In a book, The Forgotten War Against Chinese Americans (Randon House, 2007, 400p.), Professor Jean Pfaelzer, "tells the unknown story of immigrants who, under assault, stood up for their own civil rights and the civil rights of others. This is an account of racial pogroms, purges, roundups, and brutal terror, but also a record of valiant resistance and community." (Book cover).
Between 1840 and 1900, more than 2 million Chinese laborers left their homeland to work in plantations and mines around the world. Twenty-five thousand of them joined California's Gold Rush. By the 1860s, Chinese immigrants were a vibrant part of the state's economy, accounting in some rural counties for one of every five residents. But by the turn of the century, more than half of a Chinese American population that once reached 80,000 was gone - deported, exiled or dead -- and the survivors herded into urban ghettoes. (Book review by Tony Platt, San Francisco Chronicle, Jun 3, 2007).