Transcontinental Railroad | The Iron Road | American History Tellers | Podcast

What this episode is about

The narrative captures the momentous occasion of the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad on May 10, 1869, highlighting the excitement of railroad workers celebrating the driving of the Golden Spike at Promontory, Utah. It also underscores the contributions and marginalization of Chinese laborers, who played a crucial role in the project while facing discrimination and unequal treatment.

Key takeaways

• The Golden Spike marks unity but overlooks Asian labor—proof history often forgets its unsung heroes.
• May 10, 1869: A celebration of progress, yet thousands toiled in shadows, undervalued and underappreciated.
• Photographs capture a moment but rarely the stories behind them—Chinese workers were integral yet invisible.
• Celebrating the railroad's completion bonds us, but it also raises questions about who gets to be celebrated.
• As we toast history, let's remember those sidelined; recognition may be the true golden spike of our time.

Who speaks in this episode?

• Lindsey Graham (Host) · 23 min speaking
• Sue Lee (Guest) · 15 min speaking
• Connie Young Yu (Guest) · 4 min speaking

What is discussed, and when

1. 0:00 – 5:00: Transcontinental Railroad, Promontory Summit, Voices from the Railroad, Sue Lee
2. 5:00 – 10:00: Chinese Historical Society of America, Phil Troy
3. 10:00 – 15:00: Transcontinental Railroad, Summit Tunnel
4. 15:00 – 20:00: Summit Tunnel
5. 20:00 – 25:00: Summit Tunnel
6. 25:00 – 30:00: Promontory Summit, Corki Lee, Department of Labor
7. 30:00 – 35:00: Summit Tunnel, Transcontinental Railroad, Voices from the Railroad, Department of Labor
8. 35:00 – 37:39: Sue Lee, Transcontinental Railroad, Connie Young Yu, Voices from the Railroad

Notable quotes from "Transcontinental Railroad | The Iron Road | American History Tellers | Podcast"

• History your story on May 10th 1869 the Transcontinental Railroad was finally completed leading figures of both the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroad companies gathered at Promontory Summit Utah to.

  about Transcontinental Railroad · at 2:22

• The railroad but over the years their contribution has often been undervalued or overlooked entirely here with me to discuss recent efforts to recognize Chinese railroad…

  about Sue Lee · at 3:30

• The Chinese workers who labored so hard on the railroad made it into this photo is your 2019 Book voices from the railroad perhaps an attempt to correct the record so the…

  about Voices from the Railroad · at 4:22

• Whitewashes our history and says you guys aren't important we're not going to include you in anything we at the Chinese Historical Society felt that it was time to set the…

  about Chinese Historical Society of America · at 6:49

• Memorial plaques to be installed one at Promontory and one in Sacramento where the Central Pacific began and the head of the Historical Society Phil Troy was actually invited…

  about Phil Troy · at 7:58

• Their own board Chinese workers were able to save $20 a month Summit Camp is the camp where the Chinese worked for over two years Summit tunnel is the largest of the 15 tunnels…

  about Summit Tunnel · at 19:11

• Rendition corki was inspired by that story of Phil Choy being snubbed in 19 69 I knew corki and he decided to go to Promontory in 2014 and recreate that historic photograph but…

  about Corki Lee · at 28:51

• Chinese American who moved from the White House to the Department of Labor so the Department of Labor internally staff decided to place a plaque on their wall of honoring…

  about Department of Labor · at 29:45

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

• Sue Lee — Person · Main guest · 2 mentions · first at 3:41
  Interviewee explaining efforts to recognize Chinese railroad workers and co-editing a descendant-story collection that corrects historical omissions.
• Connie Young Yu — Person · Referenced expert; collaborator · 2 mentions · first at 3:49
  Cited as Sue Lee’s co-editor and as a descendant of a Chinese railroad worker; her family story illustrates how descendant oral histories fill archival gaps.
  Lee historian and former executive director of the Chinese Historical Society of America she's the co-editor with Connie young Yu of voices from the railroad stories by descendants of Chinese railroad workers our conversation is next.
• Phil Troy — Person · Referenced community leader · 1 mention · first at 8:06
  Described as the Chinese Historical Society leader who was invited to present a plaque at the 1969 centennial but was removed from the agenda—an incident motivating later corrective commemorations.
• Corki Lee — Person · Referenced photographer; catalyst figure · 1 mention · first at 28:48
  Credited with recreating the iconic Promontory photo in 2014 with Chinese participants, helping catalyze organizing leading to the 2019 150th commemoration.
• Leland Stanford — Person · Referenced historical figure · 1 mention · first at 2:52
  Named as the Central Pacific president who drove the symbolic Golden Spike, anchoring the episode’s discussion of the 1869 ceremony and who was (and wasn’t) recognized.
  Central Pacific railroad companies gathered at Promontory Summit Utah to watch as president of the Central Pacific Leland Stanford drove a symbolic Golden Spike into the final…

