Locke, California

Portions are taken from http://www.locketown.com/  http://www.lockeca.com/  See their website for more details, picture and updates.
 
 HISTORY
     Locke was founded in 1915 after a fire broke out in the Chinese section of nearby Walnut Grove. The Chinese who lived in that area decided that it was time to establish a town of their own. A committee of Chinese merchants, led by Lee Bing, Chan Hing Sai, Tom Wai, Chan Dai Kee, Ng So Hat, Chan Wai Lum, Chow Hou Bun, and Suen Dat Suin was formed. They approached land owner George Locke and inquired if they could build on his land. An agreement was reached. The town was laid out by Chinese architects and industrious building ensued. The founding of Lockeport, later 'Locke', was a reality. By 1920 Locke stood essentially as you see it now.
     Levee construction originally brought the Chinese to this area, but by the time Locke was built most of the work was in farm labor. Locke had many businesses that catered to the farm workers and residents of this region. In the 1940's restaurants, bakeries, herb shops, fish markets, gambling halls, boarding houses, brothels, grocery stores, a school, clothing stores, and the Star Theatre lined the bustling streets of Locke. At its peak 600 residents, and as many as 1500 people occupied the town of Locke.
     On August 2, 1970, Locke was added to the registry of national historical places, by the Sacramento County Historical Society, because of its unique status as the only town in the United States built exclusively by the Chinese for the Chinese.
     Locke is no tourist trap, nor is it a ghost town. Its unusual, out-of-the-way charm is genuine. Perhaps it is this authenticity, without any hypocritical overtones, which brings so many out of town visitors to its doors.
Currently, there are between 70 to 80 people live in Locke. Chinese population is down to about ten.

Chinese have been in the Delta at least since the 1860s. As in most of the West, the Delta's Chinese population was made up of two separate groups who had emigrated from neighboring districts in Guangdong Province in southeastern China. One group came from Sze Yap, and the other from Chungshan district.        
    Chinese have been in the Delta at least since the 1860s. As in most of the West, the Delta's Chinese population was made up of two separate groups who had emigrated from neighboring districts in Guangdong Province in southeastern China. One group came from Sze Yap, and the other from Chungshan district.
    The California state legislature passed the Swamp and Overflow Act of 1861 to encourage levee building for reclamation purposes. Subsequently, between three to four thousand Chinese laborers came to the Delta under contract to American developers built hundreds of miles of levees. Their task was arduous, requiring them to work in waist-deep water in an area which malaria was still endemic. They cut drainage ditches, built floodgates, and slowly piled up small levees. In this fashion, between 1860 to 1880 a total of 88,000 acres was reclaimed from the Delta marshlands.
    Once the land became fit for agriculture, Chinese remained in the Delta to become farm workers and tenant farmers.
More History                           
    In 1915, both the Chungshan and Sze Yap sections of Walnut Grove's Chinatown burned to the ground. After years of less than peaceful coexistence, rather than rebuild in Walnut Grove, the Chungshan group moved out and  later built themselves a town on land leased from the family of a land owner named George Locke.
    The Chinese can only leased the land to build the town because the state law forbade the Chinese immigrants to purchase land. Under terms of California's 1913 Alien Land Act, Chinese were not allowed to own land. The law was not declared unconstitutional until 1952.
    Originally the town was called Lockeport, the name was later shortened to Locke. The non-English-speaking Chinese began calling it 'Lockee', and still do today.
    Tin-san Chan and two other Chinese merchants leased and built the first three buildings in George Locke's property in 1912. They consist of a boarding house, a gambling parlor, and a saloon. The buildings are located at the south end of town, where the former saloon is now   the Locke Garden Restaurant.
    After an accidental fire led to the complete destruction of Walnut Grove's Chinatown in 1915, a group of Chungshan merchants headed by Bing Lee, financed the construction of some nine residential houses and opened his own general merchandise store in the new town they called Locke.
    The asparagus boom was in full flower by 1920 in the Delta, more and more houses and businesses catering to the Chungshan workers in the asparagus field were being built in Locke.  In 1925, Southern Pacific enlarged the packing shed across the street from Locke, consequently , Locke expanded even more rapidly. More than 600 Chinese were believed to live in town.
    Throughout the 1920s illicit amusement quarter began developed in town which included gambling parlors, speakeasies, a few opium dens, and several houses of prostitution. The gambling parlors, speakeasies and opium dens were owned and operated by Chinese. The prostitution business were owned, operated, and staffed by whites. There were no Chinese prostitutes in Locke because of the respectable Chinese families in town.
    Locke was a lively place in the 1920s. It had a Chinese owned movie theater called Star Theater which showed silent black and white films. A Chinese herbalist dispensed medicine and medical advice. There were six restaurants, nine grocery stores, a flour mill, a hotel, and numerous boarding houses.
    A gradual decline in the Delta's Chinese population began after World War II, and population decline became more rapid in the 1950s as more and more young Chinese Americans became better educated than their parents, they rarely stayed in agricultural districts. When the state government closed down all gambling business in town, merchants started to move out, and population in town decline even faster.

