The Fervor

by Alma Katsu

In 1871, in one of the largest mass lynchings in U.S. history, a mob in Los Angeles attacked and killed nineteen Chinese residents, part of a growing wave of sentiment against Asians, who were seen as taking jobs that belonged to white laborers. This led to passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which banned Chinese laborers from immigrating to the U.S. • In the U.S. in the 1940s, 120,000 people of Japanese heritage were forced to relocate to internment camps due to fears of espionage, following the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Over 60 percent of internees were U.S. citizens. No spies were ever found. • In 1979, the Ku Klux Klan arrived in Seadrift, Texas, to intimidate Vietnamese crab fishermen, following an incident between local white and Vietnamese fishermen in which a white fisherman was killed. The Vietnamese involved in the shooting were acquitted on the grounds of self-defense, but the acquittal prompted the Ku Klux Klan to descend on Seadrift and maintain a long campaign of violence and intimidation against the Asian community there. • Vincent Chin, a Chinese American, was beaten to death in 1982 by two