Donaldina Cameron's guest appearances

Donaldina Cameron

Commonwealth Club of California Podcast

Elijah Rising Podcast

Sermons from St. Gregory of Nyssa in San Francisco

Queens of the Mines

Ray Dalio

Sam Harris

Reid Hoffman

Elon Musk

Bill Gates

Steven Pinker

Kamala Harris

Deepak Chopra

Sean Spicer

Donald Trump

Nancy Pelosi

Jake Tapper

Roger McNamee

Marlo Thomas

Benjamin Franklin

OwlTail

Support Queens of the Mines with a tip! Venmo- @queensofthemines CashApp $queensofthemines Paypal southernminequeen@gmail.com   Today, we are talking about an active and daring freedom fighter from California history!   For decades after America’s largest migration, the gold rush began, the men who came alone to California to seek their fortunes longed for wives and women of pleasure. It was easier for Chinese traders to convince families to sell their daughters rather than their sons. The traders would offer money to the parents for their daughters, some as young as five years old. The parents were straight up lied to. They were told the traders would help their girls find wealthy husbands, or arrange for them to get an education. The girls would became domestic slaves or were sold into prostitution. The young women lived brutal lives. The youngest girls didn’t last more than a few years before their worn and abused bodies gave out. They would usually die within five years after they were first held captive. Some who were on the verge of death were put in a solitary room to starve. Chinese gangs known as Tongs, usually headed up the operations. The local government overlooked the crime. San Francisco City Hall took kickbacks from Tong groups at the time so there was little government action against this problem.   Donaldina Cameron was born on a sheep farm in New Zealand in July of 1869. She spent the first three years of her life there with her Scottish family including her six older siblings. By the time she was four years old, the entire family had immigrated to the United States of America. They brought their skills and knowledge from the farm and made their home on a large sheep ranch in the San Gabriel Valley in California. San Gabriel Valley is to the east of Los Angeles in present-day Pasadena.   Her family and friends called her Dolly. Dolly’s childhood was secluded from the outside world. On the ranch, she spent the days picking Johnston's bush lupine and dreaming of marrying. She would have a hard working ranch family and live the kind of comfortable life that her parents had always provided. She knew of nothing else in her new home state of California.    When she was thirteen years old, The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was passed, the first piece of federal immigrant legislation in the United States. It was said to be originally passed to prohibit sex trafficking of Asian women and an influx of Asian male laborers. The Chinese slave trade was as much a part of San Francisco history as was the gold rush. Under the Chinese Exclusion Act, any immigrant from any area considered “undesirable” was prohibited from entering the United States. This included most of Asia. Chinese women could not enter the United States unless they were already married to a man living there. A dangerous and illegal system dubbed the "paper daughters” was created, where papers were forged stating the trafficked victims were already members of Chinese families in the United States.    Hours north, cable cars were first climbing San Francisco’s hills. The city had been built to a massive scale since the gold rush began. Protestant women were launching an attack on “yellow slavery” in San Francisco. Cameron came to the city as a young woman to attend school to be a teacher. In the bay, she fell in and out of love.    Her best friend at school had an activist mother, who volunteered at the Presbyterian Mission House in San Francisco. Young Chinese girls who had been shipped from China or kidnapped to work as indentured servants were taking refuge under Maggie Culbertson's team's care. They were provided with “food, shelter, and the teachings of the Christian faith.” At the time, females made up 60 percent of the missionary force. Missionary work, and social work in general, was an example of leadership that was acceptable for Victorian women. Maggie Culbertson, the founder of the Presbyterian Mission House, was ill and needed help.    Dolly had recently left a fiance and quit college and decided to join Culbertson's team. She could teach sewing and other useful skills at the San Francisco Mission House. They agreed on a one year term. Dolly arrived in April of 1895. On her first day ever at the Mission House, sticks of dynamite were found around the premises. She then realized the magnitude of her new situation. The gangs often threatened the mission with death and destruction not just from the Tongs, but, by the police who came to roust the illegal aliens. Magggie Culbertson mentored Dolly in the ways of care and justice. Dolly relished in assisting her in providing the safe haven for the young Chinese girls. She was inspired by Culbertson’s courage as she worked by her side.     