On September 2, 1885, a mob of white coal miners attacked their Chinese co-workers (both groups were employed by the Union Pacific Coal Company) in Rock Springs, Wyoming Territory, over a dispute on who had the right to work in a particularly lucrative area of the mine. The violence occurred after Chinese workers refused to participate in a strike for higher wages planned by the American miners. Twenty-eight Chinese were killed and fifteen were wounded; seventy-nine homes were set ablaze. The bodies of many of the dead and wounded were thrown into the flames. Several hundred Chinese workers were chased out of town and fled to the surrounding hills. Property damage was estimated at $150,000.

A week later, federal troops escorted Chinese laborers back to the mines. After restoring order, the troops remained at Rock Springs until 1898. Although the federal government had refused responsibility for actions in a territory, President Grover Cleveland requested that Congress indemnify the Chinese for their loss of property and Congress complied.

In the mid-1800s, large numbers of Chinese came to the U.S. to build the transcontinental railroad and to work in the gold fields. With completion of the railroad, the ebb of gold prospecting, and widespread economic depression, jobs became scarce and Chinese immigrants faced increasing exclusion, racism, and violence. These factors contributed to the events at Rocks Springs.

The Rock Springs Massacre was followed by a similar situation in early November in Tacoma, Washington, where Chinese immigrants were ordered to leave the city. Several hundred Chinese immigrants left before the eviction deadline but another 200 were marched out of the city by force. Two Chinese settlements were burned down.

On September 2, 1935, George Gershwin signed his name to the completed orchestral score of the opera, Porgy and Bess. The composer called the 700-page score his masterpiece and never ceased to marvel that he had created it. Many critics consider Porgy and Bess to be the first and finest American opera.

Summertime, and the livin’ is easy
Fish are jumpin’, and the cotton is high

“Summertime.” From Porgy and Bess

In February 1934, George and Ira Gershwin and DuBose and Dorothy Heyward began their collaboration on a libretto, songs, and music for DuBose Heyward’s 1925 novel, Porgy. In 1926, the Heywards had turned the novel, which features African-American Gullah culture of South Carolina, into a play that was produced by the Theater Guild in New York in 1927. During the summer of 1934, George Gershwin spent several weeks on Folly Island off the coast of Charleston, where the Heywards owned a beach cottage. There, they observed customs of the local people and listened to their music. Gershwin joined in their “shouting” which involved rhythms created by hands and feet as accompaniment to the spirituals.

The opera opened in Boston on September 30 and premiered in New York on October 10, 1935. The cast included the Juilliard-trained singers Anne Brown as Bess and Ruby Elzy as Serena; Todd Duncan, a Howard University music professor as Porgy; and vaudevillian John W. Bubbles as Sportin’ Life. The songs that they sang, including “Summertime,” “I’ve Got Plenty o’ Nuttin’,” “Bess, You is My Woman Now,” and “It Ain’t Necessarily So,” have entered the American popular repertoire, but are musically subtle and difficult to render—containing jazz, blues, and folk elements. George Gershwin wrote of his composition, “I think the music is so marvelous, I don’t believe I wrote it.” Most reviewers welcomed the opera. One notable exception was composer Virgil Thomson who had collaborated with Gertrude Stein on Four Saints in Three Acts, an opera with an all-black cast. Thomson called Porgy and Bess “crooked folklore and half-way opera.” In spite of these sour notes, the opera played to appreciative audiences in Boston and New York.

Actors Protest Segregation

During its Washington, D.C., run, actor Todd Duncan led the cast in a strike to protest the National Theatre’s segregation policy. The actors held out against offers by the theater to permit African Americans to attend a “blacks only” performance.

As spokesman for the cast, Duncan stated that he would never play in a theater that barred him from purchasing tickets to certain seats because of his race. Theater management gave in to this demand and for the first time an integrated audience attended the National TheatreExternal.

The opera folded after its Washington, D.C., run; West Coast engagements proved a financial disaster. For many years, Porgy and Bess received more attention and acclaim in Europe and the Soviet Union than in the United States. Gershwin’s complete score was not heard on an American stage again until 1976, when the Houston Grand OperaExternal mounted a critically acclaimed production. In 1985, fifty years after its Broadway premiere, the “folk opera” was performed by New York’s Metropolitan Opera Company.

The 1959 film version of Porgy and Bess was added to the National Film Registry in 2011. For background on the tumultuous making of the film, read the essay, Porgy and Bess (PDF), written by film historian Foster Hirsch.