Bellingham ceremony honors victims of bigotry, warns history is repeating

Past injustices against minority residents in Bellingham are in danger of being repeated because of President Donald Trump’s scapegoating of undocumented residents, transgender people and others, officials said in a ceremony at a downtown monument that honors the victims of bigotry and mob violence more than a century ago.

Whatcom County Executive Satpal Sidhu discussed the current national political climate in an address to about 50 people who gathered near the Arch of Healing and Reconciliation on the anniversary of the Sept. 4, 1907, riot where white Bellingham residents forcibly ousted hundreds of East Indian workers who they accused of taking their jobs.

“A lot of people don’t know about (the 1907 riot). And if you see what’s going on today, it’s even more needed. A lot of people say, when we talk about this (incident). People say it’s amazing that something like this can happen in a community. I say, it’s happening (now),” Sidhu said.

Sidhu didn’t mention Trump by name, but his message was clear.

“This is how it happens. We must speak up,” Sidhu said. “We all agreed, never again. To anybody. We should take a pledge.”

Sidhu, a member of the Sikh faith who was born in India and immigrated to the U.S. from Canada, was elected county executive in 2019 and was re-elected in 2023. He was a driving force behind the creation of the monument at the corner of Commercial and Lottie streets, between the Bellingham Public Library and City Hall.

That monument will soon have a digital component in the form of a QR code that will allow quick access to information about three dark events in Bellingham history: the ouster of Chinese workers in 1885, mob violence that forced East Indian residents to flee in 1907, and the imprisonment of Japanese Americans in 1942.

It’s part of an effort to help more people learn about those events, including a traveling exhibit that is being developed in partnership with the Asian & Pacific Islander Americans in Historic Preservation and the Washington Trust for Historic Preservation, Sidhu told The Herald in an interview.

The Herald reported on the original mob violence in 1907 and helped renew interest in learning about the the city’s racist past with a series of articles on the riot’s 100th anniversary — including an editorial apologizing for the paper’s coverage that incited prejudice and minimized its effects. Both the University of Washington and Western Washington University have developed websites to teach about the 1907 violence.

“We’ll have a website available with more information so anyone who travels and visits this arch can scan that QR code and then read more about the histories, and read more about what happened here in Bellingham,” historian Tejpaul Singh Bainiwal said during the event.