SPECIAL PLACES TO VISIT

The entire town of  Locke is a historical site.  Special places to visit or see include:

·         Locke Boarding House Visitors’ Center

An exhibit and research facility open to the public free of charge.

·         Locke Chinese School

A language school for the children of Locke established in 1926.

·         Locke Memorial Park and Monument

Dedicated to the Chinese who built the railroad, levees, and agriculture of California and the town of Locke.

·         Al the Wop’s Saloon and Restaurant

Early operation included a brothel.

·         Star Theater

Past enterprises included Chinese opera, gambling den, and brothel.

·         Dai Loy Museum

An exhibit of Chinese gambling paraphernalia.

·         Lockeport Hotel

The first building in Locke.

·         Locke Garden Restaurant

Chinese restaurant that at one time housed Locke’s first saloon and gambling hall.

·         Connie’s Toilet Garden

A collection of planters made from discarded toilets of past Chinese residents.

·         Locke Community Garden

Established during World War II as a victory garden.

 http://www.lockeca.com/    http://www.locketown.com/


EVEN MORE HISTORY


Locke
Locke, Sacramento County
This predominantly Chinese American community contains four blocks of one- and two-story frame commercial and residential structures. Many buildings are located along the levee of the Sacramento River, with second-floor porches and loading sheds along the top of the levee. In addition to the buildings, the communal vegetable garden is an integral part of the community.
The buildings date from three distinct periods. The earliest are those built in 1912: the Tules restaurant building, the building across from the Tules on Levee Street, and the building across from the Tules on Main Street.
The second group of buildings was constructed between 1915 and 1919: the Town Hall and six other buildings built by Bing Lee on Main Street — a restaurant, boarding house, two gambling houses, a dry goods store, and a hardware store.
The third group of buildings was built between 1920 and 1933: the Southern Pacific packing shed and dock, the Star Theater, the soda fountain and grocery store run by Robert Suen, the Locke Christian Center, the post office, single story residences on Key Street, Al Adam's restaurant, the gas station, and other buildings.
Locke is unique in that the town was built by Chinese Americans for Chinese Americans; its population is still largely Chinese American. Its isolation is the result of various alien land laws that prevented early Chinese immigrants and other aliens ineligible for citizenship from owning land in California, and discouraged them from trying to establish permanent communities. They were allowed to live where no one else wanted to be, and were required to move whenever the owner of the land wanted it for other purposes. Chinese Americans were permitted to establish communities in the Sacramento/San Joaquin Delta area because their labor and services were essential for draining swamps, building levees, and growing crops.
The predecessor of the town of Locke was a cluster of three buildings called Lockeport. They were located a mile north of Walnut Grove on the property of George Locke, a long-time Sacramento merchant who had owned farm land in the delta region since the 1880s. Lockeport was constructed by Tin Sin Chan and others from the Chung Shan district in Kwangtung province, China.
When a fire destroyed the Chinese American section of Walnut Grove in October 1915, a division arose in the community between people who had emigrated from the Chung Shan district and those from the Toi Shan and other districts in Sze Yup ("the four districts"). The people from Sze Yup (mostly from Toi Shan) decided to rebuild their community in Walnut Grove, but those from Chung Shan, speaking a different dialect of Cantonese and observing different customs, decided under the leadership of Bing Lee to relocate to Lockeport.
When the newcomers arrived in Lockeport, the only buildings were a saloon owned by Tin Sin Chan, a boarding house built by Wing Chong Owyang, and a gambling hall built by Yuen Lai Sing. Bing Lee financed construction of six buildings near the first three Chinese American buildings at a cost of $1,200 for each two-story structure. The buildings were erected against the land side of the levee, fronting a road on top of the levee and with a main street behind and below the levee. Between 1915 and 1920, residents of Lockeport shortened its name to Locke, and it gradually expanded from the original cluster of nine buildings.
Locke eventually had a permanent population of about 400, but at times seasonal crop workers increased this figure to more than a thousand. It had a church, a small Chinese school, a post office, a lodge, a theater, nine restaurants and boarding houses, five hotels and rooming houses, two saloons, four grocery stores, a hardware and herb store, a fishmarket, two dry goods stores, a dentist's office, two cigar stands, a shoe repair shop, a poolroom, and a bakery. Bordellos also abounded, along with gambling halls.
Although the population of the town of Locke has dropped today to fewer than 100, it still survives as a reminder of the significant contribution the Chinese American people have made to agricultural development and rural life in California, despite racism and discriminatory legislation.
Locke is a California State Historical Landmark and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Locke, Locke, Sacramento County

