National Guard troops standing guard outside Glass House Farms during a federal immigration raid in Camarillo, California in July this year. Agents detained workers at the farm targeting state licensed cannabis and other crop operations. — AFP
THERE is a pretty little cemetery in California’s foggy north-west corner, where moss-covered headstones date back to the 1860s.
Every time Karen Betlejewski visits the Smith River Community Pioneer Cemetery, she places silk flowers beside a simple granite marker in the north-east corner. It belongs to a man she never met.
“DOCK RIGG 1850 – 1919”, it reads.
At the time of his death, he was said to be the only Chinese person formally allowed to live in rural Del Norte County – three decades after white residents there and in neighbouring Humboldt County had forced out their Chinese neighbours in a series of violent purges.
They called him Dock Rigg – the surname of his employer – but government papers list his name as Oo Dock.
He worked as a cook and ranch hand for two prominent families in the Smith River Valley, who arranged for him to work across the Oregon line until the racist fervour subsided enough for him to quietly return.
Dock’s flower-adorned grave in a town of 1,200 people stands as a modest monument to the extraordinary perseverance of a man who endured one of the ugliest, often-overlooked chapters in California history – when Chinese immigrants were banned, Chinatown razed and mobs beat and murdered Chinese residents.
Like Rigg, a handful of Chinese labourers remained in Northern California after the purges, living quietly in isolated areas, said historian Jean Pfaelzer. She sees echoes of those expulsions in today’s deportations of Latino immigrants.
“Think of all the parents not sending their children to school right now and people not showing up to work. They’ve been scared to live their full lives,” said Pfaelzer, author of Driven Out: The Forgotten War Against Chinese Americans. “History is smacking us in the face again.”
A quiet life, a lasting impression
In the Del Norte County Historical Society Museum, which Betlejewski manages, a thin manila folder contains what little is known about Dock.
The documents describe a man with a good sense of humour who entertained local children by pushing them around in wheelbarrows.
“Dock was a lovable fellow and well known throughout the area for his humour, his good cooking, and his hospitality to the travellers who passed through,” one woman recalled.
Another note, however, hints at his isolation: “It is reported that he never left the ranch in all the years he worked there.”
Dock’s 1894 Certificate of Residence, signed by a revenue collector in Portland, Oregon, lists his occupation as cook and his complexion as “dark”.
Like all Chinese residents who arrived before the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, he had to carry such papers to avoid deportation.
He was likely a child when he arrived in the United States, first working in gold mines across California and Oregon before settling in Del Norte County.
There he found employment with ranchers John and Ann Rigg and later with Raleigh Scott, a county commissioner and state lawmaker who inherited the Riggs’ ranch.
Dock lived out his final years with the Scotts, dying in their home in 1919. He never married, never had children, and rarely left the property.
The purges begin
The wider purge of Chinese communities began in 1885 in Eureka, 160km south of Smith River.
That February, a white city councillor was killed by a stray bullet during a reported dispute in Chinatown.
An angry mob of more than 600 filled the streets. Gallows were erected, an effigy of a Chinese man strung up.
Some demanded slaughter, others suggested burning the neighbourhood, but the wooden buildings belonged to a white landlord.
Instead, a committee ordered every Chinese resident to leave.
The sheriff arranged wagons for belongings, while armed vigilantes patrolled.
The next morning, 300 Chinese residents were marched to the wharf and loaded onto steamships bound for San Francisco.
The expulsion, celebrated by whites as the “Eureka Method”, was soon copied across California, including in Del Norte County.
Remembering a dark history
In recent years, California cities have begun acknowledging past wrongs.
Antioch and San Jose apologised in 2021 for burning their Chinatowns. San Francisco followed in 2022, and Los Angeles is developing a memorial for an 1871 massacre in which at least 18 Chinese people were killed.
In Eureka, the group Humboldt Asians & Pacific Islanders in Solidarity (HAPI) has led efforts to commemorate the town’s long-erased Chinatown. Signs, a mural and a renamed roadway now honour Chinese American pioneers, and a larger monument is planned.
“Having those names, knowing what they did, that they existed as people, that makes a huge difference,” said Amy Uyeki, a member of HAPI’s steering committee. “Then they’re not just a group of anonymous people. Personal stories ring true to people.”
Dock’s quiet memorial
While cities plan high-profile monuments, Dock’s grave remains a quiet reminder of the purges. His granite headstone, thought to have been installed around 1969 during a cemetery restoration, replaced an earlier wooden cross.
At the time of his death, being buried in the Smith River cemetery – where no other Chinese people were interred – was considered a significant mark of respect, said Carolyn Spencer Westbrook, who co-wrote a history of the site.
“A lot of people really loved him,” she said.
Pink and white silk flowers rested against his stone last August, placed there by Betlejewski after visiting a friend’s grave nearby. That friend, who adored Dock, had once demanded his photograph be displayed in the local museum.
More than a century after his death, Dock’s modest grave continues to tell a story that California is only beginning to fully confront. — Los Angeles Times/TNS
