Here’s how SLO newspapers used racist rhetoric to target Asian immigrants over the decades
Journalists look to shine a light on injustice, tell stories that have been left untold.
As part of Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, here are examples of shameful racist actions targeting the Asian community associated with San Luis Obispo journalists.
Walter Murray
The founding editor of The Tribune started his paper in reaction to the first newspaper in San Luis Obispo, the Pioneer.
Walter Murray, who led the Tribune as editor from 1869 to 1872, believed in the Union. He was a full-throated supporter of the Republican Party of presidents Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses Grant.
Murray was also interested getting elected judge and wanted to have an ally in the media.
The Pioneer was cheerfully racist and its editor, Rome G. Vickers was waging war against the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, then being voted on nationally. The 15th Amendment prohibited voting restrictions based on “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”
Murray and the Tribune fully endorsed the 15th Amendment, but Vickers found a way to embarrass Murray.
Almost a decade earlier, Murray had been a Democratic state assemblyman. Murray changed his party affiliation when the Confederates fired on Fort Sumpter in 1861, igniting the Civil War.
In March 25, 1859, Murray was one of five members of the so-called “Chinese Committee” to stop Chinese immigration to California.
The Sacramento Union published Murray’s report calling Chinese immigrants “heathen and idolatrous in their religious tenets.” They were also seen as “grossly immoral, filthy and disgusting in their practices and habits.”
Murray’s report asks why wealthy business owners “are openly welcoming to our shores the dingy inhabitants of Asia to compete with and to jostle our white brethren?”
The screed finished with a call to Congress “The passage of a law for the prevention of the further immigration of said Chinese or Mongolians to this state.”
Vickers reveled in republishing the most racist parts of Murray’s report in the Oct. 12, 1869, edition of the Pioneer and called Murray a hypocrite for supporting a civil rights amendment.
At the time, both men and the political parties they belonged to — Republican and Democrat — opposed Chinese immigration. Soon a third party with even more anti-Chinese leanings, the Workingmen’s Party of the United States, would be founded.
A year before his assembly term, Murray took a more tolerant tone in a private letter to his sister.
In May 28, 1858, Walter wrote to his sister Anne in England, arguing that church attendance does not guarantee a seat in heaven.
“And I conceive that a Buddhist might perchance reach the Christian heaven and a really true believer in the principles of Presbyterianism or the doctrines of the Brethren might find himself lacking at the great day,” he wrote.
In the Nov. 4, 1871, issue of the Tribune, Murray condemned a murderous attack by white people on Chinese immigrants that resulted in 18 deaths, calling it a “disgraceful tragedy.”
“In light of this massacre, who is the inferior race? — the murdered ones in that pile of victims, or the wretches who were guilty of running amuck in the streets of Los Angeles,” he asked.
Murray wanted to halt immigration from China, but in this case he condemned violence against those immigrants.
“Those who did this wrong must be made to suffer,” he wrote, “and the people themselves must rise above the cowardice of apathy, and bring the offenders to their just account.”
O.F. Thornton
For the first 56 years of its existence, the Tribune was a Republican or neutral newspaper.
A Democrat, James J. Ayers, was editor for a brief three-month stint. He endorsed Republican candidates but he quickly returned ownership to Murray.
A few years after Murray left the Tribune, Oscar Thornton came to town.
Thornton listed his occupation as miner in the voter registration roll in 1875. He had come from silver and gold mines in remote Alpine County to the relatively big town of San Luis Obispo, which had 2,000 inhabitants.
Thornton, who served as Tribune editor from 1875 to 1878, was a booster with big, impractical ideas.
Shortly after arriving in town, he was elected director and president of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows and quickly floated a stock scheme to build an extravagant $10,000 hall. The plan stalled and money was returned.
Thornton became partner in a newspaper that had become nonpartisan. It was one of the rare moments when there wasn’t a competing, polarizing newspaper in town.
Thornton, a Republican most of his life, soon became infatuated with the new Workingmen’s Party.
The slogan of the party’s leader, Dennis Kearney, was “The Chinese must go!”
