “shovel-shaped” morphology that osteologists have found occurs more frequently in populations with Asian ancestry, including Native Americans (Hager and Koff 1995: E2; Praetzellis and Stewart 2001: 321). Clothing such as men’s boots and a leather belt whose copper buckle was embossed with the letter “B” led to the conjecture the individual was male. He was “well-dressed,” and his teeth showed marks indicating he had experienced malnutrition as a young child (Praetzellis and Praetzellis 2004: 247; Hager and Koff 1995: E2). The location of the burial underneath a cottage led archaeologists to infer the man had been murdered and his burial kept secret (Praetzellis and Praetzellis 2004: 247).
Another stratigraphic excavation project studied areas associated with historic Chinatowns. Archaeologists conducted an assessment of potential impacts the Broadway-Jackson Freeway Interchange Improvement Project might have on cultural resources in the corridor between Fifth and Sixth Streets, from Adeline to Oak Street (Koenig, McIlroy, and Meyer 2001; Van Bueren et al. 2002). The needed freeway footings only affected one area potentially associated with a historic Chinatown, the block bounded by Broadway, Franklin, Fifth, and Sixth Streets (Van Bueren et al. 2002: 28-30; Koenig, McIlroy, and Meyer 2001: 28, 72). Here the area of impact was limited to a portion of what had been the rear yards of 818-822 Broadway (Van Bueren et al. 2002: 28-30, 59-63). Pre-construction excavation recovered intact archaeological features likely associated with an 1870s liquor store operated at Sixth & Broadway by George Conrad, and the harness shop begun at 820 Broadway by fellow-French-Canadian immigrant Adolph Boudreau (Van Bueren et al. 2002: 28, citing U.S. Bureau of the Census 1880). State of California Department of Parks and Recreation Primary Record P-01-010520 (citing Koenig, McIlroy, and Meyer 2001) reports “other parts of the block are likely to retain [National Register of Historic Places] eligible historic features.”
missed opportunities in compliance archaeology
Two compliance archaeology projects investigated areas associated with historic Oakland Chinatowns. In both cases, inadequate study with primary source documents in favor of dependence on late nineteenth-century sources such as the 1889 Sanborn map of buildings led to assessments and treatment plans that likely endangered or destroyed potentially unique archaeological remains. In doing so, both studies failed to achieve the compliance goals, and missed significant opportunities for archaeological investigation of social relations in the mid-1800s.
First Chinatown site
Historian Ma (Ma and Ma 1982: 32; also Ma 2000: 29) identifies the location of Oakland’s City Hall as the site of the first Chinatown. Her expanded history, Hometown Chinatown, draws on a 1976 paper by M. Fong, W. Hom, and M. Soong that was then available at the Oakland Public Library’s Asian Branch, “Chinese in Oakland: Early History,” to describe Oakland’s earliest Chinatown of the 1860s:
This early Chinatown was located about a mile from the waterfront near the corner of Washington and Fourteenth Streets, and probably consisted of no more than one or two Chinese food and drygood stores along with a gambling joint. Oakland’s mayor forced its destruction in 1865 to make room for white businesses (Ma 2000: 29).
It’s unclear which primary sources enabled this identification, and Fong, Hom, and Soong’s 1976 paper is no longer available. Identification of the site as an early Chinatown may relate to an 1867 newspaper article that commented “Fourteenth street, near Chinatown, is almost impassable on account of a large pond of rain water” (Oakland Daily News, 26 January 1867), although the article could have been referring to the Chinatown created to the northeast of the City Hall, on the east side of Telegraph Avenue between Sixteenth and Eighteenth (Chew 1952; Chow 1974: 116; Ah-Tye 1984). Or it may be that there was a long-forgotten Chinatown at the location that would become the present-day City Hall; the City’s tax roll of 1870 records that a tax of $15.00 was paid by “Bee Kwan [Kuan?] C.C.” for land valued at $1200 in Block F of the City Hall Tract. (The City Hall site itself had been purchased and resold to the City in 1868 [City Council Resolutions, No. 51-52, December 1867-January 1868]). Regardless of whether these two fragments can speak to the existence of an 1860s Chinatown at the site of the City Hall, if there is a community remembrance of a Chinatown predating the historic Telegraph Avenue Chinatown, a cultural resource evaluation would need to take it into consideration. A variety of independent lines of inquiry with archival documents would need to be conducted, and archaeology could have great potential for being able to recover material indications of populations underrepresented in other historical accounts.
A mid-1990s project to construct a new City administration building adjacent to the City Hall included a compliance archaeological study (Hupman and Chavez 1994; Busby 1996). The preconstruction archaeological resources investigation seems to have been unaware Ma and Ma (1982: 32) had identified the City Hall area as the site of the earliest 1860s Chinatown. Pre-construction historical evaluation focused on documented businesses and buildings of the 1880s and later. It did not investigate primary source documents—such as property tax assessment rolls, land ownership records, chains of title, contemporary newspapers, and census records—capable of elucidating earlier land uses that might be able to speak to whether the location had been the site of the earliest Chinatown.
Preliminary archaeological assessment relied on a few geotechnical soil bores (Hupman and Chavez 1994: 22-23), and concluded that the bores indicated “that no reported subsurface soil strata or soil constituents can be interpreted as containing potential historical archaeological deposits” (Hupman and Chavez 1994: 35, 61). Events would reveal the geotechnical bores produced a false negative result, and the estimate that historical archaeological remains would have been eliminated through the previous construction of twentieth-century buildings with “extensive basements” (Hupman and Chavez 1994: 34) was not correct.
Estimating there would be no archaeological remains, the report recommended archaeological monitoring during construction (Hupman and Chavez 1994: 61). Monitoring was conducted by an archaeologist who was “restricted to the observation of [construction] excavation activities to a depth of 5-10 feet below the current basement floors of the former buildings present on the Dalziel and Taldan Blocks” (Busby 1996: 2).
Despite the challenging working conditions of a lone archaeologist watching two blocks of heavy earthmoving in early February “rain and mud,” five intact archaeological deposits were observed and recorded (Busby 1996: 2, 3). Artifacts dating as early as 1840 were pulled from one intact feature, a trash pit six feet in diameter and six feet deep (Busby 1996: attachments, list 1, page 8). An additional 14 objects “collected from…isolated contexts” may suggest further archaeological remains, and the contractor reported rain and mud obscured some observations (Busby 1996: 2, 3, attachments, list 1, page 1).
