race

1909 MEDIA RACISM REPORT CARD

Jeff Elliott Leave a comment

Sonoma County violence against Asian-Americans was at its worst in years, but the newspapers were unsympathetic, even indifferent to getting the basic facts correct.

In Santa Rosa, anti-Chinese racism had simmered for more than a generation; when the town cleaned up its red light district the year before there was a simultaneous call to force out the Chinese, an idea even endorsed by the District Attorney. With such an attitude, justice was sure to be denied the Chinese when attacks occurred. Santa Rosa produce seller Wong Gum was beaten “until he was almost unrecognizable” in 1909 because he dared to ask moocher John Belesto for the return of one of the many tools he had borrowed. Belesto was fined ten dollars and served no jail time.

Japanese-Americans had their own worries. Fear-mongering had been building since the previous year when a nationwide scare about Japanese spies reached Sonoma County, with alarm over a pair of “well dressed and intelligent looking” Japanese men visiting Bodega Bay, and rumors that Japanese spies were trying to learn military secrets by seeking laundry jobs during a war games exercise near Atascadero. The Santa Rosa newspapers, which had long treated the Japanese community with respect, now used the racist term “little brown men” in almost every story that mentioned local Japanese.

The year began with headlines about a series of proposed anti-Japanese bills and resolutions were introduced in both the California state senate and assembly, most infamously the “Anti-Japanese School Bill,” which would force Japanese children to attend separate schools. After it passed in the Assembly, lame duck President Teddy Roosevelt took the unusual step of lobbying the governor to veto it or immediately challenge it in court if it passed. State legislators took this as meddling and were incensed, and the author of the bill took to the floor of the Assembly to make a blatantly racist pitch for his proposal:


“I am responsible to the mothers and fathers of Sacramento County who have their little daughters sitting side by side in the school rooms with matured Japs, with their base minds, their lascivious thoughts, multiplied by their race and strengthened by their mode of life…I have seen Japanese 25 years old sitting in the seats next to the pure maids of California. I shuddered then and I shudder now, the same as any other parent will shudder to think of such a condition.”

The Anti-Japanese School Bill failed (although attempts to revive it were made later in the session), but the Press Democrat gave the story prominent front page coverage, even quoting a sympathetic state senator that “antipathy of the Californians to the Japanese is reasonable, and that they are entirely right to legislate against them if they so desire.”

Such political rhetoric likely encouraged racism, as did the drumbeat about the “yellow peril” in Hearst’s San Francisco Examiner. But for whatever reason, attacks upon local people of Chinese and Japanese origin were both more frequent and more violent in 1909. The worst incident happened in Sebastopol during Chinese New Year. After starting a free-for-all with a group of Japanese men, three toughs next attacked Gee Yook in the Chinatown neighborhood, breaking off the tip of a knife in the man’s head. Also in Sebastopol’s Chinatown a few months later, four drunks trashed a “noodle house,” throwing bottles at owner Gee Chung.

These incidents, along with an attack the previous year, should be considered together. One of the attackers in the stabbing was Irving Masse, and the Press Democrat reported that a man involved in the later noodle house fracas was also named Masse. Another restaurant rioter was identified as Joe Poggi. Readers of this journal may recall that a year earlier, Johnny Poggie and a friend smashed the same shop owner in the head with a brick, breaking his jaw.

Now, the odds are pretty high that “Johnny Poggie” and “Joe Poggi” were the same person, just as it’s very likely that the same guy named Masse was involved in both attacks of 1909. Today a District Attorney would probably spot that Poggi and Masse were committing serial racial hate crimes and prosecute them aggressively to get them off the streets for a few years. But this was Sonoma County a hundred-plus years ago and the victims were Chinese, which together meant that the crimes weren’t taken that seriously. Masse was punished with 50 days for his role in the knife assault and 90 days for his acts at the noodle house. Poggi(e) apparently received no jail time at all; he was not charged in the brutal 1908 bashing of Gee Chung – although the judge suspected he was lying under oath – and two 1909 Sebastopol trials for his role in the restaurant melee ended in hung juries (the case was moved to Santa Rosa where the jury appeared headed for another stalemate).

In the local press, assaults like these were considered routine and often treated as humor items. Per the knife attack, Gee Yook was not fatally injured, according to the Santa Rosa Republican, because “the skull of the Celestial was more than ordinarily thick.” Like the Republican, the Press Democrat called the gang of attackers “half-breeds,” and belabored a joke that “the Indians are going to take a hand in Japanese and Chinese exclusion.” Aside from flinging racist insults, the worst was that neither paper could be bothered to get the story right. Both reported at first that the victim was attacked on the street. But when the matter came before a judge, the setting had changed to Gee Yook’s restaurant, where he was stabbed while “Masse was doing his best to disfigure the Chinaman’s face with his fists.” (The man who drove his knife deep into Yook’s scalp was sentenced to a mere four months in county jail.)

