“Great Falls is a white man’s city”: Exclusion of Chinese Residents from Great Falls, Montana, 1880s-1940s

With one exception, Chinese settlers resided in virtually every town and city in Montana and were key to the region’s flourishing. However, from its origins, Great Falls, Montana, expelled would be Chinese townsfolk and prevented any from settling for more than fifty years. What began as a rowdy expulsion of one entrepreneurial Chinese laundry owner took on mythic proportions in its retelling over the decades, with the story changing to meet local and national political trends of the time. The city’s stance against Chinese Montanans became a point of pride, even raising the prominence of Great Falls in the process to choose a permanent capital of the state. Through an examination of the city’s stance against Chinese inclusion, trends in labor history, state and regional politics, and myth-making emerge that show how general anti-Asian sentiment manifested in the protocols of specific locales.