The archaeological observations were interpreted through matching observed deposits with records of known buildings. The archaeologists compared the deposits with (1) buildings recorded on the 1889 Sanborn map or (2) information collected by the Oakland Cultural Heritage Survey, the City’s on-going survey of standing architecture. In looking at sources dating no earlier than the late nineteenth century, the archaeologists missed the opportunity to identify and study earlier historic remains. In relying on the 1889 map to make sense of unearthed deposits, archaeological remains of previous landuses may have been misidentified. With the deposits being encountered during archaeological monitoring of construction work, there was no recording of the archaeological context, such as interrelations with other deposits or data on soil geomorphology. Busby’s (1996) report seems to indicate that once historical artifacts were unearthed, the archaeological monitor was able to briefly shift construction work from the immediate area to allow observation and extraction of the archaeological deposit. But construction work was never halted to allow archaeological excavation of the area now known to contain numerous intact archaeological deposits. In consequence, the archaeological monitoring produced primarily out-of-context materials, a situation that often renders archaeological interpretation impossible. It’s unknown whether the project site included more extensive archaeological deposits related to previous historic uses.
Charter Avenue Chinatown
A second compliance archaeology investigation was scoped to evaluate cultural resources associated with what the 1880 census had identified as the Charter Avenue Chinatown (1880 census sheets 125D-126B, 127D, reproduced in Naruta 2005a). Historian Baker (1914: 203-4; also Hinkel and McCann 1939: 744; Chow 1974: 194) wrote this Chinatown had developed in 1876 in the Tuttle Tract, the tract name for the land on either side of the historic Charter Avenue—today’s West Grand Avenue—between San Pablo and Telegraph Avenues. This area is depicted in the portion of the 1878 Thompson and West map reproduced in Figure 4-6; historical names for Charter Avenue also included 22nd Street and Charter Street, according to the Alameda County Assessor’s map. Baker identified the Tuttle Tract location as the new homesite for the residents dislocated from the San Pablo Avenue Chinatown discussed below. The vicinity may also have been associated with the Chinese men recorded in the 1870 census as independent farmers—neighbors of the white Simpsons and the family of Irish immigrants John and Bridget Smith—in the vicinity of the then-extant San Pablo Avenue Chinatown (1870 census sheet 239A; Naruta 2004; 2005a). Other neighbors included the Tuttle Tract landowner, Charles A. Tuttle (1819-1888), a San Francisco lawyer who hailed from New England via Milwaukee (Lewis Publishing Co. 1892: 631-3). The Tuttles resettled from Auburn, California to Oakland in 1868 (Thompson and West 1882), the same year the Tuttle tract was surveyed and recorded (Oakland City Blueprint Services n.d.), and the 1878-1879 city directory listed their residence as the southwest corner of Telegraph Avenue and Charter.
Archaeological remains from these recently rediscovered Chinese farmers of the 1870s, the 1870s-1880s Charter Avenue Chinatown residents, or their immediate neighbors could be of immense significance in understanding life experiences and social relations in early multi-ethnic Oakland. A construction project slated for an area one
block east of the former Tuttle Tract, portions of the blocks bordered by
A recent cultural resources evaluation for the Project area “focus[ed] on the 1889 and 1912 Sanborn Maps” (Archeo-Tec 2004: 13), and assessed “that there is a potential of encountering significant later nineteenth century cultural remains, such as privies and wells, within the confines of the Broadway-West Grand Project area” (Archeo-Tec 2004: 14). The archaeologist noted archaeological resources in the vicinity may be located as shallow as one to four feet below the surface, and therefore concluded “that even shallow excavation within the project area could encounter cultural resources” (Archeo-Tec 2004: 3).
However, the evaluation “focus[ing] on the 1889 and 1912 Sanborn Maps” was unable to find the geographic location of the Tuttle Tract, or Charter Avenue, Chinatown (Archeo-Tec 2004: 9-12, 14). This seems to have led the evaluator to conclude no further study was necessary. Instead, he wrote, if construction turned up archaeological resources, ground-disturbing activities within a 50-foot radius should be halted and “a qualified archaeologist be contacted within at least 24 hours” (Archeo-Tec 2004: 14). The language the City body actually adopted to meet cultural resource protections of the California Environmental Quality Act contained an even lower trigger for stopping construction work, calling for halting all work in a 50-foot radius if a single “archaeological artifact [is] discovered on-site during project construction” (Oakland City Planning Commission 2004: 29). Although casual observation of the project area showed the construction work exposed buried historic items (Naruta 2005), an archaeologist was never summoned, and it may never be known if unique archaeological resources were destroyed.
Both the compliance archaeology evaluations of areas associated with historic Chinatowns relied on records of known buildings to make their assessments. In both cases, these records post-dated the period for which archaeological resources may have had the most significance as legally defined by state and federal protective legislation. The assessments failed to conduct an integral component of archaeological investigation, primary source research that would have allowed formulating excavation strategies adequate to discovering new data.
the san pablo avenue chinatown
Investigating the San Pablo Avenue Chinatown allows us to develop information significant to understanding a community’s particular history, while providing another data source allowing evaluation of whether the Irish Laborer Hypothesis’ adequacy explains the Chinese Exclusion movements. The contexts of the formation and destruction of the San Pablo Avenue Chinatown join the larger setting of events linked to the Chinese Exclusion movements to show a strategy by mainstream white businessmen and politicians to gain white public support for projects that would generate private profit, enacted under the claims of protecting white society from a foreign race. Finally, data from the San Pablo Avenue Chinatown and the post-Chinatown residents shed light on processes by which identities were asserted and contested in a pluralistic society.
First-hand accounts of the San Pablo Avenue Chinatown are rare. While an active Chinese American press covered events throughout California in the nineteenth-century (Lo and Lai 1977; Lai 1986), few newspaper editions predating 1900 are preserved in the major collections held by the University of California’s Ethnic Studies or Bancroft Libraries. A valuable source for the early history of Oakland Chinatowns comes from Edward W. Chew, who served in World War I as Oakland’s first U.S. Army officer of Chinese descent (Ma and Ma 1982: 35). Edward Chew’s father was Oaklander Ng Poon Chew (1866-1931), a civil rights crusader who edited and published San Francisco’s major Chinese-language newspaper, the Chung Sai Yat Bo. Edward Chew’s father—if not Edward Chew himself—would have been in direct communication with the people who lived in the San Pablo Avenue Chinatown. In 1952, on the occasion of Oakland’s 100-year anniversary, Edward W. Chew published a special article in the Oakland Tribune relaying the history of Oakland’s early Chinatowns and preserving important community oral history. Chew’s 1952 article and Baker’s 1914 (203-204) history both record the existence of the San Pablo Avenue Chinatown. Chew’s article preserves important community oral history and has provided clues allowing researchers to discover further information about the San Pablo Avenue Chinatown.