The Republican paper also didn’t think much ado when teenagers assaulted a man named Hop Lee near Guerneville. The boys didn’t want to pay for their laundry and Lee refused to turn it over without cash. They took it from him anyway and used the string tying the package to fashion a sort of noose which they knotted over his queue. Hop Lee was left hanging by his hair from a railroad bridge, where he was found sometime later by a horrified passerby. Instead of voicing outrage over the incident (which apparently wasn’t even investigated by the sheriff), the newspaper used it as an opportunity to include some “funny” pidgin: “I washee all you clo’s flee,” he supposedly promised his rescuer.

A final item transcribed below concerns a dust-up between two Japanese and Chinese men that wound up in court, and is notable for being one of the few items that (apparently) involves Tom Wing Wong, the “mayor of Chinatown” in Santa Rosa and father of Song Wong Bourbeau, whose memories of that era were recorded by Gaye LeBaron.

ROUSING SPEECHES URGE EXCLUSION OF ASIATICS
Wednesdays Session of State Building Trades Council
Exclusion League’s Speakers Arouse Much Enthusiasm–Want Delegates to Indorse the Anti-Race Track Legislation–More Resolutions Adopted

…A hearty greeting was given the fraternal delegates George B. Benham, Charles W. Steckmest and A. R. Yoell, the representatives of the Asiatic Exclusion League. They were not there merely as visitors and in a very few minutes they were called upon for speeches and as each one of them has a natural facility for talking, particularly when it comes to exclusion matters, they were heard with much interest.

Yoell is secretary-treasurer of the Asiatic Exclusion League. He called attention to the rapid increase of Japanese, Chinese and Koreans in the territories of United States. According to his figures there are 72,000 Japanese in the Hawaiian Islands out of a population of 170,000. He also mentioned the births for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1907. The total births in Hawaii were 4,593, and the number of Japanese babies born was 2,445, or over 50 per cent of the total number of children born in the Hawaiian Islands.

In California for the year 1908, Yoell said, there were according to the reports 222 Japanese children were born, 179 Negro children, 155 Chinese and 23 of Indian parentage. This indicates that the increase of Japanese by birth on the soil California is next to that of the white race.

Benham made an exhaustive address. He spoke of the dangers confronting the county by Asiatic immigration and claimed that the press and the pulpit were too indifferent and apathetic on this question…

– Press Democrat, January 14, 1909
HAS A PIECE OF STEEL IN HEAD
Aged Chinaman Injured by Half Breed Indians

A Chinese resident of Sebastopol is going about that place with a piece of knife blade an inch in length in his skull. Were it not for the fact that the skull of the Celestial was more than ordinarily thick, his remains might now be occupying a slab in the morgue. The Chinese was stabbed by one of three drunken half breeds and despite the piece of steel sticking in his head, declined to go for medical attendance until Friday, asserting that he was “too busy” attending to the joss during the New Year’s festivities.

The onslaught on the Celestial was made without provocation or warning. The three Indians had attacked three Japanese in Sebastopol, and in a free for all fight had routed the men from the Mikado’s realm. Emboldened by their success in this fight they wandered to Chinatown and made an assault on the Celestial, whom they found standing at the outside door of the joss house. One of the aborigines wielded a knife on the cranial adornment of the Chinaman and broke the blade, a portion of the steel remaining in the man’s skull.

The injured man has identified two of the half breeds taken before him as his assailants, and they will be held for the crime. Another Indian was arrested here by Constable Orr of Cloverdale on suspicion of having been implicated in the assault. His name is Smith, and he was turned over to City Marshal Fred Mathews of Sebastopol.

– Santa Rosa Republican, January 28, 1909

CHOPS COMPANION WITH A BIG AXE
Three Half Breeds Put to Flight Three Japs and Then Make Attack Upon an Aged Chinaman

Are the California Indians arraying themselves of the side of Japanese exclusion? Three half-breeds went over to Sebastopol on Tuesday night and encountering three Japanese a free-for-all started, in which the Indians are said to have come off with the honors, having put the little brown men to flight.

Doubtless encouraged by the success of their onslaught on the Japs, the Indians later wandered into the little Chinatown at Sebastopol, and finding an aged Celestial in front of the joss house, set upon him and one of them stabbed him in the head and broke off a part of the knife blade in his skull.

On Wednesday the Chinaman was still on duty at the joss house and was apparently not bothering about having the piece of steel in his head. He siad he would have the doctor attend to that on Thursday.

