1907: Asian Indian millworkers are attacked by white working men in Bellingham, Washington.

In Bellingham, Washington on September 4, 1907, almost 500 white working men attacked East Indian millworkers. A mob of white men chased two East Indian mill workers they had found on the street and then beat them. Then the mob headed to a boardinghouse where many Asian millworkers lived, and smashed the windows terrifying the residents out of their beds and to the tideflats. The rioters went from house to house and to all mills driving every East Indian worker they can find out chasing them to the train station. The next day almost all of Bellingham’s Indian workers had fled the city by boat or train. The police had responded very leisurely and the city condemned the mill owners for inviting “undesirable and unwanted,” East Indian workers into the city in the first place.

The working men declared that their purpose was to move the Indian workers and chase them out of town so they would stop crowding white labor out of the mills. There were about 250 Indians employed and rumors that the managers at Whatcom Falls Mill Company plant had been replacing white workers with lower paid Asian workers had angered the white men. According to the working whitemen, the darker skinned Indian men had been gathering on the sidewalks after work and forcing female passer-bys to walk in the street as well. The white worker’s excuses and justifications for the hate crime are a mere example of stereotyping that the Asian American’s are inscrutable and untrustworthy.

At the time, The American Federation of Labor (AFL) was affiliated with the National Asiatic Exclusion League, which had approximately 800 members in Bellingham alone that declared they would, “guard the gateway of the West Coast against Oriental invasion.” Members had also previously written to President Theodore Roosevelt, warning him they would massacre Asians if he didn’t stop their immigration.

In addition to being attacked, the East Indians experienced other types of racism such as stereotypes and hateful slurs. The Bellingham Herald, which was the newspaper at the time stated: “The Hindu is not a good citizen. It would require centuries to assimilate him, and this country need not take the trouble. Our racial burdens are already heavy enough to bear.” The paper went further to insult the intelligence and work skills of the Indians as well. Later, other papers contained insults and racial epithets as well.

After this, most of the Indian millworkers along with Chinese, Japanese and Filipino workers who fled from the riots never returned to Bellingham, Washington.

This racism faced by the Indians is an example of Oriental stereotyping. The millworkers were viewed as coolies or low wage laborers. They posed a threat to the white working man which helped create an emergence of the working class identity. The riot was a act of class consciousness with a purpose to degrade the Asian’s national and racial identity.