Chew (1952) relays that by the mid-1860s, the “official” Chinatown in Oakland was on the east side of Telegraph Avenue between today’s Sixteenth and Seventeenth Streets. (Howard Ah-Tye’s 1984 work notes this Telegraph Avenue Chinatown may have extended as far north as Eighteenth Street.) A detail of the U.S.G.S. Coastal Survey Map of 1857, reproduced in Figure 4-7, shows how this area was at the outskirts of town. Oakland City development was then clustered further south towards the waterfront. At that time, the City Hall, shown in Figure 4-8, was on Broadway between Second and Fourth Streets (Oakland Tribune, 20 February 1934; Chow 1974: 116-117), and, as the 1859 Whitcher Map in Figure 4-9 indicates, Broadway extended no further north than Fourteenth Street.
In 1867 fire destroyed the official Chinatown on Telegraph Avenue. The cause of this fire is unknown, but Chew (1952) reports after the fire city authorities prevented the Chinese residents from rebuilding. At the same time, a number of City actions signaled the northward shift of the city’s development. In December of that year, City Hall took up a new location further north from the waterfront, in Shattuck Hall, the two-story building at Eighth Street and Broadway depicted in Figure 4-10 (Oakland Transcript, 26 August 1877; Tribune, 20 February 1934). The City also contracted to have gas lamps installed along both Broadway (Hinkel and McCann 1939: 740) and Telegraph Avenues (City Council Resolution Number 18, May 1867). Shortly after the mysterious fire, City Council Resolution Number 358 enacted a plan to extended Broadway northward, through the site of the former Chinatown.
Edward W. Chew (1952) records that after the Telegraph Avenue Chinatown burned down, city authorities assigned the official Chinatown to an area along the east side of San Pablo Avenue. Giving reference points that would be understood by his mid-twentieth-century readers, Chew wrote that the Chinatown was on the east side of San Pablo between Nineteenth and Twentieth Streets, although Chew’s reference to these streets cannot be taken as a strict definition of the Chinatown’s boundaries, as neither Nineteenth or Twentieth Street (or Williams Street in between them) existed at the time of the Chinatown. Streets in this area have also been renamed multiple times; Table 4-2 relays the sequence of their names. The extant maps, city tax rolls, census records, and city directories indicate the surrounding land was mostly farmland with some residences.
At the time of the new Chinatown’s development, the official city map was the Whitcher Map of 1859. Figure 4-9 shows the area east of San Pablo Avenue between what would become Nineteenth and Twentieth Streets is adjacent to and immediately southwest of the pond—at today’s southwest corner of Telegraph Ave and Twentieth Street—which on its eastern side linked to the tidal slough that would later be engineered to create Lake Merritt. Comparing landmarks of the 1859 Whitcher Map with the subdivided 1868 Boardman Map in Figure 4-11 indicates the new official Chinatown Chew (1952) describes as being on San Pablo Avenue between Nineteenth and Twentieth Streets would have been located at least on block 283, and may have extended further into blocks 284, 285, or 280. The names of the post-Spanish and post-Californio period landowners can be derived from sources including the 1868 Boardman map, the 1878 Thompson & West map (Figure 4-6), the city’s tax assessment rolls, and original tract maps. (The relevant tract maps were identified using the current County Assessor’s maps, and were viewed at City Blueprint Services.)
The area immediately east of San Pablo Avenue that would later be divided by Nineteenth and Twentieth Streets then was part of Block 283, a parcel owned by an Irish immigrant named Edmund Hogan. Hogan owned the parcel by 1861, if not earlier (1861-2 Tax Assessment Roll, page 100). From property tax research, archaeologist Kelly Fong found that between 1866 and 1869, the assessed value of improvements on Hogan’s property more than doubled (Naruta 2004a). This concurs with Chew’s account of the establishment of the San Pablo Avenue Chinatown at that area in 1867. Chew’s history is further supported by the discovery of the 1870 census having recorded that the San Pablo Avenue Chinatown supported at least 36 all-Chinese households; cross-referencing the names listed adjacent to the Chinatown in the census with contemporary city directories, the 1868 Boardman map, and tax assessment rolls, supports identifying 1870 census sheets 223B-225A (households 1440-1464) as the enumeration of the Chinatown’s residents (Naruta 2004a, 2005a: appendix A). Residents were listed as either “Laborers on R.R.” or “Laborers in Quarry.” All those recorded were men, ranging in age from 19 to 50, with most being in their later twenties through forties.
Further confirmation of Chew’s report of the San Pablo Avenue Chinatown comes from an 1872 newspaper article historical geographer Chow (1974) discovered in his study of Oakland Chinatown locations. On May 9, 1872, the Oakland Daily Transcript reported the residents of “the Chinatown on the San Pablo road” were “‘consigned’ to…new homes on Second Street.” The newspaper article, reproduced in Figure 4-12, reports on having viewed their move the day prior. Other sources, such as the 1889 Sanborn fire insurance map, confirm the establishment of a Chinatown at the waterfront at the south end of Castro Street (Praetzellis and Praetzellis 2004: 246, citing Oakland Tribune, 18 January 1886), and it’s also shown in a contemporary sketch (Wong 2004: 9). Yet despite this confirmation of a dislocation effort, an Oakland Tribune article printed three years later, on March 13, 1875, demonstrates that at least some of the residents resisted the move, and continued the San Pablo Avenue Chinatown (Figure 4-13).
Investigating why San Pablo Avenue Chinatown residents were “consigned” to live elsewhere
Examining the possible reasons behind the residents of the “official” Chinatown being “consigned” to a new location, a spot at the opposite end of town, is productive in understanding the ways in which prominent white businessmen and politicians used alleged racial qualities to shape the landscape to their advantage.