Books & papers

• Voices from the Railroad — Book · Primary recommendation · 4 mentions · first at 3:49
  Book co-edited by Sue Lee, documenting stories of Chinese railroad workers' descendants.

Companies & orgs

• Chinese Historical Society of America — Company · Business focus · 3 mentions · first at 3:45
  Organization dedicated to preserving and promoting Chinese American history.
• Department of Labor — Company · Case study · 2 mentions · first at 29:33
  Federal department that recognized Chinese railroad workers' contributions in 2014.

Concepts & topics

• Transcontinental Railroad — Concept · Core topic · 7 mentions · first at 0:31
  Central theme of the episode, discussing its construction and the role of Chinese laborers.

Places & events

• Promontory Summit — Place · Setting · 3 mentions · first at 2:49
  Location where the Golden Spike was driven, marking the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad.
  Figures of both the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroad companies gathered at Promontory Summit Utah to watch as president of the Central Pacific Leland Stanford drove a…
• Summit Tunnel — Place · Setting · 8 mentions · first at 10:34
  Major tunnel constructed by Chinese laborers through the Sierra Nevada.

Full transcript with timestamps

0:11 Wonder imagine it's a sunny warm afternoon on May 10th 1869 and you're standing on the summit of a large Hill near Promontory Utah you Shield your eyes from the midday Sun as you and dozens of your fellow railroad workers toast in celebration you've just witnessed the ceremonial Golden Spike being driven into the final rail of the Transcontinental Railroad and your head is swirling with excitement you take a swig from a bottle of whiskey and then hand it to your friend standing beside you he gives you a knot of thanks you know while I was breaking my back trying to dig this damn thing I didn't think this day would ever come sure glad I was wrong me too for the last 2 years it feels like I've done nothing but swing a sledgehammer but here we are at last your friend hands the bottle of whiskey back to you and you gesture in the direction of a photographer who's setting up his equipment well looks like they're going to try and

1:01 memorialize the moment with a picture maybe we'll get in the paper well that would be something I bet my wife and boy would be so proud well come on let's make sure we're not left out you and your friend make your way over to two large locomotive engines that have been positioned facing each other on the track to Mark the occasion and squeeze into the crowd surrounding them just then though you notice a group of Chinese workers standing to the side you think they're going to get in the picture too how should I know they'll do whatever they want I suppose well the ought to be in the picture they do the most dangerous work and get paid less than us too I guess go invite them but you'll lose out on a good spot your friend starts climbing up the side of one of the engines eager to get a more prominent place in the photograph you look back and see the photographer's assistant usering the Chinese workers

1:47 further away from the group you want to say something but you're also afraid you'll lose your place so you scramble up next to your friend and just as you manage to find your footing you hear a loud pop and see the flash of a photographer's Bowl you smile knowing you managed to make your way into the history books but you also feel a Pang of guilt as you think of everyone who's being left

2:16 out from wondery I'm Lindsey Graham and this is American history tellers our history your story on May 10th 1869 the Transcontinental Railroad was finally completed leading figures of both the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroad companies gathered at Promontory Summit Utah to watch as president of the Central Pacific Leland Stanford drove a symbolic Golden Spike into the final rail of track also present that day were scores of of workers whose labor had made the railroad a reality including a group of Chinese laborers from the Central Pacific who' moved the final rail into position before the completion ceremony initially hired during a labor shortage thousands of Chinese men worked under harsh conditions while facing daily discrimination Chinese workers were paid lower wages and assigned the most dangerous tasks including blasting tunnels through the Sierra Nevada mountains but they persevered despite