http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/

Facebook Bride Priscilla Chan

How £12 billion Facebook bride embodies the American dream: Father of Zuckerberg's new wife was Asian refugee who worked 18-hour days in Chinese takeaway

• Priscilla Chan was mainly raised by her grandmother because parents Dennis and Yvonne worked such grueling hours at their Boston restaurant
• Her science teachers says she was determined and bright pupil who was aiming for Harvard when she was just 13

PUBLISHED: 19:23 EST, 26 May 2012 | UPDATED: 12:51 EST, 27 May 2012


When Priscilla Chan married her long-time boyfriend, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, last weekend she looked every inch the fairytale bride.
In a stunning full-length white gown, 27-year-old Priscilla smiled serenely as she exchanged vows with Zuckerberg, 28, worth an astonishing £12 billion, in a surprise ceremony.
Her transformation into the wife of the world's youngest billionaire, however, is more remarkable than it may seem.
For Priscilla is the child of a Chinese-Vietnamese father who arrived in America with his family in the Seventies after spending time in a refugee camp.

Billionaire bride: Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg wed Priscilla Chan last weekend in California

Later Dennis Chan, 47, raised enough money to open a Chinese restaurant, where he worked gruelling 18-hour days as he dreamt of his first-born daughter living the American dream.
Priscilla was raised largely by her grandmother as her mother Yvonne also worked long hours at the Taste of Asia in Boston. At the 1,200-pupil state-run Quincy High School in the working-class town of Quincy, near Boston, it quickly became clear that Priscilla was bright - and determined to get on.
Peter Swanson, 66, her science teacher and tennis coach, said: 'She came up to me during that first year, when she was 13, and said, 'What do I have to do to get into Harvard University?''
'I was stunned. In all my years of teaching I have never had a 13-year-old ask a question like that. She knew what she wanted, even back then. I encouraged her to join the tennis team because I knew that Harvard would require her to have a well-rounded resumé.'
He added: 'She was mostly raised by her Chinese grandmother, who spoke no English. She was a very dignified woman who clearly was a huge influence in Priscilla's life. The grandmother was her emotional support. Her parents were working long hours - 18-hour days - at the restaurant.
'Priscilla worked incredibly hard at her studies and graduated top of her class. She gave me a voucher for a free meal at her family's restaurant as a gift.
'It was clear the family came from humble beginnings but were prepared to work around the clock to make something of their new life in America.
'Priscilla had that drive within her. She did everything she needed to round out her resumé and make it attractive to Harvard. And she joined the tennis club – she was not a natural athlete but with hard practice she steadily improved. When she got into Harvard she ran up to me grinning from ear to ear and said, 'See, I told you I would get to Harvard!''

