LaborFest:1877 Strike & The Chinese Struggle for Justice

Presentation by Anna Naruta Ph.D., Director of Collections of Chinese Historical Society of America
The Transcontinental Railroad from the West Coast was built primarily by Chinese immigrant labor and this aspect is usually not covered in American history. In San Francisco, which is officialy 1/3 Asian American, but in reality probably 1/2 Asian American, mostly of Chinese descent, this is an especially important part of American history. As is stated at the website on the Chinese American Contribution to the Transcontinental Railroad, http://cprr.org/Museum/Chinese.html,
'Without the efforts of the Chinese workers in the building of America's railroads, our development and progress as a nation would have been delayed by years. Their toil in severe weather, cruel working conditions and for meager wages cannot be under appreciated. My sentiments and thanks go out to the entire Chinese-American community for its ancestors' contribution to the building of this great Nation."
The 1877 Railroad Strike is described by the United Electrical workers' site at http://www.ranknfile-ue.org/uen_1877.html
as "the first major strike in an industry that propelled America’s industrial revolution. It was the first national strike, stretching from Atlantic to Pacific. In some cities, especially St. Louis, the struggle became one of the nation’s first general strikes. This was the first major strike broken by the U.S. military. Probably in no other strike had so many working people met a violent death at the hands of the authorities."