Racist anti-Chinese rhetoric was fused with a policy of populist economic redistribution, which alarmed Republican businessmen. Breaking up of businesses was anathema but they didn’t seem concerned about the racism.
When Thornton was seen organizing at a Workingmen’s Party rally, the businessmen of San Luis Obispo were incensed.
A letter signed by 34 businessmen said Thornton had to go. To compare, there were only 23 local advertisers in the first edition of the Tribune nine years earlier.
Thornton sold his share of the paper to his partners.
Jacob K. Tuley and W.W. Waters rapidly returned the paper to nonpartisan status.
“The fight between Mr. Thornton and the people is no fight of ours; the only course left us we have taken,” they said.
It was the high water mark for the Workingmen’s Party. The party would win a third of the seats to the California Constitutional Convention in 1878 and control San Francisco City government in 1879, but the party’s star gradually faded.
For decades, Chinese Americans, African Americans and Native Americans were not allowed to testify in court, making it impossible to get justice in the court of law.
Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882. It was signed into law by then-President Chester A. Arthur.
When Thornton left California for Arizona, he returned to the Republican party.
J.R. Paulson
Paulson worked in various roles from managing editor to publisher of the Telegram-Tribune from 1936 to 1944.
He was editor in 1941 when the Japanese military launched a surprise attack on the naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, shocking the United States. Rampant racism was the response.
In January 30, 1942, the San Luis Obispo Chamber of Commerce passed a resolution to remove Japanese immigrants and people of Japanese descent from the Central Coast area to inland sections outside the war zone. The meeting was chaired by president J.R. Paulson.
In a speech two days earlier, U.S. Representative Martin Dies (D-Texas) predicted a “tragedy on the West Coast that will make Pearl Harbor sink into insignificance.” He chaired the House Un-American Activities Committee.
Fear of a second Pearl Harbor sneak attack was cited as a motivation for imprisoning American citizens, and that fear extended to the federal level.
On Feb. 19, 1942, then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, which approved the relocation of people of Japanese descent into internment camps.
About 1,000 people of Japanese descent were forced to leave their homes in San Luis Obispo County and be imprisoned at concentration camps across the west. About 120,000 U.S. residents total were relocated.
There were no instances of sabotage or damage from the Japanese American community during the World War II. Ironically, only about 2% of the people of Japanese descent in Hawaii were relocated to camps due to the government slow walking the process.
Even the often progressive California Gov. Earl Warren supported internment, an action he would later regret.
On March 2, 1942, the Telegram-Tribune carried the story of Hiedo Murata, a Japanese-born U.S. Army veteran of World War I who killed himself with poison rather than face life in a concentration camp. He is buried in the Arroyo Grande Cemetery.
Murata, who was just 52, died with a testimonial of appreciation from the Monterey County Board of Supervisors in his pocket.
Anyone who tours the former Manzanar War Relocation Center, now a National Historic Site, can feel the sense of remote isolation and the penetrating cold wind off the snowcapped Sierra Nevada.
Most of the camp has long since been dismantled but wind still chills to the bone on a day that snow blankets the Sierra Nevada.
BEHIND THE STORY
MORETribune examines history of anti-Asian racism in SLO County
The month of May is Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. The celebration coincides with a concerning rise in anti-Asian violence across the United States.
With that in mind, The Tribune is exploring what it means to have Asian and Pacific Islander heritage in San Luis Obispo County.
Why we did this story
As part of our project, led by reporter Lindsey Holden, the Tribune is looking into the historical erasure of Asian and Pacific Islander communities in the county.
Throughout the month, we are examining the often overlooked yet vital role that residents of Asian descent have played in the county’s history.
We’re also taking a hard look at how the Tribune and other local newspapers used harmful racist rhetoric to target Asian immigrant communities — and we are hoping to tell more of the stories of those people who were ignored or misrepresented in the past.
We are also delving into modern anti-Asian bias, and what forms that takes for current county residents of Asian and Pacific Islander descent.
Through this project, The Tribune hopes to shine a light on the shadowy past — and present — of racial bias and hate in San Luis Obispo County.
This story was originally published May 8, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
