booknotes / By Amy Stewart

Driven Out: The Fortgotten War Against the Chinese

(June 7, 2007)  Late on the night of February 6, 1885, a gallows was built on Fourth Street between E and F Streets on the edge of Chinatown, in Eureka, a foggy lumber town on California’s North Coast.”

When Jean Pfaelzer’s new book arrived in the mail, it opened to that page and I almost dropped it. A gallows in downtown Eureka? Chinatown? I didn’t know anything about this. Of course, I didn’t grow up here, but as I asked around I found that very few people knew anything about the expulsion of Chinese people from Humboldt County in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Driven Out: The Forgotten War Against Chinese Americans, by Jean Pfaelzer

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The book is Driven Out: The Forgotten War Against Chinese Americans , and University of Delaware professor Pfaelzer was motivated to write it after she noticed the near absence of Asian students at HSU when she taught there years ago. She had heard that Chinese residents were forced out of the area and not allowed to return until the 1950s, but it was a story that had only been told as local lore. Pfaelzer later moved to Washington, DC, where she worked in a number of policy jobs, and then went on to her teaching position at the University of Delaware.

But she kept a cabin in Big Lagoon, and continued to wonder about this story when she came back to spend time in Humboldt County. When she began the research for Driven Out , which is her fifth book, she was surprised to realize that Eureka was far from the only community to round up Chinese-Americans and force them out of town. However, Eureka’s expulsion was so quick and thorough that the tactics came to be called “The Eureka Method.”

Eureka’s Chinese expulsion began when a city councilmember was killed in crossfire in Chinatown, leading an angry mob to force every Chinese person out of town. It continued for decades through official policy and the informal pressure of local law enforcement and citizen groups. A booklet produced by the Chamber of Commerce called The Humboldt Souvenir bragged that:

“One fact makes Humboldt unique among the counties of California and indeed, on the Pacific Coast — we have no Chinese The community rose up as a man and drove every Chinese out of the county Even in far-off China, the coolies know that they are not permitted to come here, and none ever attempt it.”

Pfaelzer is getting ready for a book tour that will include four stops in Humboldt County next week. I spoke to her by phone and she was getting ready to leave. Here’s just an excerpt from our conversation, but go see her next week to learn more.

NCJ: I was surprised to see the names of so many prominent Eureka citizens involved in the expulsion. Buhne, Sweasey — you don’t have to know much about Eureka history to recognize these names.

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