Anatomy of a Song – Sundown Town

“From Maine to California, thousands of communities kept out African Americans (or sometimes Chinese Americans, Jewish Americans, etc.) by force, law, or custom. These communities are sometimes called “sundown towns” because some of them posted signs at their city limits reading, typically, “N*gg*r, Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On […]

Anatomy of a Song – Lily White

Lily White Mine Disaster. Located northeast of Baker City in the Wallowa Mountains, the Lily White Gold Mine is thought to be the source of unverified stories about as many as 100 or as few as 13, Chinese miners being trapped in the mine sometime between 1886 and 1889. Either […]

Anatomy of a Song – Gather the Ghosts and Bones

“By the mid 1940s, Chinatown’s residents had gradually moved on, although the historical record does not tell us where or why they left. In the 1970s, after over a century of a Chinatown in the heart of Baker City, the last of its buildings was torn down. Of the approximately […]

Anatomy of a Song – Ride the Rails

“During the year 1893 a time of great economic depression, a great deal of agitation against the Chinese arose – it being felt, particularly by the unemployed, that the Chinese were taking work away from the whites. On 24 September of that year a great mob of men visited Chinatown […]