Changing fortunes: The Chans' old restaurant Taste of Asia in Boston - now called Pho & I

Mr Swanson visited Priscilla and her new husband at their £3.5 million home in Palo Alto, California, last year. 'Mark was at the kitchen table working on his computer,' he said. 'Priscilla introduced us and he grinned and said, 'Behind every great man there is a great woman.''
'People are saying how lucky she is to marry him, but he knows he's the lucky one. Priscilla is the ultimate story of the American dream made good. Her parents came to the States with virtually nothing and she has married a self-made billionaire. It doesn't get much better than that.'

 

Priscilla has closely guarded her family's humble roots, releasing only a few titbits through Facebook's PR machine. Her 'official' biography states that after Quincy High, she studied biology at Harvard where she met Zuckerberg as they queued for the toilet at a party in 2003.
She has recalled: 'He was this nerdy guy who was just a little bit out there.' While Zuckerberg dropped out of Harvard after founding Facebook in his dorm room and moved to California to build his company, she remained at the prestigious Ivy League university. After Harvard, Priscilla attended medical school and graduated as a pediatrician a week before her wedding.
Her family's home is a four-bedroom red-brick detached house in a quiet cul-de-sac in the middle-class Boston suburb of Braintree. But the precise details of how the family arrived in America are unclear.

Determined pupil: Priscilla's yearbook photo from state-run Quincy High School, near Boston

Reports in China say they came originally from the city of Xuzhou in eastern Chandong province, also the home city of Rupert Murdoch's wife Wendi Deng. Others say that the family lived in Nanjing, an industrial town 150 miles west of Shanghai, before leaving to live first in Hong Kong and later in the US.
A source at the Asian-American Civic Association in Boston said it was 'highly likely' the family spent time in a refugee camp, either in Hong Kong or on arrival in the US.
Priscilla's father said he was a refugee who had lived in Vietnam, according to Thai-born Napat
Sriwannavit, who bought the 87-seat Taste of Asia restaurant from him in 2006 and turned it into a noodle bar called Pho & I.
Mr Sriwannavit said: 'Mr Chan was a very good man, very good manners. He said he had been a refugee and had lived in Vietnam. He was Chinese but he told me he lived in Vietnam.'
When Priscilla's father sold up, he told the new owner: 'I'm tired of working such long hours.'
Records show Dennis, who now owns a small wholesale fish business, was given a social security number as an 'Asian Refugee' between April 1975 and November 1979.
It is believed that he and his accountant wife, now 50, moved to Massachusetts in the early Eighties. Priscilla and her younger sisters, Elaine and Michelle, were born in the US.
Priscilla has already introduced Zuckerberg to her Asian roots. The couple travelled to Vietnam last December and to China in March.
Of the future, Mr Swanson said: 'Priscilla wants to contribute to society. She was the one who encouraged Mark to start a feature on Facebook encouraging people to be organ donors.
'She knows who she is and what she wants. She and Mark both want to change the world. And they are in the fortunate position of having the resources to do that.'

Mansion: Mark Zuckerberg's mansion in Palo Alto, California, which he bought for a reported $7 million

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2150534/Facebook-bride-Priscilla-Chans-father-Asian-refugee-worked-Chinese-takeaway.html#ixzz1x7epvxlK

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/

Portraits of Pride II

The John Jung Letters:                       

      Two Chinese American Boys And Their White Mentors

  Two Chinese American Boys And Their White Mentors
                Adolescent peers, especially those of the same ethnic background, have major impact on the psychological development of each other.  But when peers of one’s own ethnic group are not available, what alternative resources assume this role?  The present account illustrates how much older white people functioned as mentors for two young sons of Chinese laundrymen, each coincidentally having the same name, John Jung.  They grew up in cultural isolation in two different generations, one in North Dakota, and the other in Georgia.  I used their written correspondences to determine the influence of white mentors on the social development of these ethnically isolated boys.  In one case, I examined letters written in the 1920s by the North Dakota boy to his fourth grade teacher after she moved from his hometown and in the other case I studied letters that white adults in my Georgia hometown wrote in the early 1950s to me, the John Jung in Georgia, after I moved to San Francisco when I was 15. 