Two half-breeds were taken before the Mongolian for inspection and he identified one of them as the knife wielder. District Attorney Clarence Lea went over to Sebastopol to conduct an investigation on Wednesday morning. Wednesday afternoon Constable Orr arrested an Indian named Smith at the  Court House here on suspicion of being concerned in the trouble, and City Marshal Fred Matthews of Sebastopol took him in charge.

“Looks like the Indians are going to take a hand in Japanese and Chinese exclusion,” remarked some one among the spectators at the Court House. “The Indians were here before the Japs and before the whites, too, for the matter of that.”

– Press Democrat, January 28, 1909

SENTENCED FOR AN ASSAULT
Broke Knife in Chinese Skull at Sebastopol

Carolina Smith was sentenced to serve one hundred and twenty days in the county jail, and Irving Masse received fifty days’ sentence from Justice Harry B. Morris at Sebastopol on Friday.

These are the men who filled up on booze Wednesday and attempted to wreck the noodle joint of G. Yook. The fight ended by Smith sticking a knife into Yook’s skull, and breaking the point off in the bone. Masse was doing his best to disfigure the Chinaman’s face with his fists.

The men were brought to the county jail here Friday afternoon by City Marshal Fred Mathews.

– Santa Rosa Republican, January 29, 1909
MANY JAPS ARE ROBBED
Desperate Man Holds up a Lodging House

A desperate man, who wanted coin badly, robbed a number of Japanese in Brown’s Chinatown in Sebastopol early Saturday morning.

The robber secured more than a hundred dollars and four watches of the little brown men and made his escape. He left absolutely no clew of his identity. The man had his features concealed behind a mask of cloth and the Japs can give no description of the culprit.

The place is conducted by a Japanese named Ezery and the robbery occurred at three o’clock Saturday morning. City Marshal Fred Matthews was notified at once and was on the scene is less than half an hour after the robbery. He was unable to get a clew to the robber.

If the Japs had had a revolver or weapon of any kind at the time they were compelled to hold up their hands they could have killed the man who took their coin. It was a desperate chance and the robber played his hand in a careless manner. He searched the pockets of his victims.

– Santa Rosa Republican, February 27, 1909
A HEAVY SENTENCE FOR ANNOYING CHINAMAN

In Justice Morris’ court in Sebastopol this week two youths name Burns and Masse were sentenced to serve sixty and ninety days imprisonment, respectively, in the county jail for throwing bottles and other missiles at on G. Chung’s head. Another man arrested pleaded not guilty, and will be given a trial on Saturday.

– Press Democrat, May 13, 1909
CHINESE-INDIAN CASE IS ON
Noodles Not on Free List Precipitates Litigation

The hearing of Joe Poggi, an Indian, or of Indian blood, who was charged with disturbing the peace of the Sebastopol Chinatown, and who was tried twice on that count in the Justice Court of that place, the jury disagreeing on each occasion, came up in Judge Atchinson’s court Thursday morning, the case having been transferred. The complaining witness was Gee Chung, a Chinese, who alleged that Poggi was one of a party of four who created a disturbance in a noodle house maintained by the former.

A jury was empaneled, those chosen being… The principal question asked the prospective jurymen and upon which their eligibility to act in the case seemed to largely depend, was whether the fact of the defendant being of Indian blood and the complaining witness a Chinaman would influence them unduly in the bringing in of a verdict. None examined gave any such manifestations of race prejudice.

Assistant District Attorney George W. Hoyle appeared against Poggi and L. C. Scott of Sebastopol on his behalf.

Gee Chung was put on the stand and stated that Poggi and three others came in his noodle establishment at a late hour in a state of intoxication and besought him to treat them to noodles, which he decided to do. And when they offered to let him share in the consumption of several bottles and a demijohn of beer, he persisted in his refusal. It was then the scenes of tumult alleged by him to have taken place commenced. He stated that the glass receptacles of the liquor were hurled violently, striking the partition shivering it into pieces. He ran out and blew the whistle calling the night watch. The latter, Fisher Ames, testified to finding the floor covered with shattered bottles and overturned benches. Companions of Poggi admitted having engaged in a rough house, but denied that Poggi had participated in the exercises. The case was argued at some length by  counsel on both sides and the case was submitted to the jury. The hour being late, the court dismissed the jurymen for dinner, to reassemble and deliberate on a verdict later in the day.

– Santa Rosa Republican, July 29, 1909
CHINAMAN IS HUNG BY QUEUE
Treatment of Celestial Who Tried to Collect Bill

Because he refused to return articles of laundered apparel unless payment was made on delivery, several Oakland high school boys, who are camping in the vicinity of Guerneville, are believed to have been responsible for the treatment accorded Hop Lee, who was discovered Monday morning hanging by his queue to a tie on one of the railroad trestles.