City Council President John A. Hobart (City Council Resolutions, No. 1, January 1867) at that time owned the land immediately north of the site of the Chinatown. The property on which the Chinatown was situated was part of a tract owned by Irish immigrant Edmund Hogan, and a portion of it was reserved for his residence. Councilman Hobart was not the only powerful landowner neighboring Edmund Hogan. In fact, the list of neighboring property owners in the area of San Pablo and Telegraph Avenue north of Fourteenth Street—shown in Table 4-3—reads like a Who’s Who of early Oakland business and politics: some of the city’s largest property owners and real estate developers; a State Representative; the Surveyor of the City and County of San Francisco (a job associated with extensive political connections); the Alameda County Surveyor; speculators in a railroad company; and at least one other man who would serve as City Council President (Wilcox 1880; Tuttle 1849; Gardiner 1857; Potter 1867; Oakland City directories 1869-1881; City of Oakland tax rolls; Wilcox 1880; Thompson and West 1882; Potter 1883; Wood 1883: 661; Bancroft 1888c; Campbell 1890; Lewis Publishing Co. 1892: 631-633; Bates 1912: 535-536; City Council Resolutions, No. 1, January 1867, No. 45, November 1867, No. 77, April 1868, No. 101, May 1868, No. 404, September 1869, No. 553, May 1870; Bagwell 1982: 39; Quentin 1997; Wong 2004: 27)
In contrast, Edmund Hogan was listed in the Oakland City directories of 1869, 1872, and 1873 as a gardener, and his son, James, was identified as a laborer and later a milkman (Oakland Tribune, 11 September 1883). Edmund Hogan emigrated from Ireland to the U.S. by 1848, according to the deposition of a friend who prior to emigrating himself was instructed to look for Hogan in Boston (Lynch 1887: 3). If Edmund Hogan, already singular in an area otherwise owned by wealthy and prestigious individuals, was alone in leasing to the residents of the San Pablo Avenue Chinatown, this perhaps explains why the Tribune (11 September 1883) article after his death describes him as “eccentric.”
In anticipation of the Transcontinental Railroad having its western terminus in Oakland, real estate speculation and a building boom edged Oakland’s downtown northward (Chow 1974: 212). After the December 1867 siting of City Hall in temporary quarters at Shattuck Hall, at Eighth and Broadway, Councilman John A. Hobart introduced a resolution to start plans to construct a new City Hall on a suitable piece of land at a location to be determined (Oakland Transcript, 26 August 1877; Oakland City Directory 1870: 29).
The fruit of Councilman Hobart’s resolution to build a new city hall was the City Council committee’s selection of a location just south of his property (City Council Resolution No. 52, January 1868), at the conjunction of San Pablo Avenue, Broadway and Fourteenth Street. (Today this site is the front lawn of the present City Hall.) Choosing a more northern site for the new City Hall not only anticipated a boom in development associated with the arrival of the Transcontinental Railroad, but also turned the properties along San Pablo Avenue into prime real estate.
Having just concluded his term as President of the City Council at the end of the previous year (City Council resolutions Nos. 45-47), John A. Hobart proceeded to take action to subdivide the land between San Pablo and Telegraph Avenues, starting with the area around his own property. Hobart constructed a fence along his property, and then successfully petitioned the City Council to “open” a street—Hobart Street (later Twenty-first Street)—“[b]eginning on the said San Pablo Road upon the lands of John A. Hobart at the corner of the new fence recently erected by him.” (City Council Resolution No. 214, 26 Oct 1868). Using the metes-and-bounds method of description, the City Council resolution continued to specify how the road would be constructed between San Pablo and Telegraph Avenues in relation to Hobart’s house.
The City Council also resolved (1868, No. 214) the City Marshall would serve notice to people owning or residing on the affected land, as well as their immediate neighbors, indicating that at least some of the new road impacted people currently residing in the area. The City Marshall was to deliver the written message “That all persons owning or occupying the lands embraced in the above description or abutting upon the same,” if they had any objection to their land or their residence being taken over to build the new road, must appear before the Council to state in writing their objections and any claim to an amount of damages (Resolution No. 214; also No. 203, 159-160). It’s unclear what happened subsequently, as the City Council Resolutions do not record any result of the resolution to create Hobart Street. But it is recorded the City Council followed a similar procedure of posting notice to occupants or owners when a request was made to create Frederick Street, today’s Nineteenth Street, between San Pablo and Telegraph Avenues, and after no written claims were delivered to the council at the specified time, the City Marshall was instructed to clear residents from the area, giving those forced to relinquish their homes or other property $1 compensation (Resolution No. 354, May 3, 1869; No. 368, June 7, 1869). As indicated in Table 4-2, the history of east-west streets constructed near or through the San Pablo Avenue Chinatown, resolutions to create today’s Twentieth Street—then Delger Street—were passed the following year.
The account preserved in the City Council resolutions is intriguing, and raises the question of the identity of those who owned or lived on the land to be transformed into a public street. That they were to be offered the paltry compensation of one dollar and that the City Marshall was there to be sure residents left, suggests a forcible removal. It’s possible some of the early Oaklanders being displaced for the planned streets were residents of the San Pablo Avenue Chinatown, which would indicate the Chinatown at the time extended southward through today’s Nineteenth Street, and even possibly further south into the next block. This information demonstrates the inutility of adopting the streets later constructed, today’s Nineteenth and Twentieth Streets, as the boundaries of the San Pablo Avenue Chinatown.
In 1871 the new City Hall at the conjunction of Fourteenth Street, Broadway, and San Pablo Avenue was sufficiently complete to open (Transcript, 26 August 1877; Merritt 1928: 120). An early photo of the new City Hall, Figure 4-14, shows the front facade, which faced the intersection of Fourteenth and Washington Streets, from a vantage point to the south, on Washington. The area of the San Pablo Avenue Chinatown is visible to the left of the City Hall: just beyond a shorter white building with a gabled roof is a windmill which seems to correspond to one depicted on the contemporary bird’s eye drawing reproduced in Figures 4-15 and 4-16. To the left of the windmill, the photograph may have captured the roofs of the Chinatown, although the depth of focus is too narrow to allow us to see the buildings clearly. It is apparent, however, that the San Pablo Avenue Chinatown was visible from the new City Hall, and anyone riding the newly established San Pablo Avenue horsecar line (Hausler 2004: 3) to or from the City Hall area would have passed along it. Soon after the City Hall opened, the Chinatown’s residents were subjected to a dislocation effort that would seem to have official sanction if not actual sponsorship; the Oakland Daily Transcript reported in May 1872 the residents of “the Chinatown on the San Pablo road” were “‘consigned’ to…new homes on Second Street.” It seems likely, therefore, that the removal of the San Pablo Avenue Chinatown was directly related to this “recentering” of Oakland around the new City Hall as the city continued to expand north.
