LOS ANGELES — It happened in the early days of Los Angeles, when the city was a dusty, violent, frontier town.
An eruption of gunfire around 4 p.m. on Oct. 24, 1871, spurred what's believed to be the most lethal example of racial violence ever recorded in the city — the Los Angeles Chinese massacre.
Hundreds made up the largely white mob that descended upon what's now downtown Los Angeles. They indiscriminately beat, shot or hanged any Chinese person they saw.
