In March 1900, Chick Gin, the Chinese proprietor of a lumberyard, died of bubonic plague in a flophouse at 1001 Dupont Street, in the Chinese quarter of San Francisco. Authorities immediately rope off the 15-block neighborhood, quarantining roughly 25,000 Chinese and closing businesses owned by nonwhites.

In Jun., a court ruled the quarantine racist and lifted it, declaring that health officials acted with an “evil eye and an unequal hand.”