The events of the 1907 riots in Bellingham are largely known to us through press accounts of the time. Bellingham was home to several newspapers, including the Bellingham Herald and the American Reveille, and reports of the riot, often varying wildly in their accuracy, were sent all over the world. One faulty report appearing in the New York Times prompted the mayor to demand a retraction. While the reports recount the events in some detail, they are also very biased, as the papers were sympathetic to the rioter’s demands. The racism of the news reports is so flagrant, in fact, that one paper, the Bellingham Herald issued an apology in 2007 to mark the 100th anniversary of the riots.

What follows below is a select list of headlines. Unfortunately, the links no longer work. The relevant news articles had been collected in the Asian American Curriculum & Research Project, an archive at Western Washington University that has since disappeared. We hope to restore the archive and links at some point.