3:25 these challenges and their hard work and resilience proved instrumental in fleing the railroad but over the years their contribution has often been undervalued or overlooked entirely here with me to discuss recent efforts to recognize Chinese railroad workers contributions to the Transcontinental Railroad is Sue Lee historian and former executive director of the Chinese Historical Society of America she's the co-editor with Connie young Yu of voices from the railroad stories by descendants of Chinese railroad workers our conversation is next suie welcome to American history tellers thank you so much I'm so glad to be here now there is this very famous photograph taken at prator Summit Utah on May 10th 1869 uh the one where the Central Pacific and the Union Pacific lines meet there appear to be plenty of white men there but it does not look like any of the Chinese workers who labored so hard

4:24 on the railroad made it into this photo is your 2019 Book voices from the railroad perhaps an attempt to correct the record so the photograph is the famous champagne photo with one workers bottle of champagne raised over his head with the two engines coming together at Promontory point and you have all these people surrounding the two engines the Central Pacific had actually completed its part of the line for the May 10th celebration the Union Pacific was late so what the Central Pacific did did was it sent most of its work crew back down the line to clean up the rail line so then actual number of Central Pacific workers at Promontory for that May 10th celebration was very small but if you look at the photograph as just a normal person you go well wait a minute there are no Chinese there and in fact if you look at that photograph very very carefully under a microscope you can see one or two

5:30 Chinese workers with their heads turned and their backs to the camera so there were a few Central Pacific workers and even fewer Chinese workers though the Central Pacific kept a crew of eight men an eight-man gang of Chinese workers were at Promontory or stationed at Promontory if you will by the Central Pacific for the celebration itself the work that that Aid Man gang was supposed to do was to nail in the last tie of the construction and to do cleanup and they were actually invited by James strobridge the superintendent of all of the work of the Central Pacific to his train car to be acknowledged at the celebration to thank them for their work but in those days it wasn't like a photo op that you do today and everybody knows that you have to be in the photo at a certain time right it just happened that the photographers were there there was the crowd people were there they took the photo and then they went away I

6:40 can't imagine that they would have called particular workers or people to be in the photos but the fact that Chinese weren't in that photo whitewashes our history and says you guys aren't important we're not going to include you in anything we at the Chinese Historical Society felt that it was time to set the record straight and to clarify what had happened 150 years ago and begin recovering our stories and to tell the stories through the voices of descendants of actual workers in 1969 50 years before your book came out there was a centennial ceremony at prator Point Utah 100 years after the golden spike ceremony and the head of the Chinese Historical Society of America went and was scheduled to deliver a speech how did that go it didn't go well at all 1969 was really important to the Chinese American Community folks felt that here we are a 100 years after the completion of the Transcontinental there's going to

7:45 be this celebration we should be there to bring attention to the contributions of Chinese the Historical Society worked many months in advance of that celebration had fundraisers to create Memorial plaques to be installed one at Promontory and one in Sacramento where the Central Pacific began and the head of the Historical Society Phil Troy was actually invited to present the plaque at Promontory on May 10th and when he got there the organizers said Oh Mr Troy we're so sorry but we don't have time on the agenda for you and that was because John Wayne was there to promote his new film True Grit so it was a real snub of the Chinese community in 1969 and that snub really festered in the kind of communal psyche of the Chinese American Asian-American community and so when 2019 came around and it was time to celebrate the 150th the Asian Community kind of linked arms and began to organize to make sure

8:55 that the 150th paid due respect and acknowledge M of the Chinese contribution to the Transcontinental of course your efforts in 2019 are now 150 years old 50 years further than that first Centennial how did you go about piecing together the history of these workers well we in the community actually didn't have much information about the workers like everybody else in America we go to school and we learn about the Transcontinental and we kind of hear that the Chinese worked on the Railroad and that's the end of the the story there no specifics there no details so about 5 years before the 2019 celebration we started organizing and we put out the word to the community for descendants of Chinese railroad workers and people came forward and said I'm a member of a family that's been here for four generations and we have an ancestor who worked on the railroad we don't really know that much about him but you know we know that