Tien Fuh Wu was rescued from a Chinatown gambling den and  lived at the home when Cameron arrived. She really didn’t care for her and Wu was disobedient for Dolly’s first two years at the house. As a child, Wu was told she was going to San Francisco to visit her grandmother. She was taken to a boat in her native province Zhejiang, China. Her father locked her inside a cabin onboard with only a toothbrush and washcloth, told her to eat her supper and left without saying goodbye. Her father had sold her to pay off his gambling debts.    The boat brought her one hundred miles north to Shanghai, then she boarded a steamship to San Francisco. She worked as a mui tsai, or, a domestic servant in a brothel in the city until the owner at the brothel fell into debt. Wu was sold to the gambling den on Jackson Street. There, she was subjected to rigorous household chores, and physically abused by her new owner. When she was old enough, she was transferred to a life of sex work. When rescued, Wu’s body was covered in burns, cuts and bruises. She arrived at the home on 920 Sacramento Street 15 months before Dolly. At the turn of the century in San Francisco, this kind of trafficking was rampant, and largely ignored by city authorities.     Culbertson’s health failed when Cameron was 25 years old. Two years later, she took over as superintendent of the Presbyterian Home. Wu changed her mind about Dolly after one of the Chinese women who worked alongside Cameron passed away. The intense grief Dolly displayed showed Wu a new side of the woman. Wu worked for Dolly as a translator during court cases, and helped supervise the Mission House, earning $5 a month.    Donaldina Cameron continued Culbertson’s mission of the Home. She saved young women from sex slavery and indentured servitude in the worst hellholes of Chinatown. Cameron had an uncanny knack of smelling out the brothels that were often hidden behind trap doors. Secret messages were sent to her from friends and relatives of these captive girls, tipping her off the girl’s location. Engaging in chases over rooftops, down dark alleys, hiding in hidden rooms and breaking down doors with an ax. I mean shit worthy of a blockbuster feature action film.   At the safe house, the girls however, were not entirely free. They were to concede to Anglo-American ways. Dolly incorporated Chinese food and decorations into their daily living, but the students were forced to convert to Christianity. Most of the immigrant women welcomed the conversion and looked to Dolly as a hero. They called her “Lo Mo” translated it means Little Mother. Yet there were women who had mixed feelings about this forced conversion. The house was also the site of many happy marriages of girls who eventually found worthy men. When they married their chosen suitor, they would wear a white gown, rather than the traditional red. White gowns symbolize funerals in Chinese culture.   Wu was her favorite aide. Her ability to translate was a fantastic asset. She was also able to comfort the rescued girls. The brothel and slave owners commonly spread fear of "White Devils" to stop the women in their possession from seeking help. The Tongs had many nicknames for Dolly. Jesus Woman, White Spirit, White Witch, White Devil and the Angry Angel of Chinatown. The Tongs would tell their captives that the “White Witch” would drink the blood of the liberated girls to keep up her vitality. Wu would show them her own scars, ensuring their safety. The scars were evidence of her understanding. She accompanied Cameron on the dangerous rescues that took many months and intense investigation to orchestrate. When the fear of the bubonic plague had been in Chinatown. The roads were blocked off and the neighborhood was under quarantine. They used the roofs to get to the girls they were rescuing.    Together, Dolly and her 4' 11" cohort saved the lives of thousands of trafficked Chinese girls and women in San Francisco. Wu was targeted by the Tongs because she herself was Chinese. The gangs saw her as a traitor. The threats were so common that after each major rescue, Cameron would stop Wu from going out alone for weeks at a time.    The law wasn’t always on her side. Getting legal custody of the girls was nearly impossible for Cameron since child protection laws did not yet exist. Tong leaders would claim that they had a right to the captive as her “sponsor” and the courts often agreed. They would say the captive was a relative, or that she was working voluntarily. If she captured the girl first, she could work the legal problems out later. This way, the girl would be safe in the mission house while the courts hashed out the details.   On March 29, 1900 two Chinese men and a police officer arrived at the Mission Home looking for resident Kum Quai, who they claimed was a thief. This was a typical tactic used by the brothel owners to reclaim the women. Quai was arrested, but Cameron would not let her be alone with the men, so she joined on the train journey to Palo Alto. Quai was to be locked in a cell for the night, and Cameron remained with her. At 2 am, the deputy tried to open the door, but Cameron was suspicious of the early morning entry and barricaded them inside until the officers started breaking down the doors.    