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Chinese workers who united the States

By Tom Clifford

They carried out a Pharaonic feat of labor, uniting the states. Few in history have done so much but been credited so sparsely.

For decades the contributions of Chinese railroad workers to the most important construction project in mid-19th century America, the transcontinental railroad, were largely ignored.

On May 10, 1869, Chinese employed by the Central Pacific Railroad hammered in the final rails before the famous golden spike was driven in at Promontory Point, Utah.

Physically and symbolically the completed rail linked what had, just a few short years earlier, been a nation ripped asunder by civil war. The Chinese workers were officially recognized in May 2017 at a ceremony in Washington.

More than 12,000 workers from southern China were hired by the Central Pacific Railroad. They made up the overwhelming majority of its workforce, far outnumbering other nationalities.

The iconic photo, with two facing, almost menacingly impatient, locomotives surrounded by white workmen, depicts the moment when the line was completed. The company did actually honor the Chinese workers at Promontory Point. As the photo was being organized, they invited representatives to meet company executives in a special rail car.

However, at that precise moment, either by design or fault, Andrew J. Russell shouted “smile and look at the camera'' to those who had been meticulously assembled by the locomotives. It was one of the images that defined America but it was not a definitive depiction of what had gone before.