Mob drives Punjabi mill workers out of Bellingham

Who: Punjabi mill workers, most of them Sikh, whom the press and officials of the day called "Hindus", and a mob of about 500 white working men. Wikipedia says the mob was mostly members of the Asiatic Exclusion League, which the University of Washington's Civil Rights and Labor History Project says had an 800-member chapter in Bellingham.

What: By 1907 about 250 Indian workers were employed in Bellingham's mills, APIAHIP says, and HistoryLink says residents resented a rumour that a mill was replacing laid-off white workers with lower-paid Asian workers. On Labor Day, 2 September, union organisers demanded that no South Asians be employed after that day. On the night of 4 September the mob broke windows, threw stones, beat men and dragged them from workplaces and homes, and many hid on the tide flats. HistoryLink says the police were slow to respond. They held the workers in the City Hall basement, said to be for their safety, and the National Park Service says local authorities helped the mob by keeping them in "protective custody".

The sources give different counts. The University of Washington project says about 200 workers were held overnight, APIAHIP more than 100, and Wikipedia about 100, with 125 driven out by the next day. HistoryLink says almost all the city's Indian workers left by boat or train the next day, and the University of Washington project says the whole community was gone within ten days. Five men were arrested; all were released and no one in the mob was prosecuted, according to Wikipedia. APIAHIP says they went free because no witnesses came forward.

Where: Bellingham, Washington, in the north-west of the United States, at the lumber mills, the boarding houses where mill workers lived, the tide flats and City Hall.

Why it mattered: A Punjabi community was driven out of a town in days, and nobody answered for it. Three days after Bellingham, on 7 September, a crowd that began as an Asiatic Exclusion League parade attacked the Chinese and Japanese districts of Vancouver. Some who fled went to Everett, Washington, where on 2 November 1907 a crowd of several hundred gathered against about 50 Indian workers at three mills, and police put 34 of them in the city jail, according to HistoryLink. It says most Indian workers driven out of the Pacific North-West went to California.

On the centenary, 4 September 2007, county and city leaders proclaimed a Day of Healing and Reconciliation, according to Wikipedia. The Arch of Healing and Reconciliation, dedicated in 2018, honours the Chinese expelled in 1885, the Indians attacked in 1907 and the Japanese removed in 1942, APIAHIP says.