The Los Angeles Press Club announced the finalists for the 66th Southern California Journalism Awards to be held on June 23 at the Millennium Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles and I am honored to be included as a finalist with my 31st nomination over 18 years.
My historical blog, Today Past, has been nominated for Best Individual Blog for its post: Oct 24-1871: LA’s Chinese Massacre (Largest Mass Lynching in US History). This is my eighth nomination for Best Blog and fourth for Today Past (which won in 2018).
Today Past highlights events occurring on a single day in history, many of which are overlooked and not part of the history we are taught in school. This story of the Chinese massacre is a perfect example. Michael Woo, the city’s first Asian councilman (and whose family helped found Chinatown) only learned about the massacre in 2012 when he was asked to review a book on the massacre. It was nearly a decade since he had left public office.
This is an important story since not only is it believed to be the largest mass lynching in American history, but it was the beginning of a series of anti-Chinese riots, expulsions, and massacres that broke out across the West that led to legalized discrimination against the Chinese. Did you know that:
- at least 200 California communities, including Fresno, Pasadena, and Riverside, carried out forced expulsions of the Chinese;
- the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which prohibited all immigration of Chinese laborers (with exceptions for diplomats, teachers, students, merchants, and travelers), was the first and only major U.S. law ever implemented to prevent all members of a specific national group from immigrating into the United States;
- the 1879 California Constitution prohibited the employment of Chinese people by state and local governments or businesses incorporated in California; or
- in 1913, California became one of several states to bar Asian immigrants from owning land?
This history must be told and I am honored that Today Past has been recognized by the Los Angeles Press Club for this post.
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