9:57 that's how long we've been here what do you think was behind the difficulty in finding the details about Chinese laborers we don't have names of Chinese workers because they were not recorded Chinese were hired in gangs of 30 30 Chinese names are 3 too many to write on a piece of paper when you're hiring like 5 to 10,000 of them there are individual names of let's say a cook on of an individual payroll so one of The Descendant stories inv voice from the railroad is of lamu he was a cook at the summit tunnel and there's actually a payroll record with auu on it the latu family claims that as documentation of their ancestor because who's to say that wasn't him but that's very rare the names were simply not recorded because they were hired through middlemen and it was the middlemen who could handle the payrolls the way that Chinese names were listed was with a prefix a and a nickname so rather than lindsy Graham

11:11 it'd be a Lindsay or a Graham or Su Lee it'd be auu or Ali the ah is used as a kind of informal title how would you find people that way it's not their full name there also no Diaries or letters from indiv indviduals back home saying they're working on the railroad as whatever so much of this is through oral history so it seems like there were um quite a few obstacles in the way of finding the true Chinese story of the railroad for you but I'm interested in what you knew of it before you started this adventure your grandfather came to San Francisco himself from China in 1915 and worked in a cigar Factory what were you taught at home about the contributions of the Chinese to building the Transcontinental Railroad or what were you taught at school growing up I don't recall my family talking at all about the railroad because that wasn't anything that my family had any association with coming to the us as a

12:15 merchant was one of the ways of getting around the exclusion act so if you were a partner in a business you could legally enter the country so that's how my grandfather came and went into the cigar business which is a reason why my family didn't talk about railroads because we didn't have any association and also the area where my grandfather came from wasn't an area where railroad workers came from while there are other Villages nearby that may have been railroad Villages where groups of Chinese would have come as workers the village that my grandfather came from wasn't one of those Villages so there was no reference to the railroad I'm glad you bring up the ancestral villages in China because uh we say things like Chinese laborers built the railroad but China is a very large diverse country what part of China did many of these workers come from what would have been like for them to arrive in California

13:12 and work so the estimate is that 15 to 20,000 Chinese worked on the Transcontinental Railroad primarily on the Central Pacific side the Chinese who initially worked on the railroad let's say in the beginning 1864 they were already here they may have come for the Gold Rush initially the Central Pacific didn't want Chinese workers at all at the time that the Central Pacific began its construction they had great difficulty hiring white workers white workers would work through one payroll or two payrolls and then to head literally for the hills for more lucrative mining work or other work and the leaders of the Central Pacific were very leery of hiring Chinese workers in the area it was out of desperation that the Central Pacific in 1864 hired a small group of Chinese workers to do what they deemed was the light work which was filling carts with rubble and things like that but once the Central Pacific was convinced that the

14:19 Chinese could handle the work they began hiring as many Chinese as they could in the area in California and eventually hired contractors to go to China to hire workers the majority of those Chinese came from a really small area of China outside of the city of guangong they came because their Kinsmen came and it was easier to recruit groups of Chinese from a particular Village that area has a history of sending their men overseas to send money back to support families and so the recruiters would bring Chinese here they'd come by ship they end up going by ship to Sacramento and then they'd be put onto rail cars to wherever the end of construction was to Begin work on the Railroad and again they were hired in gangs of 30 there was kinship there was teamw work those workers stayed together they weren't indentured they had contracts so they might work a month 2 months a season a year and leave for other

15:46 work so I'm interested in life on the railroad we know the work was hard and grueling and sometimes dangerous but what was life like in the camps along the line as it stretched from Sacramento to Utah so here you are in a tropical area of southern China where it's hot and humid no snow and you come all the way across the Pacific end up at Donner Lake right you've got cold cold snowy Winters and hot hot summers so you end up carving tunnels through the Sierra Nevada and you live next to the summit tunnel what we know about these gangs of Chinese working together was that they lived together they ate together they work together The Gangs worked 24/7 each gang had their own Chinese cook so they ate a Chinese diet and there are stories about how perhaps Chinese Cooks would plant the seeds of Chinese vegetables along the line and would then have a source for fresh vegetables in their diet the railroad

16:55 company used vendors there was cyon and Wallace and another fellow named cman shop Who provided all the provisions dried shrimp dried Seafood dried vegetables from China so the Chinese had their own diet you'd be cared for sometimes by a herbal doctor so either one of the men may have been trained as an herb doctor before coming and then became a laborer or you'd have these itinerant herb doctors that would travel from gang to gang in your off hours you would play Chinese games smoke a little opium try to keep warm in the winter try to keep cool in the summer but you'd be working six days a week from dawn to dusk so it was grueling grueling work so it sounds like the Chinese lived a very Chinese life or as much as they could in a very foreign land what was their work like how did it compare to the other white workers they ended up doing the heavy lifting if you will on the Central Pacific they had to carve through the

