357 results for: Discrimination
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Japanese Americans boarding ship for return to Hawaii, Seattle, November 7, 1945
Unlike Japanese Americans on the mainland, Japanese Americans living in Hawaii during World War II were not incarcerated en masse. The approximately 150,000 Japanese Americans were the largest single ethnic group in Hawaii and constituted more than one third of the territory’s population. Hawaii’s economy and society relied on the work done by Japanese Americans, and business and military leaders…
ID Number:PI28091
Date:1945
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Signal Corps troops marching at Fort Lawton, January 29, 1944
In 1897, the city of Seattle donated land on Magnolia Bluff to the US government to build a new Army post as part of a defense system for Puget Sound; this was designated as Fort Lawton in 1900. During most of its active service, the fort served as an embarkation station where troops gathered before being sent to duty in…
ID Number:SHS822
Date:1944
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Indigenous encampment at the Seattle waterfront, circa 1895
In 1865 the Board of Trustees of Seattle passed Ordinance No. 5 banning Indigenous people from living in the city unless they worked for a non-Indigenous resident and lived on their employer’s property. Despite this attempt to enforce separation between Indigenous people and the settlers, Seattle depended on Indigenous people. Settlers relied on Native people for domestic work and for…
ID Number:SHS2210
Date:Circa 1895
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Militia lined up during anti-Chinese riot, Seattle, February, 1886
The Seattle riot of 1886 occurred on February 6–9 amidst rising anti-Chinese sentiment caused by intense labor competition and in the context of an ongoing struggle between labor and capital in the Western United States. The dispute arose when a mob affiliated with a local Knights of Labor chapter formed small committees to carry out a forcible expulsion of all…
ID Number:SHS3486
Date:1886
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Industrial Boarding School buildings on the Puyallup Reservation, circa 1885
The Puyallup people are a Coast Salish group whose historic lands are along the Puyallup River Valley. They call themselves “Spuyalepabs” in their native language of Lushootseed, meaning “people from the bend at the bottom of the river.” Before settlers arrived, the Puyallup lived in villages that spread from the Cascade foothills to the shores of Puget Sound. In 1854,…
ID Number:SHS3491
Date:Circa 1885
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Automated salmon processing machine, "Iron Chink," Seattle, 1909
In 1902, machines called "Iron Chinks" started replacing the largely Chinese cannery workers who butchered and canned the fish. The use of a racial slur in the machine's name is one example of the discrimination faced by Chinese immigrants to the US. The name continued to be used into the mid-20th century. Today they are called butchering machines or iron…
ID Number:SHS10662
Date:1909
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Inventor Edmund Augustine Smith, Seattle, circa 1905
In 1903, Seattle inventor Edmund A. Smith (1870-1909) developed a machine that gutted and cleaned salmon for canning 50 to 75% faster than human workers. Most Northwest cannery workers were Chinese immigrants, and Smith, with "unselfconscious racism" (in the words of historian Carlos Schwantes), called his invention the "Iron Chink." The use of a racial slur in the machine's name…
ID Number:SHS12053
Date:Circa 1905