One hundred fifty years ago, an event occurred that became a part of American history still studied by academics today: Countless Chinese railroad workers for the Central Pacific Railroad stopped going to work. \u201cIt\u2019s significant because this was the first major strike that any Chinese group ever did. There were earlier strikes, but this was a major one, which involved 2,000 Chinese who struck for one week,\u201d said Chinese-American historian SueFawn Chung, who is professor emerita of the University of Nevada Las Vegas. Railroad work Chung recently discovered an old newspaper article that gave a description of an explosion two days before the start of the strike, which may have sparked it. \u201cThe Chinese were working on the railroad and it was very dangerous,\u201d Chung said. \u201cThere were explosions. There were accidents. There were deaths all around. This particular one was so horrific that the Chinese had to pick up the body parts of horses and white supervisors and other fellow Chinese people.\u201d The Chinese workers wanted more pay, shorter working hours and better working conditions. While historians have long thought the workers did not receive what they wanted and returned to work, after not receiving food from their bosses for a week, Chung made a new connection in another newspaper article. \u201cBut a month later, they got their, at least their wage increase that they wanted from $35 to $40 a month. It was sort of the Chinese system of \u2018save face.\u2019 \u2018OK, we\u2019ll let you save face by saying we didn\u2019t accomplish anything, but you\u2019ll give us the $5 increase a month, and we will have won,\u2019 but of course no one publicized the fact that they got the $5 a month increase.\u201d Watch: Historians Uncovering Details of 150-Year-Old Chinese Strike Family histories As historians look for new details about the Chinese railroad workers, descendants also have been doing their own digging into the past. One of the descendants of a railroad worker is San Diego physician Russell Low, who believes his great-grandfather, Lai Wah Huang, and Huang\u2019s brother, Jick Wah, took part in the strike. Like most of the Chinese railroad workers, Low\u2019s ancestors came to the U.S. from China\u2019s Guangdong province and helped build the railroad that would link the western part of the United States to the East. \u201cMy family took part in the building, not only of the West, but really the building of America. That railroad that he helped to build really united our country, and it was probably one of the most important achievements for America in the 19th century and we took part in that,\u201d Low said. Low said Jick Wah Huang lost an eye in a blasting accident. After building the railroad, he went to Montana and opened a dry goods store. Low\u2019s great-grandfather, Lai Wah Huang, became successful in the cigar industry in San Francisco. He met and married Tom Ying at a time when Chinese women were rare in the United States. \u201cShe was brought here as a child slave. She came to this country when she was 9 years of age, and she was forced to work in servitude as a slave for a very rich family,\u201d said Low, who described how his great-grandmother was treated badly before escaping her servitude. She and her husband had five children. \u201cSo you went from a railroad worker and a slave girl to the first Chinese (American) graduating (with an engineering degree) from UC Berkley,\u201d said Low of one of his grand uncles. \u201cSo you went from a railroad worker and a slave girl to the first Chinese graduating from UC Berkley,\u201d said Low of one of his granduncles. \u200bNumerous descendants The descendants of Huang number 100. They include war heroes, such as Low\u2019s father, who received a Silver Star for his actions in the World War II. \u201cIf you think about what binds these railroad worker descendants together, and we\u2019ve all met each other, I think it\u2019s this courage of the ancestors,\u201d Low said. \u201cThese young men who built that railroad had the right stuff, a determination where they never quit \u2026 you had to adapt. They knew how to learn so they could bend like a supple willow tree and never break.\u201d Low said these characteristics have been passed down through the generations as the legacy of the railroad workers who left their homes for the unknown in hopes of a better life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One hundred fifty years ago, an event occurred that became a part of American history still studied by academics today: Countless Chinese railroad workers for the Central Pacific Railroad stopped going to work. \u201cIt\u2019s significant because this was the first major strike that any Chinese group ever did. There were earlier strikes, but this was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":42173,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42172"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42172"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42172\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}