May 10, 2019 marks the 150th anniversary of the completion of the U.S. Transcontinental Railroad. To celebrate this milestone, join the Chinese Historical Society of New England and the Boston Asian American Film Festival for this special event for a film screening, lecture and The Chinese and the Iron Road exhibit on tour from Chinese Historical Society of America/Chinese Railroad Workers of North America Project:
 

FILM: CANTON ARMY IN THE HIGH SIERRAS:

Chinese workers build America's first transcontinental railroad (1863-1869)

28 Minutes • Documentary • 2001
Produced, Written and Directed by Loni Ding

Carving 13 tunnels inch-by-inch through the solid granite of the Sierras in the days before dynamite, an army of thousands of Chinese railroad workers were the backbone and heart of the Central Pacific railroad western half. This film recounts the real story of these workers, their methods of work and the ethnic/cultural values that sustained them through the difficult work of completing America's first Transcontinental Railroad "from sea to shining sea."

Followed by a lecture on selected images from the Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project at Stanford University, by former Director of Research, Denise Khor (UMASS-Boston).

About Denise Khor 

Prior to her arrival at the University of Massachusetts Boston, Professor Khor held a postdoctoral position in the Ethnicity, Race, and Migration Program at Yale University and was lecturer in the Department of History at Harvard University. She also served as the Research Director of Stanford University’s Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project. She worked on building an online multilingual digital archive that will bring together the most comprehensive collection of primary historical materials related to the history of Chinese railroad workers in the United States. More about this work can be read in her article for EDUCAUSE Review (June 30, 2014).