Brunner, who had arisen to go fishing, while crossing a trestle between this place and Guernewood Park, was horrified to see the body of the Chinaman swinging in mid air beneath his feet.

After much effort he managed to pull the Chinese up through the opening between the ties. According to the laundryman’s story he incurred the disfavor of the fellows by refusing to deliver laundry without pay.

The Chinese left his shack Monday morning to deliver laundry and on his return was met by the same crowd of lads. The twine, which Lee had used to secure his bundle, was knotted to the Chinaman’s queue and he was left to dangle above the ground.

Aside from a strained scalp, Hop Lee seems none the worse for his experience. “I washee all you clo’s flee,” he is said to have told Brunner.

– Santa Rosa Republican, July 18, 1909
BAD MAN BROUGHT SAFELY INTO COURT

John Belesto battered up Wong Gum, the well known Chinese vegetable man, the other day, until he was almost unrecognizable, and Monday morning a warrant was issued for his arrest, which was served by Constable Boswell. The trouble was occasioned, states Wong, by Belesto having a habit of borrowing tools from the Chinaman and not having the habit of returning them. When Wong went Friday to get a plow that the other had borrowed, he was met with a single tree in the hands of Belesto, who proceeded to beat the owner of the implement in the manner stated above.

Belesto was brought in by Constable Boswell without trouble and fined ten dollars by Justice Atchinson. Some trouble was anticipated with him, as he had at one time, when in trouble before, threatened to shoot both Constable Boswell and Gilliam.

– Santa Rosa Republican, July 19, 1909
INFORM ON EACH OTHER
Japanese and Chinese Did Respective Tattling

Things are happening in the Mongolian district of Santa Rosa that may yet perhaps develop into international complications between the courts and peoples of Japan and China. And it all grew out of the gambling roundup by the police the other night.

A Japanese and a Chinaman, W. K. Hyama and Wong Wing respectively, appeared in the justice court Tuesday afternoon and swore out a complaint against each other for battery. Wong stated that Hyama owed him $5 and that there remained no way of collecting it other than having recourse to fisticuffs or litigation, which he didn’t want to resort to. Then Hyama hit him, he said.

Hyama asserted that Wong insisted that he, Hyama, reimburse Wong for the $5 fine imposed upon him for gambling on the ground that Hyama had informed the police of the game that the Chinaman had in progress Sunday night. He confessed to hitting the yellow brother, but alleged that the other had struck him first. He also admitted having “tipped” the officers in regard to the Chinese gambling deal. It appears that he had supplied the information in question because he was one of the inmates of the Japanese gambling house, raided the same night by the police, and he and his fellow residents of that place believed that the Celestial had told on them, the Japanese.

Hyama was arraigned before Justice Atchinson on the charge of battery and pleaded not guilty. He gave bond to appear for trial later. He didn’t seem to have much faith in our American courts, for he insisted on Justice Atchinson giving him a receipt for his ten dollars bail.

– Santa Rosa Republican, September 28, 1909
JAPS AND CHINKS AT OUTS IN COURT
Sequel to the Arrest For Gambling on Sunday Night Now to be Aired in Courtroom

As the result of the arrest of a number of Japanese Sunday night for gambling by the police, W. K. Hymana [sic] was arrested yesterday on complaint of Wong Wing, charged with battery, while Wong Wing was arrested on complaint of W. K. Hyana on a similar charge. Both Jap and Chinese were released by Justice Atchinson on $10 cash bail and the trial will be held Thursday.

The men got into a fight over the forfeited bail of the Japanese. Wong Wing claims that Hyama put up his watch for the loan of bail money, and later demanded the watch back without paying the loan, and when refused Hyama attacked him. Hyama on the other hand, claims Wong Wing introduced him to the game and after his arrest when he went to him demanding that he pay the fine, Wong attacked him and he simply defended himself.

– Press Democrat, September 29, 1909

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LOSING MAH HO

Jeff Elliott Leave a comment

It was racism so barbarous that it’s difficult to believe: An adopted child was taken from her mother and loving family because authorities deemed the child didn’t belong with a “lesser race.”

Such was the tragic story of Mah Lo, a nine year-old girl who was living in San Francisco’s Chinatown with her mother in 1909. Her Chinese parents had the paperwork to show they had legally adopted the child in 1904, but that didn’t matter once it was discovered that Mah Lo was really partly Italian (or maybe Syrian) and not Chinese at all. Probably.

(This is the first of two essays on 1909 media racism.)