18:03 granite of the Sierra Nevada they had hand tools they had black powder and then later on closer to the end of the construction of the Sumit tunnel they had nitroglycerin which was extremely extremely dangerous during the winter there'd be Avalanches where entire camps would just disappear and then the bodies wouldn't be recovered till the next spring cuz there was so much snow and ice up there just horrendous horrendous stories it's thought that the Chinese who came here who worked on the railroad were illiterate and uneducated but in fact they came from all kinds of professions they understood teamwork and so they were very effective in those gangs of 30 men Working on the Railroad and can you imagine drilling holes and filling the holes with black powder and and then running for your life before the explosions they made the equivalent of a dollar a day but they would have to pay for room and board the white workers

19:03 would be making $35 a month and board would be covered but it said that even having to pay their own board Chinese workers were able to save $20 a month Summit Camp is the camp where the Chinese worked for over two years Summit tunnel is the largest of the 15 tunnels that were carved out of the Sierra Nevada and it took over the course of two Winters to complete a couple of thousand Chinese camped next to the location of the tunnel and so that area has been very important in Excavating and finding the remnants of the way Chinese lived as they worked you mentioned that the Chinese laborers were good at Teamwork and worked well within their gangs but one thing that was interesting to me that we learned in our series was that Chinese workers not only were good at Teamwork but were perhaps also good Teamsters they went on strike in 1867 to protest the conditions in the sieras what did these striking workers want and

20:11 did they get it what triggered the strike we believe is that there was a a huge accident an explosion and the Chinese workers knew that the white workers were making more money and were working fewer hours per day so on a Monday in June 1867 they stopped work along this 30 m stretch at the same time so they were extremely organized they had good communication between the work camps so they laid down their tools and didn't go to work which scared the hell out of the Central Pacific Railroad leaders and said wait a minute we can't do this we can't afford for the Chinese to stop work and So within a week the Central Pacific stopped the supplies to these work camps so they basically starved them out so this strike ended but the Central Pacific quietly did raise the wages of the Chinese workers and did cut the work hours by one hour over a couple months after the strike we've mentioned a few

21:21 times Summit camp and Summit tunnel and how difficult the work there was you've been there and while we tried to convey the conditions in our series there's nothing quite like visiting the site yourself I'd love for you to give us an idea of what this tunnel is the scale and scope of it and why is there a wall between two tunnels called China Wall well China Wall which is near the summit tunnel it's between I think tunnel 7 and 8 there's nothing between the Rocks there's no mortar it looks like a jigsaw puzzle where they just use rocks to build the 75 ft wall and you know before they took the tracks out there was a track on it it's 150 years old it's amazing the summit tunnel itself to make the impact on you emotionally I think it's kind of crazy but you should go in the winter when there's still ice in the tunnel it's a huge huge tunnel it's dark as hell and in the winter there's ice in

22:24 there it's freezing and then you think how in the world did these these Chinese build it you have to walk through with flashlights or with headlamps or something because there's no way to walk the length of five football fields without light and you can see the Chisel marks of the tools that were used to Chisel away at the rock or to drill the holes by hand to drop in the black powder or the nitroglycerin later to blow up the granite to allow a train to go through it gives me um Goosebumps just to think about it and you just feel like you're in this special place this almost sacred place that was handb built also because of the way that the tunnels were built the trains had to be protected from the snow so the Chinese also built wooden snow sheds over the tracks and about 30 years ago I think the railroad repl repaced those wooden snow sheds with concrete but today those tunnels are no longer used for the

23:36 railroad and that concrete has now become a canvas for graffiti unfortunately really a desecration of the work of the people who built those tunnels which is part of the reason that there's been an effort to um bring attention to the tunnels and to Landmark part of that area so that the area can still be respected and a respectful place to remember our history now one of the obvious and unfortunate consequences of the hard work these laborers were performing are accidents and deaths it's estimated that over a thousand Chinese laborers died building the railroad but when their bodies could be recovered what happened to them they were a long way from home they were a long way from home when a man signed up to work on the railroad would sign a contract and one of the conditions of the contract that he wanted was that his body would be sent home to China if he died here so that responsibility of sending the

