Aftermath and Indictments

After Tacoma's Chinese residents were wrongfully expelled, they sought justice in court with help from Chinese merchants in San Francisco, persuading a federal prosecutor to issue indictments in late 1885 against 27 men, including Mayor Weisbach, on charges of conspiracy and insurrection. The indictments were overturned, reinstated, and overturned again in 1886, and at one point charges were dismissed because women had illegally served on the grand jury. A new grand jury convened in 1887, but jurors refused to reissue the indictments, and the 27 local men were never held accountable. When the accused returned to Tacoma after being taken to Vancouver, Canada, read their indictments, and given a trial date in April 1886 with bail set at $5,000, they were greeted as heroes with a band, cannon fire, a procession, and a torchlit parade, while Rose Stannous praised them for clearing the city of what she called slave labor and making Tacoma the first city in the country to solve the Chinese problem without violence. Tacoma's expulsion of Chinese people and its continued discouragement of their resettlement gave the city an inhospitable reputation, and Chinese were not seen there again until the 1920s. After the Chinese Imperial Government protested the violence, urged prosecution, and sought indemnity from the United States for losses suffered, Congress eventually agreed to pay indemnities to China, though it is unknown whether any of the afflicted Chinese ever received any of those funds.

Tacoma, Washington · United States