13. Despite himself being an Irish immigrant to the United States, Denis Kerney led the Workingmen’s Party of California on a violent crusade against Chinese migration to America
Born in Oakmount, County Cork, Ireland in 1847, in 1868 Denis Kerney emigrated to the United States. Becoming an American citizen and establishing a successful drayage business, Kerney rapidly became a leading advocate for worker’s rights in his opposition to monopolized industries in San Francisco. Despite being an immigrant himself, as well as the victim of sustained xenophobic abuse for being a “foreign agitator” as the face of the Workingmen’s Party, Kerney was intensely racist against Chinese migrants. Denouncing the arrival of Chinese immigrants as the cause of white unemployment, by 1878 Kerney had become militant in his outrage.
Giving increasingly angry and violent speeches before crowds of thousands, always ending with the slogan “the Chinese must go”, in 1878 Kerney issued an ultimatum to railway companies. Commanding them to fire their Chinese laborers within three months, Kerney invoked the memory of Judge Charles Lynch during the Revolutionary War as a threat. Embarking on a nationwide tour to spread his message, on August 5 Kerney spoke before a packed house at Faneuil Hall in Boston. Despite his popular appeal, Kerney’s socialist political tendencies were to be his downfall. Unable to attract beyond his core demographics, Kerney, claiming victory in 1882 with the Chinese Exclusion Act, subsequently faded into obscurity.