Professor Gordon Chang, whose research at Stanford University focuses on the relationship between race and ethnicity in America, is the final speaker at this year's First Friday Forum series when he speaks, via Zoom, about the Chinese immigrants who helped construct the Transcontinental Railroad between 1865 and 1869. .
June 7 sees the final lecture in this year’s First Friday Forum Speaker Series, with a Zoom presentation by Dr. Gordon Chang, Oliver H. Palmer Professor in Humanities at Stanford University. The program begins at 1:30 p.m.
Sponsored by the Lafayette-Orinda Presbyterian Church (LOPC), the current program has offered a diverse selection of thought-provoking lectures with consistently engaging presenters since it began in January.
Professor Chang’s upcoming lecture – “Forgotten, Even Ignored, the Chinese Who Built the Western Portion of the Transcontinental Railroad” – tells the story of the Chinese immigrants whose back-breaking drudgery from 1865 to 1869 made it possible to cross the country in days instead of months.
Around 90% of the workforce was made up of Chinese labor and yet, said Chang, “these railroad workers have been little understood and were largely invisible.”
It was an era when China’s immigrants faced such appalling discrimination that, with so few job options, they had no choice but to work for extremely low wages, while simultaneously lining the pockets of the railroads’ four owners. One such was Leland Stanford, whose wealth led to the founding of Stanford University.
These 12,000 poorly treated laborers should, according to Chang, “be remembered and honored for their contributions, and my talk will restore their lives, work and sacrifices to our history.”
Chang’s latest book, “The Chinese and The Iron Road,” which he co-edited with Stanford Professor Shelley Fisher Fishkin, was published in 2019 on the 150th anniversary of the completion of the transcontinental railroad.
It explores the experiences of Chinese railroad workers and claims to illuminate, more fully than ever before, the interconnected economies of China and the United States, the dynamics of the racism these workers encountered and their role in shaping both the history of the railroad and the development of the American West.
This lecture is only available on Zoom. To access this presentation, or to explore First Friday Forum archives going back to 2022, contact the Lafayette-Orinda Presbyterian Church at fff@lopc.org.