Physical appearance of the San Pablo Avenue Chinatown: Allegations, facts, and contextual inferences
One contemporary description of the San Pablo Avenue Chinatown has been located, an Oakland Tribune article (13 March 1875), relaying only that the Chinatown included wooden buildings, had at least one well, and on one spring day in 1875 was experiencing soggy ground, a condition familiar to many Oakland residents. An early 1870s drawing, the Snow & Roos Bird’s Eye View of Oakland (Praetzellis and Praetzellis 2004: 35; Praetzellis 1994: Plate 8; Van Bueren 2004: 10), provides indications of the physical appearance of the Chinatown (Figure 4-15). The factors influencing the creation of this drawing were very different from those behind the USGS Coastal Survey Map of 1857. The USGS Coastal Survey Map surveyed the coastline and recorded the location of each building in Oakland to create an accurate record. For a bird’s eye view, the drawing’s creators, while constrained to create an image that was recognizably Oakland, worked to created an image of the city as its boosters would like it to be. Examining Figure 4-16, a close up of the portion of the 1870s bird’s eye showing the location of the San Pablo Avenue Chinatown, provides evidence of this selective process. The new City Hall is depicted in painstaking detail, but other details are sketchier; to the west, roads cease abruptly, or trail off, indicating plans for subdividing the land north of City Hall had yet to be realized. And while Lake Merritt is shown having a western tributary substantial enough to require bridge crossings at Webster and Franklin Streets, at Broadway the tributary is drawn as if it simply butts up against the road. There’s no indication of the condition of the pond, shown on all previous maps, at the southwest of Telegraph Avenue and Twentieth Street, the drawing seemingly portraying the area as of thick vegetation.
Still, comparing the 1870s drawing with city directories, the federal census, and other documents indicates at least a portion of the San Pablo Avenue Chinatown seems to be depicted by the least 14-15 gabled buildings arranged in two parallel rows shown in Figure 4-16. No pictures of the Chinatown have yet been found, but the depiction on the 1870s drawing suggests the San Pablo Avenue Chinatown would have been similar in design to the buildings shown in an early photo of the first Los Angeles Chinatown (Chinese Historical Society of Southern California n.d.), a photo of San Bernadino Chinatown ca. 1885 (Mueller 1987: 16), or a photo of the historic Ventura Chinatown (Ventura County Museum of History and Art, reproduced in Greenwood 1993: 387). The Ventura photo shows a row of wood-plank buildings of varying heights and widths, with front doors opening onto a wooden boardwalk running the length of the row, a frontier construction similar to that depicted in the other photos. At least some of the buildings were constructed with what Greenwood (1996: 141) identifies as “party walls,” where all or portions of adjacent buildings walls are shared, suggesting at least a degree of cooperative planning in the construction. The Ventura photo also shows how the gabled roof design easily supported a decorated second-story false front, enabling a variety of building facades within a row and facilitating uses ranging from a retail store to a full temple or “joss house,” a Portuguese-Cantonese-English pidgin term commonly used in the U.S. at the time (R. Allen et al. 2002: 70).
Surviving historic photos from the vicinity of the San Pablo Avenue Chinatown indicate such wood plank construction was typical for this part of Oakland at the time of the Chinatown’s establishment. Figure 4-17 reproduces a photo showing the intersection of Thirteenth Street and Broadway, looking towards the northeast. The photo is dated 1868 or 1869, shortly after establishment of the San Pablo Avenue Chinatown, and the wood plank construction of the Oakland Mills is highly visible. The photo in Figure 4-18 shows the new City Hall from a vantage point to the east, near Thirteenth and Franklin Streets. Although large houses in the distance and new plantings indicate the redevelopment of San Pablo Avenue had long been underway by the time of this photo, immediately across Broadway from the City Hall and within its view are vertical wood-plank gabled buildings. Though further west, at Twenty-second and Market Streets, the house of prominent white Oaklander Colonel John Coffee was of analogous construction, as seen in Figure 4-19.
While the above evidence suggests its buildings were of a quality consistent with their contemporaries in the neighborhood and in the wider city, the San Pablo Avenue Chinatown was branded a “nuisance” by the Oakland Tribune on March 13, 1875 (Figure 4-13). The article framed the Chinatown residents as being fundamentally different from other Oaklanders, giving such evidence as consumption of vegetables, “of which” it noted, “the Chinese are particularly fond.” The Tribune also freely indicated the motivation behind this attack, writing:
We yesterday paid a visit to the Chinese quarters, situated on the San Pablo road, a few blocks north of the City Hall….
This “settlement” is right in the center of a beautiful part of the city, and seems like a “plague-spot in the midst of a paradise.” The contiguous property-holders can do nothing with their land until the removal of the “stink-hole,” and while property a few blocks off is rapidly augmenting in value, that in close proximity is almost valueless. The reasons are obvious.
The Tribune called for the Board of Health to be the mechanism for clearing away the Chinatown, to allow redevelopment of the area the new City Hall was making valuable. This is consistent with a pattern seen in other cities. For example, Alameda researcher Frederick (2004) discovered contemporary newspaper articles declaring that the increase in surrounding property values following construction of a new train depot necessitated the city tear down its Chinatown (Figure 4-20). Under the headline “A Black Spot in Beautiful Alameda—Property near the New Depot Increasing in Value,” the Alameda Argus editorialized that removal of the Chinatown at Park Street and Railroad Avenue was “[t]he next improvement which should be made in Alameda” (3 October 1895). As proposed in the Oakland Tribune’s attack on the San Pablo Avenue Chinatown, the Board of Health in Alameda was used to “suppress the Chinatown” (4 January 1897), yet the Argus was forthcoming that the reasons for the actions against the residents were not about public health, but rather about facilitating redevelopment:
Now that the city has a proper and good-looking depot and a magnificent City Hall, these shanties which are in the shadow of both and which occupy one of the most prominent spots in the city, should no longer be permitted to offend.
…When Lincoln avenue is opened through to the east end, and improved it will become the leading thoroughfare to High street, and property in the vicinity of the new depot will become still more valuable for business purposes. (3 October 1895)
Even San Francisco’s Chinatown faced a similar attempt to eradicate a community under the guise of the Board of Health needing to stop a nuisance. Legal scholar C. McClain chronicles how the San Francisco Board of Health in February 1880 passed a resolution declaring the Chinatown a nuisance, subsequently posting a notice that informed Chinatown residents they would all be removed from the area in thirty days (1994: 86, 317; citing San Francisco Chronicle, February 24, 1880). The resolution declared “All the power of the law will be invoked…to empty this great reservoir of moral, social, and physical pollution, which…threatens to engulf with its filthiness and immorality the fairest portion of our city.” Echoing similar moves in Alameda and Oakland, the San Francisco Examiner anticipated how removing the Chinatown would open up a desirable area of the central city for redevelopment, and even indicated the health officer’s claim that major capitalists were standing at the ready (C. McClain 1994: 86, citing Examiner, 24 February 1880). As to the veracity of claims Chinatown was a source of “filthiness” and “pollution,” C. McClain (1994: 317) relays that the available statistics from the health officer’s report, printed in the Board of Supervisors’ San Francisco Municipal Reports for the Fiscal Year Ending June 30, 1870, “disclose that, if anything, the Chinese were less prone to disease than their Caucasian counterparts.”