 Devils Lake, North Dakota: Letters From John Jung (1929-1936)
         John Jung may have been the only Chinese child in Devils Lake, North Dakota in 1928.  According to the 1920 U. S. census schedule there were only 12 Chinese in Devils Lake, all men working mainly in restaurants.  Born in China, John came to live with his father who ran a laundry while his mother remained in China. 
        What is known about John Jung’s life comes almost entirely from the more than 20 letters that he wrote to his fourth grade teacher, Fanny Boulden, from 1929-1936.   The year after John was her student, she married and moved with her husband to a farm in Grand Forks County, North Dakota. A few years John himself moved to Bismarck, North Dakoka, where he continued his schooling and worked with his father who now ran a cafe. During these years, John and his teacher maintained correspondence with letters.
        Although none of her letters to him have been found, some inferences about their content can be made from what John wrote in his letters.  The seven years of correspondence reveal how a strong and lasting mentoring friendship developed, one that was a positive and powerful influence on John’s personal growth.John’s letters provide a window into how he saw the mainly white world of North Dakota.  John reflected on life in the United States and described his daily activities and experiences in the American educational system.  His tone was mostly reverential and polite.  
       His first letter, dated June 29, 1929, was written in the awkward prose of an immigrant ill-at-ease with English:

Dear Miss Boulden.I regret to inform you that I as good-by to you that day, then I am very sorry and sad. Because forever without good teacher to help me as after today, for long time ago… O thanks for you are kindness, In spite of my foolish foolies and naughty, carefully to show me the anytime, I felt glad in the joy of my heart, you keeps me from carelss, and gives me unterstand all I have.

In closing, John implored her to write him when she had time:

”if you are leisure to send me a letter tell what place are you going on if you are so kind as to grant me this favour, I shall be happy very soon.”
Your friend,  Jung

       Over the next 18 months, John wrote six letters to his teacher,  These early letters are a combination of apologies for not writing more often, progress reports on his school work, and repeated expressions of gratitude for her teaching.
       However, his intellectual growth in less than two years was quite evident in a letter dated March 22, 1931.  By then John had discovered the New York Times, which he described as “a professor’s newspaper, which is liked by the first classes people.”  He boldly wrote, “I think that will broaden your mind and conception of things wonderfully”… and noted that “Reading good books or mazanes(sic)  is to improve the mind.”  He ended with a moral tone, “Men without knowledge is like the flower without gragrance (sic)!”  Yours truly, John Jung.  IIn a postscript, he added that the New York Times had an essay contest called, OUR NAVY DAY, which inspired him to enter a similar essay contest for junior high school students in Bismarck where he won Second Price (sic), leading him to boast, “This is the advantage from reading good paper.”
       In one letter, John’s sensitivities to racism emerged.  Outraged by his French teacher, he wrote that she was not fair or “anti-different-peoples” in her treatment of students."  He reported that his anger led him to write a complaint of letter to the principal.In January 1932, John returned to China for approximately eight months to visit his mother, and during this period the growing hostilities between Japan and China galvanized John’s patriotism. He wrote about wanting to return to China later to fight the Japanese, and even enlisted in the Chinese army.  However, he returned to North Dakota to resume school.
         In a letter in March, 1933 John reacted with skepticism to his teacher’s recommendation that he read Pearl Buck’s “The Good Earth.”  He expressed doubt about its validity, writing that he felt white writers about China were hypocritical.  He explained that his school history book stated that signs in Shanghai parks forbade entry to Chinese and dogs, signs that he claims he had never seen during his extensive travels throughout China.  Angered by this book, he had a tantrum at school and wrote: “I could hardly control my temper; I threw and tore the book in front of the teacher.”
         Out of respect for Mrs. Peterson, he promised, “But I will read the “Good Earth”, however, as you said it is good!  As I was raised in China, I should by now know my fatherland well. After having read it, I will make a little critic to it and tell you whether it was just or not.”
        In Dec. 1934, John confessed some personal failings in a letter in which he acknowledged, “I broke my friendship with a so-called friend and gave up all my ambition of making friends and all my unholy desires of making money.  This experience led to some difficult times for John, who admitted...”I would become immoral ___falling into a bad habit of drinking, gambling and fooling around in a pool hall.  I did smoke once a while when I was in Devil’s Lake, but, taking your advice, I quitted (sic) smoking for almost four years.”  After Mrs. Peterson offered advice about smoking and drinking in response to his confession, John replied on Jan 3, 1935:

             “But I always have the feeling of danger of smoking and drinking. It is not the matter of money,
              but the matter of my health.  Men shall never begin a bad habit!  To learn a bad habit takes
              only few hours while to learn a good one takes several years … I tried quite smoking for many
              times, but in vain.”
             “In your instructive letter...you said, “these views are entirely personal and you are
              under no compulsion to pay any attention to them if you disagree.”
           He feigned disappointment in Mrs. Petersen’s disclaimer that he was free to ignore her advice.
             ”What kind (of) person do you think I am, Mrs. Peterson? Do you think I am a boy
              who turns good advice out from me? I should say not…As you have been my teacher
              and know more than I, you should correct my errors whenever you can find it .. .
              From now on, please tell my faults and don’t just try to make me happy, for my future
              has many days coming.”

       John graduated from Bismarck High School in 1935 and secured a scholarship to attend Purdue University in Indiana and on Aug. 5, 1935, he wrote to inform Mrs. Petersen.  Despite many invitations in the past several years and promises to visit the Peterson farm, John finally managed to visit them for the first and only time in mid- August on his way to attend Purdue.
         0n Dec. 30, 1935, he wrote to Mrs. Peterson from Purdue informing her of his academic challenges during his first year. The level of difficulty and competition was more than he was prepared for.  He confided that he was barely able to obtain B’s in many of his courses. He criticized himself,

           “Since I am not working, I ought to make higher marks than ‘B.’ Well, I cannot blame anybody
           but myself that I didn’t take drawing in high school, that my foundation is not much
           good for engineering school and that i am too dumb or did not study hard enough.“

          The story, however, does not have a happy ending.  No record of what happened to John after 1936 has been found. His last letter dated December 27, 1936 gave no indication that he intended to return to China but given that he did join the Chinese army in the early 1930s, Mrs. Peterson speculated that he may have returned to fight in the Sino-Japanese War, which broke out in July 1937.
          Years later, in 1984, Fanny Peterson, reflected that  “his intriguing letters are a literary event, I feel. They reveal a developing personality and a young man dedicated to making it in a 'white man's world'.”


  1 Photocopies of the John Jung Letters were deposited in the Orin G. Libby Manuscript Collection at the University of North Dakota by Fanny Boulden Peterson of Larimore, North Dakota in December, 1984. The original letters were deposited by Fanny Welte (Peterson’s daughter) of Aneta, North Dakota, on November 18, 2003 in exchange for the photocopies (Acc.#84-1338). Also included was one letter to Jung from Nelson Sawvain, former Superintendent of Schools in Devils Lake, a story written by Jung after he had been in Boulden’s class for eight weeks, a biographical account about Jung written by Carol Welte, and photocopied materials from the archives at Purdue University.