The news surfaced during the sleepy dog days of midsummer when desperate editors seek any scrap of news, and this story had a sensational angle sure to sell plenty of papers. The San Francisco Call’s headline, “WHITE CHILD IN AN OPIUM DEN” began:

“Mah Ho, 9 years old, with great brown eyes round as the walnut rather than like the almond, and distinctly European features, was taken yesterday morning from a basement opium and gambling den at 54 Spofford alley, Chinatown, and is now in the juvenile detention home…the fact that she was facing the shame and degradation of oriental woman slavery aroused the police and mission authorities.”

Readers of The Call were also told the girl was “kept in close confinement in her prison basement, her only playmate being a puppy, and scarcely it seems, did she ever see the sunlight.” The Call’s version, however, was the very model of restraint compared to what appeared in the San Francisco Daily News: Their version claimed the child was “Secluded for years in a basement where no sunlight can enter, when removed to the street the child covered her eyes with her hands and cried out in pain.” Leaving no lurid description unmilked, her dog was also a “half-starved” mongrel and a “flickering gas light threw fantastic shadows on the blackened walls” as her rescuers descended into the “ill-smelling basement.” As the San Francisco outlet for the UP newswire, the Daily News’ version went out to newspapers nationwide, some using an obviously retouched photograph supposedly showing Mah Ho with eyes large enough and round enough to outbulge some of the goggle-eyed waifs painted by Keane in the 1960s.

In following days reporters continued trying to write about a child abuse/crime story (the girl was described as living in a “hop joint,” a “Chinese brothel” or “discovered during a raid on an opium den”), but the details couldn’t be twisted to fit the usual yellow journalism narratives. For starters, Mah Ho and her adopted mother, Tun See, deeply loved each other; the headline in the next day’s Call was “Little White Girl Longs to Return to Her Chinese ‘Mother.'” Mah Ho could speak only Chinese and was completely accepted as a family member; through an interpreter she told authorities she had “a Chinese papa and mama” and “before the fire [1906 earthquake] we lived in a basement with my papa and mamma and uncles and aunts and cousins.” Even the captivity angle fizzled out; the woman who took Mah Ho from her family admitted she knew about Mah Ho because “she had seen the child in the street.”

From court testimony reported in the papers and an article that appeared only in the Santa Rosa Republican, we can puzzle out some of Mah Ho’s backstory. She was apparently born in Geyserville in 1900 and named Alice. The correspondent to the Republican wrote that the mother’s name was Mabel Bell, and the census that year indeed shows a 16 year-old with that name living in the Russian River area. When her birth mother married a man named William Minto three years later, the toddler was then called Alice Minto. The marriage failed quickly and the mother disappeared. Little Alice was put up for adoption, and later told the court that she had no memories of her birth mother or pre-Chinese life.

Meanwhile, her soon-to-adopt father (called both Mah Juy Lin and Mah Lin Kee in the newspapers) began seeking a child to adopt. His wife Tun See was apparently unable to bear children; he later told the court that she had previously lost two children and was “delicate.”

The adoption process was far more lax than today – see an earlier writeup about the Salvation Army giving away a baby as an attraction for their religious service in Santa Rosa. Thus in early 1904 when two anonymous women showed up at the Children’s Home Finding Society in Berkeley with little Alice in tow, superintendent Rev. Henry Brayton knew he could place her in a good Chinese home.

Brayton later told the Call that he absolutely believed she was Chinese “on account of her dark skin and oriental features. In this belief I placed her with a Chinese family in San Francisco. I would not think of placing a white girl among Chinese.” Others weren’t so sure they could ethnically pigeonhole the girl. Even the woman who took custody of her wasn’t sure she was a “white child,” telling the Call, “I have seen many half whites, but never one that looked as she does. I would say that the child is an Italian Jew.” The Salvation Army captain who delivered her to Tun See thought she was Middle Eastern, probably Syrian.

The girl’s unusual looks led her adoptive parents to fear that Mah Ho/Alice Minto would draw attention from intrusive whites, as happened in an incident described by father Mah Juy Lin. A worker on Central Valley farms, he told the Call they were apparently detained and questioned about the girl, which led them to keep the child away from prying eyes as much as possible: “Once the child and my wife went to the country to see me and the child was arrested, and after that I never sent the child out very much.” In one of the newspaper’s more sympathetic followups, the Call reported “Tun See always said that if they saw her they would carry her away.”

And, of course, that’s what happened on July 28, 1909 in San Francisco’s Chinatown. A police officer, accompanied by an interpreter and Donaldina (!) Cameron of the Presbyterian Mission House along with a reporter or three, seized 9 year-old Mah Ho and took her away. Tun See showed them the adoption papers to no avail; she was told to bring the documents to the court hearing the following week.

