Bellingham

Basic Information

Type of Place

Independent City or Town

Metro Area

Politics c. 1860?

Don’t Know

Unions, Organized Labor?

Don’t Know

Sundown Town Status

Sundown Town in the Past?

Surely

Was there an ordinance?

Don't Know

Sign?

Don’t Know

Year of Greatest Interest

Still Sundown?

Surely Not

Census Information

The available census data from 1860 to the present

	Total	White	Black	Asian	Native	Hispanic	Other	BHshld
1860
1870
1880
1890
1900
1910
1920
1930
1940
1950
1960
1970
1980
1990
2000
2010
2020

Method of Exclusion

• Violent Expulsion

Main Ethnic Group(s)

• Unknown

Group(s) Excluded

• Asian Indian

Comments

“In 1907 some two thousand Hindus were expelled
from the city and placed on trains and shunted back
across the border to Canada, and no single man was
hurt in the three days that the so-called ‘riots’
continued. This was due very larely [sic] to the action
of Chief Thomas, who recognized the universal
demand of the whites that the brown men be expelled,
and while not aiding in rounding up the Hindus, the
police were simply watchful to see that no violence
was offered the aliens.
“Beginning early one morning a big mob of white
men swept down on the waterfront from barrack to
mill and to boardinghouse, and gathered the Hindus
together in hundreds. A few stones were thrown, and
it is admitted the Hindus were terrorized. Early in the
game the police saw that to prevent the expulsion of
the invaders many lives must be sacrificed, and the
mob was directed to round up the Hindus and bring
them to the city hall, where they would be held and
shipped away. This was done, and for two days the
work of rounding up the Indians and shipping them
northward continued until there remained not a coolie
laborer. And like the Chinamen, who have never
returned to Tacoma, the Hindu has given Bellingham a
wide berth since.”

Several subdivisions in the city contained restrictive
covenants.