After the train, the men loaded Quai in a buggy, and Cameron attempted to follow. She was pushed out and thrown onto the road. Cameron woke townspeople up right away, panicked. Frustration spread throughout the town. A crowd demonstrated the  next day in San Jose at the office of the lawyer who planned the event. “The public uproar led to criminal indictments,” and the men involved were punished.     In 1904, she had her attorneys challenge the courts to provide for child welfare laws. It was a breakthrough that would provide her a most useful tool for her rescues. Some of the girls opted for more education, and one of Donaldina’s “daughters” became the first Chinese woman to graduate from Stanford University. Another daughter trained to become the first Chinese nurse through the Presbyterian Hospital in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Yet other daughters stayed on at Cameron House to help with the mission’s work. Cameron wrote extensively in publications like Women and Missions and a pamphlet titled "The Yellow Slave Traffic", seeking to gain financial support for her mission.    In April 1906, the great San Francisco earthquake and fire forced the evacuation of the Presbyterian Home, which was destroyed in the earthquake. The night the tragedy happened, Dolly ran through the blazing city back to her home to retrieve a logbook that detailed her guardianship over her girls. She did not want them to be forced back into servitude or prostitution.   The home was rebuilt the following year. Hidden passages were constructed in the basement of the new structure. A fire that happened years later burned several girls to death who were trapped in the very room that was supposed to keep them safe. It is said that this is ranked as one of San Francisco’s allegedly haunted locations and these very women still haunt the building today. The building, now known as The Donaldina Cameron House is San Francisco Landmark #44. The doors to the basement remain sealed.    Throughout her career, she kept expanding her work. She tried to overturn the Oriental Exclusion Act, which prevented Chinese from owning property, limited where they could live and denied them the right to testify on their own behalf in an American court. Donaldina also founded two homes for Chinese children and raised awareness about widespread prejudice toward all Chinese.  Many of these children were orphans or the children of the rescued women. The Chung Mei Home served young boys, while the Ming Quong Home was for girls. The former Chung Mei house is today part of the Windrush School in El Cerrito, California, and the Ming Quong Home is now a part of Mills College in Oakland, California.    Donaldina retired in 1942 and the Presbyterian Home was renamed the Donaldina Cameron House. After retirement, Donaldina moved to the Palo Alto area. Despite living in Chinatown for 40 years, Cameron never learned Chinese. Three years later, she adopted an orphan from Korea. Wu lived next door to Cameron when she was an elderly woman living in Palo Alto. She is credited with saving and educating over 3,000 Chinese immigrant women and girls and was considered a "national icon". Over 800 women are recorded as having lived there between 1874 and 1909 .    Cameron was remembered for how close she was with the home’s residents and for being kind and caring to all people, despite their nationalities. At the same time, she was part of the larger missionary system, in which “the ethnocentric attitude and national and religious absolutism… cannot be denied”. She made an effort to embrace these women's culture when she arrived at the Mission Home. “Nothing angered Miss Cameron more than the racial discrimination to which Chinese were subjected in housing, employment, and education”. For the time, Cameron was progressive and accepting. However, she still forced the residents to comply with her leadership and culture.   Historian Dorothy Gray calls her “perhaps the most active and daring freedom fighter in the history of the West.” Ron Cameron, Donaldina’s great nephew, remembers that when visiting the elderly Cameron on her birthday, years after she stopped working, he “would have to get in a line that was about two blocks long of Chinese people who had driven… to wish her a happy birthday    She died in Palo Alto, California, in 1968, at the age of 98. Wu is said to have been at her mentor's side, reading from a Bible until the very end. She is buried at the Evergreen Cemetery in the East Side neighborhood of Boyle Heights in Los Angeles. When Wu passed away seven years later, she was buried next to her friend in Cameron's family plot at the Evergreen Cemetery in Los Angeles.   The Cameron House still stands today in San Francisco, serving as a multi-service agency serving Asian communities by promoting healthy Christian communities through programs like youth sports, tutoring, and counseling. If you call Cameron House today, the phone is still answered in Chinese. Miranda Raison portrays Donaldina Cameron in the Cinemax TV series Warrior as Nellie Davenport. Ah Toy is also a character in that series.   https://cameronhouse.org/ https://truewestmagazine.com/donaldina-cameron/ https://www.kqed.org/arts/13880286/the-child-slave-who-helped-rescue-thousands-of-women-in-chinatown   http://www.sfmuseum.net/1906/ew15.html   https://truewestmagazine.com/donaldina-cameron/ https://www.foundsf.org/index.php?title=Donaldina_Cameron:_The_Person_Behind_the_Legend