One wonders what Miss Cameron thought when she and the other “rescuers” pushed through the door. The Mission had received letters (anonymously written, of course) claiming that Mah Ho was being “whipped, triced up by the thumbs and made to work at late hours of the night” – in short, it was expected to be the situation that Cameron often encountered. Now 40, Donaldina had dedicated her life to rescuing Chinese girls and young women from prostitution and slavery, personally leading the sometimes-dangerous raids. (Good profile here.) But instead of finding a victim needing to be saved, there was a frightened little girl with a puppy hiding behind her mother’s skirt.

Mah Juy Lin, then working on a potato farm near Stockton, returned home immediately and contacted the Six Companies (the umbrella Chinese benevolent society) for legal aid. Before the first court hearing, it was mentioned that he would be petitioning for guardianship of his adopted daughter.

But what of their adoption papers? Weren’t they legal?

Cameron told the Call that she saw a document from the Children’s Home Finding Society. “It purported that the society had investigated and found to the satisfaction of the officers that a certain Lin Juy was a fit person to have the custody of the child.” A Salvation Army worker confirmed “Brayton had investigated the Mah home and himself decided it to be a proper place for the child,” according to the Daily News.

Yet there was a problem with the document, Cameron said: “The name Lin Juy was written over another name, which had been erased, but which was, I believe, a Chinese name.” What this meant is anyone’s guess. Not Cameron, nor anyone else, alleged fraud – that in 1904 the girl was really entrusted to someone else. After all, Rev. Brayton had documented his home visit, and the Salvation Army captain delivered the child to Tun See. More likely the clerk screwed up the pinyin for Mah Juy Lin’s name and corrected it. What impact this had on the outcome of the case is unknown.

Before the next court date, another party announced they wanted guardianship. The new claimant was a Mrs. Ritchie of Healdsburg, who said she was the long-lost Mrs. Minto. Only now she said she wasn’t the mother of little Alice, but actually her first foster mother; she had adopted the child from the Home Finding Society, then forced to return her when the Mintos divorced. She was planning a third marriage to Louis Witschey of San Francisco, whose mother appeared in court on behalf of her future daughter-in-law. “Only God knows how  much I love the child” she sobbed over the girl she had never met. According to the Republican correspondent, they were all liars. Minto-Ritchie was indeed the mom, and this woman claiming to be Mrs. Witschey was actually the true maternal grandmother – and by the way, Mrs. Ritchie was a San Francisco dance hall floozy until recently. (Six gold stars if you followed half of that.)

The last hearing came exactly two weeks after Mah Ho had been taken from her parents. No Witscheys or Mintos were present. After a long conversation with Miss Cameron, Mah Juy Lin and Tun See agreed to drop their application for guardianship.

The only noteworthy events at the hearing was an outburst by one Mrs. Claudia Schad, who told the court she was a missionary among the Chinese. Schad demanded the girl be immediately be taken away from Cameron’s Mission House as no white child should be associating with other Chinese children living at the Mission. Cameron told the court it would be an “unkindness to the child to place her in a white family just now,” as she knew few words of English and was accustomed to only Chinese food. The judge said he would make a decision in two weeks.

The Call reporter at the hearing wrote, “The most pathetic feature of the case is the deep grief of the Chinese pair. When the child was brought to them she clung to the Chinese woman with every demonstration of affection.”

The curtain fell on the tragedy at the end of August. A wire service filler item circulated: “Judge Murasky orders that little Alice Minto, who was taken away from Chinese foster-parents in Chinatown underground den, be placed permanently in care of a white family.”

NOTES ON SOURCES: Articles from the Santa Rosa newspapers and other local journals are transcribed here when they are not available via the Internet. All six of the San Francisco Call articles can be read via the California Digital Newspaper Collection, and the San Francisco Daily News/United Press wire service stories can be found via the Library of Congress.

MAH HO BORN IN COUNTY
White Girl Has Lived With Chinese Family

Little Mah Ho, the Italian child who for six years was kept in a dark room in the home of her adopted father, a Chinaman in San Francisco, has been found to have been born at Geyserville in 1900. William Baker, a teamster residing on Cypress Alley, in the metropolis, has made a statement of what he knows about the child’s early life, and his knowledge of the child’s mother.

Baker declares that little Alice Minto is the daughter of Mrs. Mabel Minto who Tuesday secured a marriage license to wed Louis Witschey, of San Francisco and who was until 3 months ago employed as a dancer in the O. K. dance hall on Pacific street.

Since that time she has been living as Mrs. Mabel Ritchie in Healdsburg.

