Stanford scholars give voice to the Chinese workers who helped build Transcontinental Railroad

A century and a half after Chinese migrants toiled on the Transcontinental Railroad, an interdisciplinary team of Stanford professors is shedding light on a key chapter of the intertwined relationship between China and the United States.

BY CUAUHTÉMOC GARCÍA-GARCÍA
The Humanities at Stanford 

Built in the mid-1800s, the Transcontinental Railroad was among the most ambitious enterprises of American engineering – as well as an important source of Leland Stanford's wealth.  Well over 10,000 Chinese laborers performed the grueling and dangerous work of tunneling through the granite of the Sierra Nevada. They were paid less than fellow Caucasian workers, and had fewer legal rights.

 

Scholars have long known that the Chinese were integral to the construction process, but they knew relatively little about who these workers were, where they came from, what they experienced and what they did after the railroad was completed.

 

Over the past three years a team of Stanford professors has been working to change that through the Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project.

 

Led by Stanford history Professor Gordon Chang and Stanford English Professor Shelley Fisher Fishkin, the project is undertaking the most exhaustive search for materials related to the Chinese railroad workers ever conducted....