San Jose’s Chinatown faced similar accusations of blight from city authorities and seems to have encountered illegal actions against it: when it burned to the ground in 1887—the fire department’s water tank having been drained beforehand—the San Jose Evening News noted rumors its prominent white property owners had heavily increased their fire insurance in the preceding two weeks, concluding “There seems to be no doubt that the Chinatown fire was of an incendiary origin” (Yu 2001: 28-30, quoting Evening News, 5 May 1887). The white city fathers’ link between destroying a Chinatown and increasing area property values was again asserted in a newspaper commentary on the burning of San Jose’s second Plaza Chinatown: “[W]e have a right to be proud, gentlemen, of the fact…[of] the eradication of Chinatown which for twenty years depreciated the value of the neighboring property” (San Jose Evening News, 17 April 1888, quoted in Baxter and R. Allen 2002: 384).
What becomes clear from a range of documentary evidence is that contemporary white newspaper descriptions of the Chinatowns as unsanitary or blighted cannot be taken at face value. Archival and oral history studies are not always able to provide the missing information; few Chinese-language newspapers printed prior to the 1900s have been preserved, and we are often left lacking descriptions of the actual appearance of a historic Chinatown. Archaeological research could provide information not otherwise obtainable about Oakland’s early history. Chapter 3 discussed previous excavations at the sites of historic Chinatowns that have demonstrated archaeology’s potential to provide information on the actual design and conditions of a Chinatown. A notable example comes from archaeology at San Jose’s Woolen Mills Chinatown, formed as part of the rebuilding effort following the arson of the earlier San Jose Chinatown. Archaeologists discovered that contrary to the stereotypes prevalent in the contemporary English-language media, the sanitary conditions of the Chinatown were actually more advanced than those of the city as a whole. Unlike most of San Jose, the Woolen Mills Chinatown was constructed with a state-of-the-art sewage system (Baxter and R. Allen 2002: 385-6, 390; R. Allen et al. 2002: 88), as well as gravel streets and a fire hydrant system (Baxter and R. Allen 2002: 390; R. Allen et al. 2002: 89-90, 40, 82). In contrast, numerous affluent white Oaklanders, including Victor Metcalf, soon to be Secretary of the Department of Commerce and Labor and President Theodore Roosevelt’s Secretary of the Navy (San Francisco Call, 7 December 1901; Rogers 1904), were at this time still dumping their sewage into Lake Merritt (Oakland Enquirer, 9 May 1888; Bagwell 1982: 131). With archaeological research demonstrating actual material conditions were far different than the allegations that appeared in many accounts of early Chinatowns, archaeology of Oakland’s early Chinatowns could provide unique information.
Contesting dislocation
It is unclear whether the Oakland Tribune’s 13 March 1875 attack on the San Pablo Chinatown as a blight impeding redevelopment immediately translated into action against the residents. But redevelopment of San Pablo Avenue was underway by mid-1878, when the Oakland Daily Times reported on new construction on the west side of San Pablo Avenue between Nineteenth and Twentieth Streets (27 July 1878, reproduced in OCHS 1994; see also OCHS 1982).
Dispersal of the majority of the San Pablo Avenue Chinatown residents may have occurred during the later 1870s redevelopment. On June 9, 1879, the Oakland Times lamented that "[w]ithin the Corporate limits of Oakland are several Chinatowns,” each of which they referred to as a “nuisance” that should be stopped by “[t]he sanitary authorities.” The “Lower Chinatown” at the foot of Castro Street and the Chinatown centered at Eighth and Webster Streets were well established by this time (Transcript, 9 May 1872). As mentioned above, the 1880 census documents the new “Upper Chinatown” was the Charter Avenue Chinatown, located in the Tuttle Tract. While a bird’s eye view published the following year showed its location as vacant land (Oakland Daily Times 1881), this is consistent with other examples of obscuring or eliminating areas not currently occupied in the manner desired by white business interests (Praetzellis and Praetzellis 1982: 57), and therefore likely represents redevelopment desires rather than actual conditions.
The San Pablo Avenue Chinatown area was recently assessed as having “a high likelihood” of containing archaeological deposits (LSA Associates, Inc. 2003: 213), and an upcoming archaeological excavation (Oakland City Council 2004; Pastron and Vanderslice 2005a, 2005b; Naruta 2005a, 2005d) may produce evidence of the Chinatown’s appearance and lifeways of its residents. Archaeological excavations near Hobart’s requested road—and the other roads in the area that were reported to force property owners and residents to move—could determine if the Chinatown had extended into those areas, and link the road building to the Transcript’s (9 May 1872) report of the Chinatown residents being “consigned” to live elsewhere. (Compliance archaeology investigations of a project on the east side of San Pablo Avenue between today’s Twentieth and Twenty-first Streets [Praetzellis 2004a, 2004b; Praetzellis and Solari 2004] impacted portions of the former properties of Hobart and Edmund W. Hogan, but were undertaken prior to investigation of the area’s road building sequence and the discovery that prior U.S.-period residents had been dislocated from the area.) As the 1875 Tribune article (13 March 1875) complained of the San Pablo Avenue Chinatown’s continued existence, archaeological remains of its architectural structure, daily patterns of use, and the adjacent ponds’ filling may shed light on the residents’ resistance to dislocation.
Until archaeology might reach a more definitive determination, the date of destruction of the “official” San Pablo Avenue Chinatown’s buildings is best indicated by the construction dates of its successor buildings. In 1879, for example, any Chinatown buildings at the site of 1818-24 San Pablo Avenue, between Nineteenth and Eighteenth Streets, would have been demolished when French-Canadian contractors and brick-makers the Remillard brothers constructed their commercial building (OCHS 2000a). At least portions of the Chinatown’s buildings at the southwest corner of San Pablo Avenue and Twentieth Street would have undergone demolition by 1883, when construction commenced on the Victorian Italianate false-front storefront that stands at 1972 San Pablo Avenue (Figure 4-21), while the Italianate that adjoins it to the south, at 1958-60 San Pablo Avenue, dates from 1889-93 (OCHS 2000b, 2000c).
With mainstream influential white Oaklanders calling each of Oakland’s Chinatowns a “nuisance” (Times, 9 June 1879), and having “consigned” the San Pablo Avenue Chinatown residents to live elsewhere (Transcript, 9 May 1872), its significant that some Chinese Oaklanders remained at or returned to the site. The 1880 census (sheet 99A) recorded a group of Chinese men running a laundry at 1915 San Pablo Ave, near Nineteenth Street. This census recorded whether an individual was literate, and for the Chinese laundrymen, the census taker wrote “All read and write in their own language,” indicating a degree of literacy shared by few of their white European and European-American neighbors. Other people of Chinese descent also lived and worked in the area in the following years. Archaeologist Fong (2005a) discovered the 1882 Wells Fargo Directory of Chinese Business Houses recorded a Chinese laundry operating at the San Pablo Avenue Chinatown location, on Twentieth Street (then Delger) between San Pablo and Telegraph Avenue. In 1894, the Oakland Enquirer (7 April) reported on a raid on “the Chinese store on San Pablo Avenue, just above Eighteenth Street.” The 1912 Sanborn map of the San Pablo Avenue Chinatown site labels two buildings as “Chinese Garment Factories.” One building was located on the south side of Twentieth Street between San Pablo and Telegraph Avenues. The other, on the east side of San Pablo Avenue south of Twentieth Street, 1968-66 San Pablo Avenue, was singled out among neighboring buildings as being powered by electricity.