24:42 bodies home became the responsibility of one of the family associations or the six companies so if a worker died on the construction effort the body would be buried locally but over a period of time let's say within a few years the body would be exed the bones would be cleaned and would be put into a specific kind of container and ship back to China so it's through the shipping back of those bones that we have the estimates of 1,000 to 1200 workers having been killed over the construction of the railroad because there really aren't any records

25:37 so far we focused our conversation on the Chinese laborers as they worked on the railroad but in 1869 the work ended the railroad was completed what happened to the thousands of Chinese men who had worked so hard to get it done so after the railroad some workers continued with railroad work because now the Chinese have this reputation of being good railroad workers so they went to work on all the feeder lines throughout the country and then others went back to existing Chinese communities or to new communities where they became Brokers and did import export they went into fishing they established canaries or established small farming communities they became kind of the workforce building the American West but they also became a threat to organized labor in the west and became an easy target one of the things that the Manu Dynasty required was that a Chinese man had to wear a queue a braid and so if a Chinese

26:46 man here wanted to return to China at any point to visit family to marry or whatever he would have to keep his queue so that made him easily identified and different so that contributed to the scapegoating and the violence against Chinese communities so you have cities towns big and small San Francisco LA Sacramento Tacoma Seattle Portland you know I can sit here and name every town in California and give you an example of anti-chinese violence at that time laws were passed against Chinese they didn't allow Chinese to go into certain occupations there was like actions against laundries there was vigilante violence against Chinese the city of Tacoma enacted a law that said all Chinese must be out of town when such an such a date so all thatje activity percolated through the 1870s so by 1882 there was enough sentiment against Chinese for Congress to enact the Chinese Exclusion Act which specifically banned the immigration of

28:03 Chinese laborers but there were exceptions so if you were a Chinese Merchant you could come into the country the Exclusion Act lasted from 1882 to 1943 and the only reason it was repealed was that in 1943 the US and China were allies in World War II so it didn't seem right to forbid the citizens of your Ally from coming into the country we started our conversation uh with a look at the 1869 photograph of the hammering of the golden spike at Promontory point there was another photograph recreating the scene in 2014 from a photographer named corki Lee what happened in this rendition corki was inspired by that story of Phil Choy being snubbed in 19 69 I knew corki and he decided to go to Promontory in 2014 and recreate that historic photograph but to fill it with Chinese people so his efforts in educating the more recent immigrants in Utah about what happened at Promontory really was a catalyst to build up to the

29:23 2019 celebration to commemorate the Promontory Summit event and he wasn't the only one interested in correcting the record in 2014 the US Department of Labor moved to set the record straight as well what did the federal government do to recognize these Chinese laborers in 2014 there was an under secretary named Christopher louu a Chinese American who moved from the White House to the Department of Labor so the Department of Labor internally staff decided to place a plaque on their wall of honoring Chinese railro Road workers no individual names but just the group of Chinese railroad workers what I did what we did at the Chinese historical society was we put out the word to descendants to say your ancestor is going to be honored at the Department of Labor can you be in DC at this time and be part of the ceremony that was very moving and very emotional we interviewed descendants who showed up

30:27 that day who were extremely moved and said you know this is the first time that there's been official government recognition of the labor of Chinese to building this country your co-editor of voices from the railroad is historian Connie young U and she is the descendant of a Chinese railroad worker herself we have a clip talking about her great-grandfather Lee Wong sang who worked for the Central Pacific Railroad she talked about being asked to speak at the 150th Ann iversary at Promontory point in 2019 when the Chinese contribution was finally recognized as you know here it is my great-grandfather Lee Wong sing came to the United States in 1866 from guong dong Province a village in toysan to work on the Transcontinental Railroad he was 19 years old my mother his granddaughter told me she goes your great grandfather worked on the iron Road and she said this in Chinese her familiar language

31:33 was Cantonese so she said Nega D Jo TLO TLO is iron Road that's why he came to California and she always said we were very lucky that he came at the age of 19 in 1866 before the Chinese Exclusion law before the restrictions and also he had a job I mean people talk about the Chinese being exploited slave labor labor that is not how they regarded it it was an opportunity to work my mother told me that he knew a few words of English and she said she thought he was a foreman I do not have any documentation of where he worked we just know he had to be in Sacramento the rail head and start working from there we know that that he was in Sacramento and then going on to Auburn trucky further up into the sieras I don't know if he was working on the tunnel the Great summit tunnel that I visited a number of times and went through and imagined that he was there but he survived and he was able to come back riding the rails back

