Ah Quong Tir Was Handed Over and Dismembered

In June 1891, Ah Quong Tir was acquitted in Bridgeport, California, on a charge that he had murdered an Indian man, but he never left town alive. A Reuters dispatch in the Birmingham Daily Post stated that “the prisoner was dragged from the court-room by the people and handed over to the Paiute Indians, who cut him to pieces.” A later investigation in The Pittsburg Dispatch alleged that white officials and local elites helped abandon him to the mob. The case drew protests from the Chinese Consul and stands as one of the most gruesome anti-Chinese lynchings in the archive.