Support Queens of the Mines with a tip! Venmo- @queensofthemines CashApp $queensofthemines Paypal southernminequeen@gmail.com Today, we are talking about an active and daring freedom fighter from California history! For decades after America’s largest migration, the gold rush began, the men who came alone to California to seek their fortunes longed for wives and women of pleasure. It was easier for Chinese traders to convince families to sell their daughters rather than their sons. The traders would offer money to the parents for their daughters, some as young as five years old. The parents were straight up lied to. They were told the traders would help their girls find wealthy husbands, or arrange for them to get an education. The girls would became domestic slaves or were sold into prostitution. The young women lived brutal lives. The youngest girls didn’t last more than a few years before their worn and abused bodies gave out. They would usually die within five years after they were first held captive. Some who were on the verge of death were put in a solitary room to starve. Chinese gangs known as Tongs, usually headed up the operations. The local government overlooked the crime. San Francisco City Hall took kickbacks from Tong groups at the time so there was little government action against this problem. Donaldina Cameron was born on a sheep farm in New Zealand in July of 1869. She spent the first three years of her life there with her Scottish family including her six older siblings. By the time she was four years old, the entire family had immigrated to the United States of America. They brought their skills and knowledge from the farm and made their home on a large sheep ranch in the San Gabriel Valley in California. San Gabriel Valley is to the east of Los Angeles in present-day Pasadena. Her family and friends called her Dolly. Dolly’s childhood was secluded from the outside world. On the ranch, she spent the days picking Johnston's bush lupine and dreaming of marrying. She would have a hard working ranch family and live the kind of comfortable life that her parents had always provided. She knew of nothing else in her new home state of California.  When she was thirteen years old, The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was passed, the first piece of federal immigrant legislation in the United States. It was said to be originally passed to prohibit sex trafficking of Asian women and an influx of Asian male laborers. The Chinese slave trade was as much a part of San Francisco history as was the gold rush. Under the Chinese Exclusion Act, any immigrant from any area considered “undesirable” was prohibited from entering the United States. This included most of Asia. Chinese women could not enter the United States unless they were already married to a man living there. A dangerous and illegal system dubbed the "paper daughters” was created, where papers were forged stating the trafficked victims were already members of Chinese families in the United States. Hours north, cable cars were first climbing San Francisco’s hills. The city had been built to a massive scale since the gold rush began. Protestant women were launching an attack on “yellow slavery” in San Francisco. Cameron came to the city as a young woman to attend school to be a teacher. In the bay, she fell in and out of love.  Her best friend at school had an activist mother, who volunteered at the Presbyterian Mission House in San Francisco. Young Chinese girls who had been shipped from China or kidnapped to work as indentured servants were taking refuge under Maggie Culbertson's team's care. They were provided with “food, shelter, and the teachings of the Christian faith.” At the time, females made up 60 percent of the missionary force. Missionary work, and social work in general, was an example of leadership that was acceptable for Victorian women. Maggie Culbertson, the founder of the Presbyterian Mission House, was ill and needed help.  Dolly had recently left a fiance and quit college and decided to join Culbertson's team. She could teach sewing and other useful skills at the San Francisco Mission House. They agreed on a one year term. Dolly arrived in April of 1895. On her first day ever at the Mission House, sticks of dynamite were found around the premises. She then realized the magnitude of her new situation. The gangs often threatened the mission with death and destruction not just from the Tongs, but, by the police who came to roust the illegal aliens. Magggie Culbertson mentored Dolly in the ways of care and justice. Dolly relished in assisting her in providing the safe haven for the young Chinese girls. She was inspired by Culbertson’s courage as she worked by her side.   Tien Fuh Wu was rescued from a Chinatown gambling den and  lived at the home when Cameron arrived. She really didn’t care for her and Wu was disobedient for Dolly’s first two years at the house. As a child, Wu was told she was going to San Francisco to visit her grandmother. She was taken to a boat in her native province Zhejiang, China. Her father locked her inside a cabin onboard with only a toothbrush and washcloth, told her to eat her supper and left without saying goodbye. Her father had sold her to pay off his gambling debts.  