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.
Quick Start
Browse lynching records by date, place, and event details.
Read article images, transcriptions, and source citations.
Open charts, maps, timelines, and comparative views.
Access structured data used across the archive.
Ask questions and trace evidence across records.
New to the site? Take the guided tour.
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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.
Featured Record
Chinese Man Was Killed by William L. Shaffer’s Posse
1871-09-00Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana • Lynching
In September 1871, an unnamed Chinese man in Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana, was reportedly killed by William L. Shaffer’s posse. No linked newspaper article is currently attached to the record, and the surviving documentation preserves only the bare outline of the event. Even so, the case is important as one of the very few documented anti-Chinese lynchings in the American South.
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