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A Slave To Yellow Peril The 1886 Chinese Ouster Attempt In Wichita, Kansas, Julie Courtwright

Great Plains Quarterly

Wichita's war on the Chinese began in 1886. Although a small war in comparison to other anti-Chinese outbursts in the American West, the persecution and violence against the city's small Asian population was nonetheless terrifying and significant to those who were the focus of the racist demonstrations. In an attempt to follow the national anti-Chinese trend of the late nineteenth century, which the Chinese called the "driving out time,"¹ groups such as the local assemblies of the Knights of Labor and the Women's Industrial League in Wichita, Kansas, organized a boycott against Chinese businesses. Citizens attacked the "yellow peril" …