RARE ANTIOCH CHINESE FAMILY'S 1907 ANTIOCH GRAMMAR SCHOOL CABINET CARD CLASS PHOTOGRAPH. Antique photograph featuring the students and teachers of the 3rd, 4th and 5th grade classes posing on the front steps of the Antioch Grammar School building. The classes are a mixture of girls and boys, all the students are white except for one Chinese boy partially obscured by the child in front of him.

Original 1907 Cabinet Card Photograph. 12" x 10". With Chinese language handwritten note in black ink on the verso "1907 Antioch Elementary School Class" and in English in the same hand "3rd, 4th, and 5th Grades." The photographer is not stated nor is the name of the Chinese boy or his family identified. NEAR FINE CONDITION: a bright and clean image. Scarce.

Antioch, a Bay Area city on the banks of the San Joaquin River in Contra Costa County has a complicated history of discrimination against Chinese immigrants. Chinese people began to arrive in Antioch during the Gold Rush of 1848 and established a small Chinatown downtown. They faced ongoing racism, scapegoating and xenophobia between 1850 and 1876. Antioch officially became a "sundown town" banning Chinese residents from walking city streets after sunset. In 1860 the State banned Chinese children from attending public schools with white children, and created the Chinese Exclusion Acts. In 1876 the anti Chinese sentiments of the Antioch community reached a point of no return when white mobs forcibly displaced Chinese residents and burned Chinatown to the ground. For nearly 100 years after this, almost no Chinese people lived in Antioch. In 2021, Antioch became the first city in the U.S. to officially apologize for mistreatment of Chinese people.