According to Baker’s story Alice Minto was born in Geyserville in 1900, and the woman who called upon Miss Cameron of the Presbyterian Mission and represented herself to be the first foster mother of the child, is really its own mother, and the woman who wrote to Judge Van Nostrand is the real grandmother.

“Alice Minto was named for her aunt, who was a girl of thirteen years of age when the child was born,” declared Baker.

“I have heard that the child was sold for $15. Mrs. Minto’s maiden name was Mabel Bell and in 1903 she was married to William Minto, an employee of the Chutes, and took the child to live with its grandmother at San Jose. She later disappeared and the person who probably knows most about what became of her is Mrs. Laura Thomas, afterward of the Salvation Army. Mrs. Thomas was engaged to be married to a cousin of Alice Minto’s mother and the mother asked her to dispose of the child. I do not believe the adoption story and know that at the time the child is claimed to have been adopted. Mabel and Alice Minto and their mother were destitute and in no position to care for another.”

H. W. Brayton of the Home Finding Society, admits that he knew the child was placed in a Chinese family and that it was done at the request of Captain Williams. He says that until the time of the fire he kept track of the child, and believed she was in good hands, but since then he had no knowledge of her whereabouts.

– Santa Rosa Republican, August 5, 1909

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WHERE THE MUSIC DIED

Jeff Elliott Leave a comment

Even before Konocti Harbor became synonymous with oldie rock bands, the North Bay was a popular stop for fading has-beens. In the first decade of the 20th century, not a single top name musical act played near Santa Rosa, with the arguable exception of John Philip Sousa’s Band in 1904 (and even his group could be viewed as an oldies touring band, as the March King’s glory days had passed). Instead, the little theaters north of the Golden Gate churned through a procession of unpolished – and often cringe worthy – vaudeville acts, novelty athletic exhibitions such as the man who roller skated on stilts, and those geriatric tours of names once famous on Victorian stages, back 20, 30, even 40 years before.

One group that played Santa Rosa in 1908 had been quite famous less than a decade earlier: The Richards & Pringles Original Georgia Minstrels. The Press Democrat interviewed their manager, asking if he had read a recent newspaper article about declining audiences for minstrel shows. Manager Jack Holland predictably dismissed the idea as “the veriest rot,” conceding that a few minstrel touring companies had folded, but the recent theatrical season had been rough for everyone. “The good old style of entertainment still holds a warm place in the hearts of the American people,” he assured the reporter.

Some of this was braggadocio and whistling past the graveyard; minstrel shows were being slowly squeezed out by the modern and always-changing vaudeville bills, as discussed here in an earlier essay. The Richards & Pringles show wouldn’t fold until around 1916, and a few companies would hang on for another two decades beyond that, booking halls in smaller and smaller rural communities in the Deep South and performing for audiences that were mostly African-American.

Sadly, the PD interview with manager Holland begins with that single insipid question and ends with his predictable and banal answer. Even a Journalism 101 student today would have probed a bit, and realized that this man had stories enough to fill the newspaper for days. (Nor was this the only time that year a clueless local reporter had flubbed the shot at a big, newsmaking interview.) Jack had worked for several circuses before becoming an agent for Richards & Pringles, and by the turn of the century, he and his financial partner simultaneously owned that famous minstrel troupe and three others, all using only African-American performers. For showmen they were remarkably successful, and that should have led an astute reporter to drill down to the fundamental questions: Why is your famous company playing a dinky theater in a remote California farm town? Where’s Billy Kersands? And where were you on that night in Missouri, six years ago?

John Holland started working for Richards & Pringles in 1891, about three years after the company was founded. Billy Kersands was already the star of the show. Holland greatly owed the success of his shows to this black showman, who was possibly the most charismatic stage performer of the late 19th century and could be considered the first crossover act, as wildly popular with black audiences as white. Kersands was renowned as a comic genius and also created – or at least, popularized – a dancing style known as “Virginia Essence,” which was the direct ancestor of tap dance. He was universally admired and respected; when the group toured England and Europe, Queen Victoria awarded him a diamond pin. A good biography – and a Ken Burns-quality documentary, even a motion picture (he looked remarkably like Eddie Murphy) – is long overdue.

The money-making Kersands/Holland machine might have chugged along for another decade if not for what happened February 16, 1902, on the outskirts of New Madrid, Missouri. A day earlier, the Richards & Pringles company had come to town and that afternoon, a few well-dressed black performers were taking a stroll when a couple of local young men began pelting them with snowballs. One of the performers cussed at them. At the sold-out performance that night, local youths heckled the performers and at the end of the show, charged the stage. One of the minstrels fired a revolver and at once there were a half-dozen guns firing in both directions. The audience panicked but when order was restored, the only serious injury was a bullet in the leg of a performer. Members of the troupe suspected of firing weapons were taken to jail, where they were beaten. The next evening, mask-wearing men attacked the sheriff’s office. The mob singled out Louis F. Wright, a 22 year-old trombone player, as the performer who began the shooting. He was dragged from his cell and hanged from a tree at the edge of town. His body was cut down the next morning and shipped C.O.D. to his mother. No one was arrested for involvement with the murder. Wright’s friends and family in Chicago raised money for a lawyer to sue the county, but nothing apparently came of it.

