With new land laws, history repeats itself

Brutal massacre

In September 1885, three years after Congress enacted the Chinese Exclusion Act, close to 30 immigrant Chinese were massacred in Rock Springs, Wyoming, according to history.com.

In this racially motivated killing, 150 white miners killed 28 Chinese miners, wounded 15 others and drove a few hundred of them out of town. In the end, only 45 white miners were fired by the railroad company, but none of the perpetrators ever faced any legal action for the killings.

"The Chinese had been victims of prejudice and violence ever since they first began to come to the West in the mid-19th century, fleeing famine and political upheaval," said a history article about the massacre on the website.

"Widely blamed for all sorts of social ills, the Chinese were also singled out for attack by some national politicians who popularized strident slogans like 'The Chinese Must Go' and helped pass an 1882 law that closed the US to any further Chinese immigration.

"In this climate of racial hatred, violent attacks against the Chinese in the West became all too common, though the Rock Springs massacre was notable both for its size and savage brutality," the article said, explaining the background of the massacre.

Two years later in May 1887, in a course of two days, a group of seven horse thieves, all of them white, ambushed and attacked Chinese miners with firearms in an isolated part of northeast Oregon, killing 31 to 34 immigrant Chinese.