"There's a pretty little cemetery in California's foggy northwest corner, where the moss-covered headstones date back to the 1860s. Every time Karen Betlejewski visits the Smith River Community Pioneer Cemetery, she places silk flowers beside a simple granite headstone in the northeast corner. It belongs to a man she never met."
"DOCK RIGG 1850 - 1919, it reads. At the time of his death, he was said to be the only Chinese person formally allowed to live in rural Del Norte County - three decades after white residents there and in neighboring Humboldt County had forced out their Chinese neighbors in a series of violent purges. They called him Dock Rigg - the surname of his employer - but government papers say his name was Oo Dock. He worked as a cook and ranch hand for two prominent families in the Smith River Valley who arranged for him to work on a ranch just over the Oregon line until the racist fervor calmed enough for him to quietly return."
A small cemetery in northwest California holds the grave of a Chinese man marked DOCK RIGG (1850–1919). He lived and worked as a cook and ranch hand in rural Del Norte County and the Smith River Valley despite widespread expulsions and violent purges of Chinese residents in Del Norte and Humboldt counties. Local families arranged for him to work temporarily across the Oregon line before he returned. A few Chinese laborers remained quietly in remote Northern California after the expulsions. The historical expulsions draw parallels with later and contemporary immigration roundups and deportations.
Read at Los Angeles Times
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