Fong’s (2005a) study of the list of Chinese Business Partnership case files generated through federal enforcement of the Chinese Exclusion laws (Greene, Glass, and Nealand 2004) revealed this building housed Hing Chong & Co., a merchant tailoring business, from 1906 to 1923. Fong’s (2005a) mapping the locations of this and other Chinese Businesses enumerated in the list of Oakland Chinese Partnerships (see Figure 4-5) indicates Hing Chong & Co. joined other Chinese businesses in a late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century garment district along San Pablo Avenue near City Hall (Naruta 2005b). A Works Progress Administration survey of Oakland buildings in 1936 recorded the same address housed a three-person “oriental” household (OCHS 2000d).
In the 1950s and early 1960s, a man who was native to the Toisan area of Guangdong province, China, and his wife ran a laundry business in this same building (M. Chang 2005a, 2005b; Carol Chong, personal communication, 24 August 2005). They also lived there, and it was at their home that their daughter, Carol Chong, was born. Further information about the history of the San Pablo Avenue Chinatown’s site will be derived from upcoming oral histories from former residents and neighbors and a historic architectural recording of the 120-year-old buildings prior to their demolition for redevelopment (LSA Associates, Inc. 2004: 205; Cora Palmer, Page & Turnball, Inc., personal communication, 18 November 2005). The historical work may provide additional information on the actual interrelationship of Oaklanders of various ethnic backgrounds and national origins.
creating whiteness in oakland
Evidence demonstrates allegations of Chinatowns being objective “blights” on cities were unsupported, made by or on behalf of wealthy individuals hoping for the land to be redeveloped to their financial advantage. In this section I discuss other actions by mainstream white businessmen and politicians who also worked prominently to assert an idea of fundamental racial difference between white and Chinese Californians. These included public proclamations, and further alterations of the city infrastructure to the disadvantage of Chinese Oaklanders associated with particular livelihoods. A look at events during the strikes of the summer of 1877 will suggest the mainstream white businessmen and politicians’ proclaimed motives of acting to further the interests of all persons of the white race were received with skepticism. Finally, an example of how enforcement of the 1882 Chinese Exclusion legislation was enacted at the site of the San Pablo Avenue Chinatown indicates the long-term persistence of legal frameworks that simultaneously created and reinforced definitions of white identity.
I discussed in Chapter 2 how a mainstream white politician, Oakland Mayor Enoch Pardee, played a leadership role in an 1876 anti-Chinese demonstration (Figure 2-4), while the following year, during a summer of nationwide labor strikes and demonstrations for workers’ rights (Bruce 1959; Oakland Evening Tribune, 25 July 1877), he worked with local police and the City Council in organizing patrols to protect property (Figure 2-5). Despite the contrast with reported events, some later histories (e.g. Baker 1914: 203-204), assert that the summer of 1877 in Oakland was characterized by white laborers agitating against Chinese.
Yet the only major property damage that summer hit a very different target. On the evening of August 25, 1877, Oakland’s City Hall was destroyed by fire (Oakland Transcript, 26 August 1877). Its charred remains are shown in Figure 4-22. Contemporaries believed arson was the cause, and a few days later, the City began publishing notices offering “a reward of $1,000 for any information which will lead to the arrest and conviction” of the persons responsible (Figure 4-23, Transcript, 26 August 1877). The reward seems never to have been claimed. A new City Hall, shown in Figure 4-24, was constructed on the foundations of its destroyed predecessor (Tribune, 22 May 1878), in a move that likely combined economy in rebuilding with an assertion of the city government’s resilience and continuity.
That it was the City Hall that was burnt down suggests popular discontent was directed at people other than Chinese laborers. Newspaper headlines of that year suggest the possibility the act was directed at City politicians thought to be perpetuating corporate control of the City’s waterfront, a public asset, for their own gain. The issue goes back to Oakland’s founding. Historians (e.g. Bagwell 1982: 42-50) chronicle the means by which Horace Carpentier, a white squatter on the Spanish land grant of Vicente Peralta become one of Oakland’s first Trustees, turned the formation of Oakland as a town and city to personal profit by taking title to the waterfront. Years later, the Compromise of 1868 was to have resolved the waterfront deed issue as part of preparations for Oakland to become the Western Terminus of the transcontinental railroad (Bagwell 1982: 51). But instead of returning the waterfront to public ownership, city politicians and major businessmen “compromised” by merging Southern Pacific Railroad corporation interests with “the Oakland Waterfront Company.” Bagwell writes the company’s “vice president was Dr. Samuel Merritt, then mayor of Oakland, who also profited privately.” 1877 seems to have been the year the full news behind the Compromise of 1868 came out. The Oakland Transcript published articles titled “An exposé of the duplicity of the Oakland Water Front Company: A full history of their title to the San Antonio Creek—Can the City overthrow it?” (26 October 1877) and “Merritt’s steal of a cool one hundred thousand represented by blocks 206 and 226 on the waterfront” (9 December 1877). The issue remained in contemporary consciousness through years of protests and court cases, and it wasn’t until 1909 that a second compromise provided for the waterfront to be returned to public ownership (Bagwell 1982: 186-9; Baker 1914: 421)
Regardless of the motivations behind the arson of City Hall, after 1877’s nationwide civil unrest had subsided, mainstream white Oakland politicians returned to discriminatory actions and public demonstrations proclaiming Chinese Californians threatened the well-being of whites. One example is the action of the Oakland Real Estate and Merchants Exchange, which Chow (1974: 204) identifies as the Pacific Coast’s first real estate exchange as well as the city’s first civic organization. A report after its first fiscal year of operation shows the executive committee and board of directors to have been composed of mainstream white businessmen and political figures such as V. D. Moody and W. F. Boardman (Oakland Daily Times, 15 July 1878). Report of the group’s first-year activities noted with approval the establishment of a downtown market facility, the Free Market at Fifth and Washington Streets (Oakland Tribune Yearbook, 1911), which proponents hoped would drive out of business the Chinese men who brought fresh produce around daily for door-to-door sale. In 1875, wrote historian Baker (1914: 374; Praetzellis 1994: 90), Oakland families were “served by 100 to 150 Chinamen daily who came with fresh fruits and vegetables from San Francisco on the seven and 7:30 [AM] ferries.” In 1878 the President of the Exchange, E. G. Mathews, reported on the new project and its relation to Chinese selling produce door-to-door:
One other matter of great importance is the city Free Market. Although the project did not originate at the Exchange, it has received its attention and its cordial support. While this market presents unusual facilities for the people at Oakland to procure fresher fruits and vegetables than could otherwise be obtained, it at the same time encourages industry and enterprise in the people of the surrounding country, which is one of the main supports of all commercial cities. A further benefit to be derived from it is, it enables us to dispense with the heretofore omnipresent Celestial basket brigade, which was absorbing most of the trade of that kind to the very great detriment of more desirable and permanent citizens, and will prove one of the greatest helps to solve that difficult problem now agitating the country, “The Chinese must go.” (Oakland Daily Times, 15 July 1878)
Without registering any contradiction between his statements, President E. G. Mathews concluded,
Let us ever keep in mind the objects and purposes of our organization, which are to promote integrity and good faith, just and equitable principles of business, to establish and maintain uniformity in commercial usages, to acquire, preserve, and disseminate valuable business statistics and information, and generally to foster, protect, and advance all the material interests of the city.