32:45 to Sacramento and then from Sacramento to San Francisco where the Lee family his clan had a general store he soon became a manager and he became the head manager by great great grandfather was so fortunate he was able to send for his wife he wanted his family he wanted his family an American this is the oral history that we have from my mother that was passed down our people who were excluded from America denied naturalization to citizenship we actually helped build America so because of the Chinese raal workers descendant Association because of their advocacy in planning the 150th finally the Chinese would be acknowledged very prominently and I was fortunate and honored to be asked to be the commencement speaker to represent and I think my first words were I'm kannie y Yu I'm an American and a descendant of a Chinese railroad worker I'd love to hear your Reflections on what K said and just what it meant to

33:49 you I'm a wannabe Chinese railroad descendant because the railroad is one of the cornerstones of Chinese American Immigration here there's the railroad and there's the gold rush I'm a third generation Chinese American but my grandfather came in 1915 and so I don't have that connection so that's always been something that I've been envious of and to see Connie actually walk across that stage in front of the estimated 25 30,000 people who were at promontory it was really emotional it's like dang you know we did it we're finally able to have our say and to say it in our own words you mentioned earlier the state of disrepair that the more modern concrete snow sheds have fallen into and I know you you were involved in trying to preserve Summit Camp as a whole adjacent to the tunnels what would you like to see happen there well there's a ongoing effort to place the summit tunnel camp on the national register of historic

35:02 places and that application has been making its way through the bureaucracy for the last several years and it's in its final stages of becoming approved so it'll become a National Historic Landmark and hopefully that'll Elevate efforts to preserve it and not allow the desecration if you will of the graffiti that's happening up there now I don't know how many Chinese Americans view the Transcontinental Railway as as this but it could be seen as their Plymouth Rock what do you want people to know about the legacy of Chinese railroad workers in America that there's these thousands of Chinese who have been here for four five six Generations who help build that Railroad and who continue to help build this country it's as simple as that and the ability to draw a on the legacy of those workers and their contributions is inspiration for the future Su Lee thank you so much for joining us on American history tellers

36:08 thank you very much that was my conversation with Sue Lee historian and former executive director of the Chinese Historical Society of America she's also co-editor with Connie young Yu of voices from the railroad stories by descendants of Chinese railroad workers from wondery this is the fifth and Final episode of our series Transcontinental Railroad for American history tellers in our next season we're bringing you an encore presentation of our series on the Boston Molasses disaster in 1919 one of America's strangest tragedies struck Boston's busy North End when a giant storage tank holding more than 2 million gallons of molasses collapsed sending its contents crashing into the city streets the ordeal left death and destruction in its wake and sparked a contentious court case to determine who was to blame for the tragedy

37:04 American history tellers is hosted edited and executive produced by Me Lindsey Graham for Airship sound designed by Molly boach music by Lindsey Graham this episode was produced by Paulie Striker and Alita rosanski our senior interview producer is Peter aruni managing producer Desi block senior managing producer Callum ples senior producer Andy Herman and executive producers AR Jenny L Beckman Marshall Louie and Arin oity for wondering

Questions about this episode

Who speaks in "Transcontinental Railroad | The Iron Road | American History Tellers | Podcast"?

Lindsey Graham (Host), Sue Lee (Guest), Connie Young Yu (Guest).

What is "Transcontinental Railroad | The Iron Road | American History Tellers | Podcast" about?

The narrative captures the momentous occasion of the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad on May 10, 1869, highlighting the excitement of railroad workers celebrating the driving of the Golden Spike at Promontory, Utah. It also underscores the contributions and marginalization of Chinese laborers, who played a crucial role in the project while facing discrimination and unequal treatment.

What is mentioned in this American History Tellers episode?

11 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Transcontinental Railroad, Sue Lee, Promontory Summit, Voices from the Railroad, Connie Young Yu, Summit Tunnel. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "Transcontinental Railroad | The Iron Road | American History Tellers | Podcast"?

The episode runs 38 min; the transcript is about 5,590 words in 35 timestamped sections.

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