A one -paragraph AP wire story on the lynching appeared in many newspapers, including the San Francisco Call, but there was no followup in the press about the incident, much less comment from the owners or players in the troupe. Judging by ads found in digitized newspaper archives – always a hit-or-miss proposition – the company had few bookings for the rest of the season, and almost all of them were in Northern cities with no habit of lynching black men: Places like Minneapolis, Seattle, and Salt Lake City. When they ventured again into the Deep South at the end of the year, their newspaper advertisements downplayed the Richards & Pringles brand, most of the ad space filled with a photo of Billy’s big grin.

Kersands might not have been in New Madrid that night; some sources place him working that year at another of Holland’s touring groups, “Rusco & Holland’s Big Minstrel Festival.” Nonetheless, he severed all ties with Jack Holland’s minstrel empire at the end of the 1902-1903 season. He next performed a solo act, headlined in a stage comedy and formed “Billy Kersands’ Minstrels.” Later with his wife he renamed the troupe “Billy and Louise Kersands’ Minstrels,” and he broke from the minstrel tradition to create a variety show that was the precursor to vaudeville. (In an interesting switch, it was reported that whites were segregated into a corner of the balcony at these performances.) That he was also the owner of these shows and traveled on his private railway car was unprecedented for an African-American entertainer .

Billy Kersands died in 1915, immediately after closing an engagement in New Mexico. He was 73 and had spent the greater part of fifty years in the spotlight. Newspaper clippings showed he toured major cities in the East and Midwest in his last decade, but reference books are contradictory as to his movements and success (one otherwise-respected source has him performing for Queen Victoria nine years after her death). At the time Jack Holland was being interviewed by the Press Democrat in 1908, he was again part of a traditional minstrel show, headlining for the “Dandy Dixie Minstrels” in a swing through small cities in the Texas panhandle and adjoining states. But that doesn’t mean his stardom was in descent; at the same time, a top white vaudeville act, The Three Leightons, were performing an ersatz minstrel routine that centered upon an imitation of Kersands.

Between the 1902 lynching and its closure in 1916, the Richards & Pringles Minstrel Show apparently rarely performed below the Mason-Dixon Line. Perhaps Southern theater owners were skittish that local yokels would want to “finish the job” and string up other members of the company, or maybe they feared that the African-American performers were troublemakers. For whatever reason, the show toured mainly in the West, Southwest, and Upper Plains states, where audiences would be mainly white.

So this was this answer to the question that the Press Democrat reporter didn’t ask: They were in Santa Rosa because they now just performed outside the South in places where a sentimental view of “Dixie” prevailed. And without a bi-racial audience, they undoubtedly cut or “whitened up” sections of the program that appealed directly to blacks, leaving only a parody of the original show with a supersized portion of racism. What appeared here was probably more like “A Tribute to the Richards & Pringles Original Georgia Minstrels,” not so different from those ghost bands that tour under a once-famous name. Had they stuck around another seventy years, they undoubtedly would’ve been playing at Konocti.

JACK HOLLAND TALKS ON MINSTRELSY

A reporter recently met “Jack Holland,” for many years the business manager of Richards & Pringles famous minstrels who appear here on Monday night, and called his attention to an article in a recent issue of a metropolitan paper on the decadence of minstrelsy as a form of entertainment.

Mr. Holland replied with a smile: “Oh, yes, I read the article with a great deal of amusement. Every once in a while you will read an article by some misinformed writer about the passing of the minstrel show. That Americans have tired of the form of amusement that used to make their grandfathers, and yes, even their great grandfathers, laughed till the tears rolled down their cheeks.

“But such talk is the veriest rot. Minstrelsy was never in a more flourishing condition than at this very day.

“This is a progressive age, and one must keep abreast of the times if he is catering to the public. The season of 1907-08 was a particularly disastrous one. Scores and scores of dramatic shows and musical comedies were obliged to close for lack of patronage. Very few indeed were the minstrel shows that gave up the fight. There were two or three minstrel shows closed, to be sure, but they were inferior companies, and scarcely worthy [of] the name.

“None of the leading organizations closed, which proves conclusively that the good old style of entertainment still holds a warm place in the hearts of the American people.”

– Press Democrat, October 31, 1908

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