“Good faith” and “just and equitable principles of business,” then, were not for “The Chinese,” who “must go.” In asserting these principles of fair play were for “more desirable and permanent citizens,” Mathews represented the Merchants Exchange in defining Chinese Californians as fundamentally different than others, and asserting they should be eliminated from the area, specifically in the name of white economic advancement.
Mainstream white politicians continued to exert leadership in anti-Chinese discourse. After Governor Perkins, by then an Oakland-based politician with considerable influence over the Bay Area’s political landscape, declared a legal holiday to facilitate demonstrations urging Congress to pass the Chinese Exclusion legislation (Tribune, 2 March 1882), Dr. Samuel Merritt—of the reviled Compromise of 1868—headed a long list of “Vice-Presidents” leading what the Tribune (4 March 1882) called Oakland’s “Great Anti-Chinese Demonstration.” Any doubt about the tenor of those gatherings of whites is dispelled by the Tribune headlines “China’s Non-assimilative Horde” and “Difference Between Aryan and Mongolians.”
With the passage of Chinese Exclusion legislation, those asserted differences were established as law. Anyone appearing to be of Chinese descent could be subjected to having to prove their right to be in the country, and the statements an individual produced in often-lengthy interrogations had to match those of at least two “White Witnesses” willing to swear testimony at the Angel Island Immigration Station in the Bay of San Francisco (E. Lee 2003; Greene, Glass, and Nealand 2004; Chinn, Lai, and Choy 1969). At the former site of Oakland’s San Pablo Avenue Chinatown, Hing Chong & Co. partner Chow Hoy, a native-born citizen of the United States, had to undergo the immigration interrogation procedures at least four times, in 1898 at age 22, 1906, 1914, and 1921 (Choy 1898, 1921; Harmon 1921; Naruta 2005b). The legal mandate for “White Witnesses” shows identification as a member of the white race was not only associated with potential entitlements for whites, but also that these entitlements included the right to confirm or deny the very identity of persons of Chinese descent whenever they testified to their status as legal residents or natural-born citizens.
Conclusion
Compliance archaeology investigations at the sites of historic Oakland Chinatowns failed to undertake the research required to adequately assess potential archaeological remains prior to commencement of new construction projects. Further archaeological work that at least meets the standards of the compliance archaeology that has been conducted in Oakland for the California Department of Transportation (e.g. Praetzellis 1994, 2002; Keonig, McIllroy, and Meyer 2001; Van Bueren et al. 2002; Van Bueren 2004; Praetzellis and Praetzellis 2004) is needed to adequately investigate the early development of the Bay Area and the social relations of its inhabitants. Fortunately, significant data can still be derived from other resources. The examples in this chapter highlight how asserted racial differences were given resonance in the city landscape. Substantial evidence related to the dislocations of the San Pablo Avenue and other historic Oakland Chinatowns shows the prominent role of mainstream white Oakland politicians and businessmen in asserting racial difference as a justification for enacting projects that would provide them personal profit. The Free Market, designed to replace Chinese vegetable sellers’ daily door-to-door service (Oakland Daily Times, 15 July 1878), was explicitly proclaimed as a material site for announcing, enacting, and maintaining definitions of white identity in opposition to “the Chinese.” The creation of the Free Market, then, was analogous to the ostensibly neutral regulations about building materials, permissible locations, hours of operation, and delivery methods Oakland, San Francisco, and other cities enacted to harass the laundry industry, then closely associated with Chinese American workers (Ong 1975; Chow 1974). The creation of the Free Market formed part of a strategy that included arranging elements of the built environment to support ideas of differences based on racial categories, a process of external differentiation Bell (2005: 454) identifies as having been practiced in the colonial Chesapeake. By hoping to create a market with the proclaimed goal of enabling white Oaklanders “to dispense with the heretofore omnipresent Celestial basket brigade” in favor of patronizing sellers asserted to be “more desirable and permanent citizens” (Oakland Daily Times, 15 July 1878), those behind the Merchants Exchange and Free Market were asserting there existed a fundamental difference between themselves and Chinese Californians. Further, the marketplace itself was premised on white customers changing their daily practices of purchasing vegetables from Chinese door-to-door peddlers, and instead converge at a downtown location to purchase produce. The change in practices meant produce buyers being seen, seeing each other, and perhaps interacting with each other at a market established with explicit reference to excluding Chinese Californians and forming a venue proclaimed to favor non-Chinese business. The produce market, then, formed a site for “internal definition” (Bell 2005: 447) that took the form of the creation of and emphasis on an idea of white solidarity. Demonstrations and other public discourse emphasized a white group identity in contrast to the Chinese, and as these divisions were based on “racial” categories, the differences were considered natural. But establishing those divisions as natural, argues Epperson (1999), requires a reinforcing legal framework enacted over a number of generations (Bell 2005: 448). The Chinese Exclusions laws that from 1882 to 1968 subjected persons of Chinese descent, such as the native-born U.S. citizen Chow Hoy, to the perpetual jeopardy of having to prove one’s legal status—while giving a privileged position to the testimony of whites by virtue of their race—were part of such a legal framework. The final chapter returns to investigating how data from other California Chinatowns speaks to the creation of whiteness in California, and looks towards developing effective practices in Chinese American archaeology.
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