The boat brought her one hundred miles north to Shanghai, then she boarded a steamship to San Francisco. She worked as a mui tsai, or, a domestic servant in a brothel in the city until the owner at the brothel fell into debt. Wu was sold to the gambling den on Jackson Street. There, she was subjected to rigorous household chores, and physically abused by her new owner. When she was old enough, she was transferred to a life of sex work. When rescued, Wu’s body was covered in burns, cuts and bruises. She arrived at the home on 920 Sacramento Street 15 months before Dolly. At the turn of the century in San Francisco, this kind of trafficking was rampant, and largely ignored by city authorities.  Culbertson’s health failed when Cameron was 25 years old. Two years later, she took over as superintendent of the Presbyterian Home. Wu changed her mind about Dolly after one of the Chinese women who worked alongside Cameron passed away. The intense grief Dolly displayed showed Wu a new side of the woman. Wu worked for Dolly as a translator during court cases, and helped supervise the Mission House, earning $5 a month.  Donaldina Cameron continued Culbertson’s mission of the Home. She saved young women from sex slavery and indentured servitude in the worst hellholes of Chinatown. Cameron had an uncanny knack of smelling out the brothels that were often hidden behind trap doors. Secret messages were sent to her from friends and relatives of these captive girls, tipping her off the girl’s location. Engaging in chases over rooftops, down dark alleys, hiding in hidden rooms and breaking down doors with an ax. I mean shit worthy of a blockbuster feature action film. At the safe house, the girls however, were not entirely free. They were to concede to Anglo-American ways. Dolly incorporated Chinese food and decorations into their daily living, but the students were forced to convert to Christianity. Most of the immigrant women welcomed the conversion and looked to Dolly as a hero. They called her “Lo Mo” translated it means Little Mother. Yet there were women who had mixed feelings about this forced conversion. The house was also the site of many happy marriages of girls who eventually found worthy men. When they married their chosen suitor, they would wear a white gown, rather than the traditional red. White gowns symbolize funerals in Chinese culture. Wu was her favorite aide. Her ability to translate was a fantastic asset. She was also able to comfort the rescued girls. The brothel and slave owners commonly spread fear of "White Devils" to stop the women in their possession from seeking help. The Tongs had many nicknames for Dolly. Jesus Woman, White Spirit, White Witch, White Devil and the Angry Angel of Chinatown. The Tongs would tell their captives that the “White Witch” would drink the blood of the liberated girls to keep up her vitality. Wu would show them her own scars, ensuring their safety. The scars were evidence of her understanding. She accompanied Cameron on the dangerous rescues that took many months and intense investigation to orchestrate. When the fear of the bubonic plague had been in Chinatown. The roads were blocked off and the neighborhood was under quarantine. They used the roofs to get to the girls they were rescuing. Together, Dolly and her 4' 11" cohort saved the lives of thousands of trafficked Chinese girls and women in San Francisco. Wu was targeted by the Tongs because she herself was Chinese. The gangs saw her as a traitor. The threats were so common that after each major rescue, Cameron would stop Wu from going out alone for weeks at a time.  The law wasn’t always on her side. Getting legal custody of the girls was nearly impossible for Cameron since child protection laws did not yet exist. Tong leaders would claim that they had a right to the captive as her “sponsor” and the courts often agreed. They would say the captive was a relative, or that she was working voluntarily. If she captured the girl first, she could work the legal problems out later. This way, the girl would be safe in the mission house while the courts hashed out the details. On March 29, 1900 two Chinese men and a police officer arrived at the Mission Home looking for resident Kum Quai, who they claimed was a thief. This was a typical tactic used by the brothel owners to reclaim the women. Quai was arrested, but Cameron would not let her be alone with the men, so she joined on the train journey to Palo Alto. Quai was to be locked in a cell for the night, and Cameron remained with her. At 2 am, the deputy tried to open the door, but Cameron was suspicious of the early morning entry and barricaded them inside until the officers started breaking down the doors.  After the train, the men loaded Quai in a buggy, and Cameron attempted to follow. She was pushed out and thrown onto the road. Cameron woke townspeople up right away, panicked. Frustration spread throughout the town. A crowd demonstrated the  next day in San Jose at the office of the lawyer who planned the event. “The public uproar led to criminal indictments,” and the men involved were punished.  In 1904, she had her attorneys challenge the courts to provide for child welfare laws. It was a breakthrough that would provide her a most useful tool for her rescues. Some of the girls opted for more education, and one of Donaldina’s “daughters” became the first Chinese woman to graduate from Stanford University. Another daughter trained to become the first Chinese nurse through the Presbyterian Hospital in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Yet other daughters stayed on at Cameron House to help with the mission’s work. Cameron wrote extensively in publications like Women and Missions and a pamphlet titled "The Yellow Slave Traffic", seeking to gain financial support for her mission.  