Chinese Red Record

Documenting the history of anti-Chinese lynchings, riots, and massacres
in the American West (1850 – 1915)

What Is Chinese Red Record?

Chinese Red Record is a scholarly archive of anti-Chinese lynchings and related racial terror. It traces how lynchings, riots, massacres, expulsions, and exclusion worked together to drive Chinese communities from mining camps, railroad towns, river ports, and cities across the American West and beyond.

Drawing on a newly compiled dataset of documented lynchings, digitized newspaper archives, maps, and structured records, the archive reconstructs how violence spread across regions and how newspapers, law, and politics helped nationalize anti-Chinese racial terror.

The interactive maps, timelines, and charts presented here translate the dissertation's quantitative and spatial arguments into web form. Where possible, the visualizations correspond directly to the thesis, The Chinese Red Record: Western Lynch Law and the Nationalization of Racial Terror, 1853-1915.

Read the full thesis framing in About → Project & Thesis.

Quick Start

New to the site? Take the guided tour.

Contribute or Share Feedback

Do you know of an incident of lethal anti-Chinese violence that belongs in the archive, or do you have a question, suggestion, correction, or comment about the website? Use the options below to submit evidence for review or send feedback.

Map showing location of Lone Pine, California

A Chinese Man Was Brutally Lynched for Murder

1868-10-03

Lone Pine, California • Lynching

On October 3, 1868, an unnamed Chinese man was taken from the custody of the Sherifff at Lone Pine and brutally lynched. He was accused of killing a "Mexican near Walker's Pass" (San Francisco Chronicle, October 25, 1868, page 1). The incident was reported in several other newspapers with very few details.

Read full record →