Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Fall 2007 - (Page 53)

have a real tact for business, and the merchants of the Flowery Kingdom are among the keenest in the world. A year ago we had no Chinese among us; we now see them everywhere in the streets of New Orleans, and they have opened two large stores for the sale of Chinese articles…. This looks, indeed, like business.” It was in 1871 that people of Asian descent achieved sufficient numbers to become a noticeable presence in the streets of New Orleans. Contemporary newspaper articles considering the newcomers — referred to generically as “the Celestials,” “John Chinaman,” or simply “John,” or derisively as “Coolies” or “Chinks” — divulged feelings ranging from curiosity and admiration to condescension and disdain. The census at the end of the decade recorded 95 Chinese living in New Orleans and 489 in Louisiana (both probably significantly undercounted), primarily comprising single men residing in boarding houses and apartments, employed in occupations such as laundering, cooking, and making or selling cigars. The Emergence of Chinatown In 1881-1882, a Maine-born missionary from Boston named Lena Saunders, recently arrived to New Orleans, began offering classes in English, American culture, and Christianity in her home to five Chinese immigrants. The effort caught the attention of the Canal Street Presbyterian Church, which in 1882 incorporated the effort as part of its outreach to foreigners. A building was acquired at 215 South Liberty Street, next to the church, to serve as the Chinese Mission. Saunders’ school served over 200 Chinese and other Asians (the first convert was “Corean”) in the mid-1880s as a place to feel welcome, learn English, and be among brethren. In establishing the Chinese Mission, Lena Saunders unwittingly helped make the Third Ward neighborhood near 215 South Liberty the geographical hub of the Chinese community. Chinese-owned businesses starting opening in a scattered pattern near the Chinese Mission, joining the Loung Sing Laundry, which had been at present-day 160 South Rampart since 1874. In the early 1890s, the loose allegedly “docile” Chinese were in fact ready and willing to fight for what was rightfully theirs. Withheld wages, disparate pay, and ill treatment were met with confrontations, work stoppages, and lawsuits. Additionally, many Southerners were hostile to the notion of “another” racial group in the tense postbellum social landscape. For every opinion extolling the “industrious” and “disciplined” Chinese was one condemning them as “heathens,” “Mongols,” “a demoralizing blight to any community,” “filthy, thievish, and infamously vile.” Harper’s Weekly warned in 1867 that “these people are the lowest and in every way the least desirable portion of nations the most alien to us and our civilization.” Louisiana sugar planters in the 1870s looked elsewhere for contract labor — Spain, Portugal, Greece, and finally Sicily — to replace the replacements of the emancipated slaves. Chinese recruitment to the South flopped. Chinese in Postbellum New Orleans Chinese laborers already in the South began in 1870 to gravitate to larger cities, particularly New Orleans, to which arrived that same year the first shipments of Chinese merchandise directly from China. In 1871, Fou Loy and Company opened a store on Chartres Street, described by the New Orleans Times as “a centre of attraction for hundreds who delight to gaze upon the curious manufactures of China, and the pigtail of John himself.” A similar operation run by Yut Sing was located on Royal, while a Chinese laundry opened on Carondelet Street. The New Orleans Bee commented: “Chinese Merchants—The Celestials Fall 2007/LOUISIANA ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES 53

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Fall 2007

Contents Friends & Letters Editor’s Column Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities Big Charity: A History of New Orleans’ Public Hospital Historic New Orleans Collection Making Groceries: A History of New Orleans Markets New Orleans’ Faubourg Tremé: Rooted in Tradition Jazz Notes Louisiana Association of Museums Chinatown New Orleans Louisiana Foodways A Question of Secession Louisiana Architecture Louisiana State Museum The Unnatural History of Cypress Parish Terra Incognita Bookstand Sound Advice Forum

Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Fall 2007

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