In April 1906, the great San Francisco earthquake and fire forced the evacuation of the Presbyterian Home, which was destroyed in the earthquake. The night the tragedy happened, Dolly ran through the blazing city back to her home to retrieve a logbook that detailed her guardianship over her girls. She did not want them to be forced back into servitude or prostitution. The home was rebuilt the following year. Hidden passages were constructed in the basement of the new structure. A fire that happened years later burned several girls to death who were trapped in the very room that was supposed to keep them safe. It is said that this is ranked as one of San Francisco’s allegedly haunted locations and these very women still haunt the building today. The building, now known as The Donaldina Cameron House is San Francisco Landmark #44. The doors to the basement remain sealed.  Throughout her career, she kept expanding her work. She tried to overturn the Oriental Exclusion Act, which prevented Chinese from owning property, limited where they could live and denied them the right to testify on their own behalf in an American court. Donaldina also founded two homes for Chinese children and raised awareness about widespread prejudice toward all Chinese.  Many of these children were orphans or the children of the rescued women. The Chung Mei Home served young boys, while the Ming Quong Home was for girls. The former Chung Mei house is today part of the Windrush School in El Cerrito, California, and the Ming Quong Home is now a part of Mills College in Oakland, California.  Donaldina retired in 1942 and the Presbyterian Home was renamed the Donaldina Cameron House. After retirement, Donaldina moved to the Palo Alto area. Despite living in Chinatown for 40 years, Cameron never learned Chinese. Three years later, she adopted an orphan from Korea. Wu lived next door to Cameron when she was an elderly woman living in Palo Alto. She is credited with saving and educating over 3,000 Chinese immigrant women and girls and was considered a "national icon". Over 800 women are recorded as having lived there between 1874 and 1909 .  Cameron was remembered for how close she was with the home’s residents and for being kind and caring to all people, despite their nationalities. At the same time, she was part of the larger missionary system, in which “the ethnocentric attitude and national and religious absolutism… cannot be denied”. She made an effort to embrace these women's culture when she arrived at the Mission Home. “Nothing angered Miss Cameron more than the racial discrimination to which Chinese were subjected in housing, employment, and education”. For the time, Cameron was progressive and accepting. However, she still forced the residents to comply with her leadership and culture. Historian Dorothy Gray calls her “perhaps the most active and daring freedom fighter in the history of the West.” Ron Cameron, Donaldina’s great nephew, remembers that when visiting the elderly Cameron on her birthday, years after she stopped working, he “would have to get in a line that was about two blocks long of Chinese people who had driven… to wish her a happy birthday  She died in Palo Alto, California, in 1968, at the age of 98. Wu is said to have been at her mentor's side, reading from a Bible until the very end. She is buried at the Evergreen Cemetery in the East Side neighborhood of Boyle Heights in Los Angeles. When Wu passed away seven years later, she was buried next to her friend in Cameron's family plot at the Evergreen Cemetery in Los Angeles. The Cameron House still stands today in San Francisco, serving as a multi-service agency serving Asian communities by promoting healthy Christian communities through programs like youth sports, tutoring, and counseling. If you call Cameron House today, the phone is still answered in Chinese. Miranda Raison portrays Donaldina Cameron in the Cinemax TV series Warrior as Nellie Davenport. Ah Toy is also a character in that series.  <a href="https://cameronhouse.org/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://cameronhouse.org/</a> <a href="https://truewestmagazine.com/donaldina-cameron/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://truewestmagazine.com/donaldina-cameron/</a> <a href="https://www.kqed.org/arts/13880286/the-child-slave-who-helped-rescue-thousands-of-women-in-chinatown" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.kqed.org/arts/13880286/the-child-slave-who-helped-rescue-thousands-of-women-in-chinatown</a> <a href="http://www.sfmuseum.net/1906/ew15.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.sfmuseum.net/1906/ew15.html</a> <a href="https://truewestmagazine.com/donaldina-cameron/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://truewestmagazine.com/donaldina-cameron/</a> <a href="https://www.foundsf.org/index.php?title=Donaldina_Cameron:_The_Person_Behind_the_Legend" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.foundsf.org/index.php?title=Donaldina_Cameron:_The_Person_Behind_the_Legend</a>

