Unfortunately, the age-old drumbeat of nativism never seems to lose its appeal as a rallying cry. In the case of Bellingham, Washington, a mill town, it meant violence and terror for the new arrivals who faced racism and resentment from their white counterparts. The immigrant workers were mostly Sikh men (misidentified at the time as Hindu) from what is today India and Bangladesh. They received no assistance from local police. Newspapers at the time said the South Asian community had effectively been “wiped out.”