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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 recent
