News, An L.A. mob once massacred 18 Chinese people. Now, a push to never forget the racist assault : detailed suggestions and opinions about An L.A. mob once massacred 18 Chinese people. Now, a push to never forget the racist assault .
It happened in the early days of Los Angeles, when the city was a dusty, violent, frontier town.
An eruption of gunfire around 4 p.m. on Oct. 24, 1871, spurred what’s believed to be the most lethal example of racial violence ever recorded in the city — the Los Angeles Chinese massacre.
Hundreds made up the largely white mob that descended upon what’s now downtown Los Angeles. They indiscriminately beat, shot or hanged any Chinese person they saw.
“Then, every rickety shanty in Chinatown was looted. ‘Boys, help yourselves,’ was the cry,” according to an account of the lynchings published by The Times in 1999.
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