The San Luis Obispo Pioneer was the first newspaper in the county. It began non-partisan then abruptly lurched over to the Democrats. It was founded by Rome G. Vickers. San Luis Obispo City-County Library

Almost a decade earlier, Murray had been a Democratic state assemblyman. Murray changed his party affiliation when the Confederates fired on Fort Sumpter in 1861, igniting the Civil War. In March 25, 1859, Murray was one of five members of the so-called “Chinese Committee” to stop Chinese immigration to California.

The Sacramento Union published Murray’s report calling Chinese immigrants “heathen and idolatrous in their religious tenets.” They were also seen as “grossly immoral, filthy and disgusting in their practices and habits.” Murray’s report asks why wealthy business owners “are openly welcoming to our shores the dingy inhabitants of Asia to compete with and to jostle our white brethren?” The screed finished with a call to Congress “The passage of a law for the prevention of the further immigration of said Chinese or Mongolians to this state.”

Tribune editor Walter Murray is pictured as a young attorney in 1858. Courtesy Photo

Vickers reveled in republishing the most racist parts of Murray’s report in the Oct. 12, 1869, edition of the Pioneer and called Murray a hypocrite for supporting a civil rights amendment. At the time, both men and the political parties they belonged to — Republican and Democrat — opposed Chinese immigration. Soon a third party with even more anti-Chinese leanings, the Workingmen’s Party of the United States, would be founded.