SMITH RIVER, Calif. — There’s a pretty little cemetery in California’s foggy northwest corner, where the moss-covered headstones date back to the 1860s.

Every time Karen Betlejewski visits the Smith River Community Pioneer Cemetery, she places silk flowers beside a simple granite headstone in the northeast corner. It belongs to a man she never met.

DOCK RIGG 1850 — 1919, it reads.

At the time of his death, he was said to be the only Chinese person formally allowed to live in rural Del Norte County — three decades after white residents there and in neighboring Humboldt County had forced out their Chinese neighbors in a series of violent purges.

They called him Dock Rigg — the surname of his employer — but government papers say his name was Oo Dock. He worked as a cook and ranch hand for

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