When increasing numbers of Vietnamese refugees arrived in the United States during the late 1970s, they often experienced racist and at times violent reactions from residents. Following the turmoil of America’s involvement in the Vietnam War, many Americans across the country eyed the refugees with suspicion or, as in the case of Galveston area fishermen, saw them as unwanted immigrants who would create competition in the bay shrimping industry.
While tensions between Vietnamese and native-born fishermen characterized relationships in many Gulf states from the late 1970s through the early 1980s, small fishing towns and cities along the Galveston Bay coast experienced some of the most violent confrontations between newly settled Vietnamese refugees and white residents. In many cases, local chapters of the Ku Klux Klan joined fishermen in protesting the arrival of Vietnamese and leading attacks on Vietnamese shrimping boats in Galveston in 1982. However, as local Fulton, Texas, business owner and fisherman Leslie Casterline explained in his 2008 interview, not all local residents were hostile toward the Vietnamese who arrived in Fulton during the early 1980s.
When the Vietnamese first came here, they originally started out, some of them, selling shrimp to the place next door to us, which at that time was called Seabrook Seafood. There was a man named Lou LeBlanc that was the operator of it, and of course, once a few of them started there, and then some of them started spilling over and dealing with us. And, you know, we bought shrimp off them. I mean that’s our business, is to buy shrimp, selling diesel fuel to shrimp boats and supplies and things, and so they started dealing with us in between the two places…. Well, a lot of them, they had their own boats. Actually, a lot of the people that came here were already fishermen in Vietnam. Some of them weren’t and just learned to be from the others, but when they first came, the ones that some bought old boats from other fishermen that was around and started shrimping and it just kind of seemed like more and more came. Because what a lot of people don’t realize is when they came into this country, they went all over, but they were naturally had lived along the coast, so they might have went to Minnesota or somewhere like that and then within a few years they ended up here. And, you know, the ones that came here, I guess they called their family, or you know, they were doing all right so more of them migrated all the time. When they first got here, the ones that came bought older boats from the fishermen here and actually, I think where the problem started is they were — when they first came they were buying a lot of the older boats up and paying probably higher prices than what they were worth and after they had been here a while, then they either started building or buying newer boats and became more competitive with the local fishermen and I think that’s what kind of started a lot of the problems, and plus, just the numbers of them that came here all at one time.
Probably was just in the increase of number of fishermen here…. And I always thought a lot of the problem was just the sheer numbers that came here. It was, you know, the number of fishermen that we had locally and then all of a sudden there were many times more than there had ever been here, which made it harder on the people that were here.
… I mean Surfside Seafood was the place next to us, and us, at first we had local fishermen that dealt with us too, but then eventually the two of us, all the local people wouldn’t sell their shrimp to somebody who bought stuff from the Vietnamese was kind of the first deal. And, you know, if you were buying from the Vietnamese, which we were the only two places here in town that would buy from the Vietnamese. And when we started we both had local fishermen and Vietnamese and then once the numbers started getting up, and of course, even the local ones that didn’t mind it pretty much succumbed to peer pressure from their other friends that they would just give them a hard time about selling here, and most of them moved to the places that didn’t buy from the Vietnamese.
… And I guess one of the problems that where we got more involved and people started giving us a hard time is because there is a coast guard regulation that says that a non-citizen can’t own a boat that is over five net tons of displacement. And the boats that they build appeared to be over that, and what we did, and I was actually the one that — we hired a naval architect to teach us how to make the boats where they would fall below that classification because a lot of people think that in this coast guard requirement that says five net ton, they associate it as a ton being 2,000 pounds. It doesn’t have anything to do with it…. So we hired a guy and he taught me how to do it and how to measure the boats and show them where they had to build them in certain ways in different parts of the boats where they would pass. And so that’s when they started. And you would build the boat and call the coast guard and they would send a person to measure it and check it out and then they would give you a certificate saying what it was. Well and when that started happening, well then it started getting pretty hot around here…. And we had — they had Klan rallies here. We were actually — we got notes on our door from the Klan and stuff like that but we never really had — I mean you know, we had some confront us but never really had any fights or anything like that, you know. We got cussed at a lot and things, but nothing else. But a lot of the Vietnamese were — I know some of the women, like I know they come to my dad’s house like in the middle of the night. I don’t know if people would come by and threaten them or throw stuff at their house or something and they’d come to my dad’s house all upset and want him to help them … the Klan actually has a business card that says, “You’ve been paid a friendly visit by the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. Be careful. Your next visit might not be the same.” And it’s a printed business card and they leave them in your door.
Source: Interview with Leslie Casterline, Texas business owner and fisherman, 2008. Used by permission of Victoria Regional History Center, Victoria College/University of Houston–Victoria Library.
Evaluating the Evidence