Donaldina Cameron - Freedom Fighter

Julia Flynn Siler’s new book, The White Devil’s Daughters: The Fight Against Slavery in San Francisco’s Chinatown, is a revelatory history of the trafficking of young Asian girls—a practice that flourished in San Francisco during the first century of Chinese immigration (1848–1943)—and the "safe house" on the edge of Chinatown that became a refuge for those seeking their freedom. Starting in 1874, the brick house at 920 Sacramento Street in San Francisco’s Chinatown served as a home and gateway to freedom for thousands of enslaved and vulnerable young Chinese women and girls—a pioneering “rescue mission.” Known then as the Occidental Mission Home, it survived earthquakes, fire, bubonic plague and violence directed against its occupants and supporters—a courageous group of female abolitionists who fought the slave trade in Chinese women. Donaldina Cameron was the indomitable leader of the home for over 37 years. In 1942, the home was renamed Cameron House, and it still serves the Asian-American community today, offering a range of social services and youth programs. With compassion and an investigative historian's sharp eyes, Siler relates how the women who ran the house defied contemporary convention and anti-Chinese prejudices. These women occasionally even broke the law by physically rescuing children from the brothels where they worked or snatching them off the ships that were smuggling them in, helping bring the exploiters to justice. Siler has also uncovered the stories of many of the girls and young women who came to the Mission and the lives they later led. Sometimes these women became part of the home's staff themselves, including Tien Wu, who became Donaldina Cameron’s translator and aide. Siler will talk about this remarkable story of an overlooked part of our history—a story that still resonates today. This is the tale of immigrants overcoming great difficulties with the aid of sympathetic Americans. MLF ORGANIZER NAME Lillian Nakagawa Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Julia Flynn Siler’s new book, The White Devil’s Daughters: The Fight Against Slavery in San Francisco’s Chinatown, is a revelatory history of the trafficking of young Asian girls—a practice that flourished in San Francisco during the first century of Chinese immigration (1848–1943)—and the "safe house" on the edge of Chinatown that became a refuge for those seeking their freedom. Starting in 1874, the brick house at 920 Sacramento Street in San Francisco’s Chinatown served as a home and gateway to freedom for thousands of enslaved and vulnerable young Chinese women and girls—a pioneering “rescue mission.” Known then as the Occidental Mission Home, it survived earthquakes, fire, bubonic plague and violence directed against its occupants and supporters—a courageous group of female abolitionists who fought the slave trade in Chinese women. Donaldina Cameron was the indomitable leader of the home for over 37 years. In 1942, the home was renamed Cameron House, and it still serves the Asian-American community today, offering a range of social services and youth programs. With compassion and an investigative historian's sharp eyes, Siler relates how the women who ran the house defied contemporary convention and anti-Chinese prejudices. These women occasionally even broke the law by physically rescuing children from the brothels where they worked or snatching them off the ships that were smuggling them in, helping bring the exploiters to justice. Siler has also uncovered the stories of many of the girls and young women who came to the Mission and the lives they later led. Sometimes these women became part of the home's staff themselves, including Tien Wu, who became Donaldina Cameron’s translator and aide. Siler will talk about this remarkable story of an overlooked part of our history—a story that still resonates today. This is the tale of immigrants overcoming great difficulties with the aid of sympathetic Americans. MLF ORGANIZER NAME Lillian Nakagawa Learn more about your ad choices. Visit <a href="https://megaphone.fm/adchoices" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">megaphone.fm/adchoices</a>

Donaldina Cameron and the Occidental Mission Home