Macon, Georgia: Letters To John Jung (1952-1954)

         Like the North Dakota John Jung, a generation later another son of a Chinese immigrant, laundryman also named John Jung, experienced a solitary childhood  in Macon, Georgia.  His family members were the only Chinese in the entire city during the WWII years, a time before the civil rights movement challenged and refuted the Jim Crow laws that were prevalent throughout the South for decades. There, his parents operated a laundry.  When he was 15, John, like the North Dakota John, was suddenly uprooted from his hometown when his parents decided to move the family to San Francisco to provide them with contact with a Chinese community.  His father make the sacrifice to stay behind alone to run the laundry to support the family in San Francisco.  Overnight, John went from being totally isolated from other Chinese in Macon, to living in the midst of the largest Chinese community in the United States. 
         During this sometimes bewildering transition, his emotional ties remained to Georgia and it was through letters that he maintained ties with people in Macon that were important in his life.  Two teachers were faithful correspondents.  Miss Rosa Taylor, the retired principal of  his elementary school, who had taken a special interest in my development as far back as when he entered the first grade.  She invited John to visit her occasionally after school at her nearby home.  There, they would sit on her front porch and converse at length on many topics.  She served in the role of one of his grandmothers in China that he never met, always patiently listening, with indulgence, to his undoubtedly childish banter.
        What was important to John about this relationship was that a highly respected adult had a genuine interest in his personal growth.  After he moved to California, she would often write spirited letters of encouragement.  When John  once confided that his high school in San Francisco was very difficult, she wrote: “I only know that you are in every way an A-1 boy and will always be a joy and a credit to everyone who has had the happy privilege of knowing you. Right you are! Show the Westerners that the “deep South” is not so benighted as we have been pictured…
       A second mentor, Mr. Guyton Carr was John’s 9th grade science and homeroom teacher.  A curmudgeon at heart, he was a master teacher captured and held the attention of fidgety 14-year old boys long enough to teach them the principles of physical science. In his letters, Mr. Carr was full of encouragement and praise, expressing high hopes for John’s success.  When he disclosed that his new school, the prestigious Lowell High, was intensely competitive and that he was no longer making all A’s, he offered support with a dose of humor.  “As far as I am concerned, something about your school has the delicate aroma of a two weeks old fish-head. Surely that school is not than much harder … Another thought just struck me… Are you a courting boy now?  If the love bug has bitten you, that explains it.”
       Mr. Carr treated John as a colleague or peer rather than as one of his pupils.  For example, in more than one letter he described his ideas for new ways of teaching certain concepts, and then asked for John’s opinion: “Do you think I give too much homework? What methods could be used to get them to have fun doing science? Anything you can say would be very much appreciated. You would be a much better critic than practically any of the students I had last year.”
           And then there were townspeople who cared about John.  Mr. Shirley, the manager of an office building, was a father-surrogate to him, and a family friend who treated them respectfully and was always available to assist my father in business matters. Mr. Shirley was a prototypical Southern gentleman, the kind who tipped his straw hat and nodded to women as they walked by on the street. 
           His style was polite, genteel, and refined.  In one letter, he wrote,
          “I pass by the store daily, and it suddenly dawns on me that my fine young friends,
            are 3000 miles away.”  He also would comment reassuringly on how well John’s father
            was doing alone in Macon.  And he often noted my father “missed his family a lot.”
        A second correspondent was Mr. Jessie Cooner, an elderly good ol’ boy who served as a surrogate for the grandfathers in China that John never met.  He was the clerk at the small liquor store next door to the laundry.  The two of them developed a deep friendship through their mutual interest in baseball, and they would spend hours discussing major league teams and players and listening to radio broadcasts of games.  On Sundays, they often attended local games together under the broiling Georgia heat. 
         From Mr. Cooner, John would get a letter every few weeks lamenting about the local hot weather, how much he missed his companionship, and how poorly the local baseball team was playing.  He liked to tease  when John’s favorite team, the St. Louis Cardinals, was not doing well.  He often mentioned his conversations with John’s father when they would sit outside their stores to cool off during the summer evenings, “I talk with your Daddy every night and of course it is about you all. He tell me every time hear here (sic) from any of you.” In several letters, his Southern racial biases would emerge, “John, your Daddy just told me that Negroes go to the same school you go to.  How about that.  I bet you don’t like that at all.  Write me all about how they work that kind of business.”
         And so it was, that when John moved across the country, this assortment of correspondents helped him adjust by expressing interest, concern, and confidence.  These correspondences lasted for only for one to two years, brief compared to those of the North Dakota John Jung.  Nonetheless, the affirmation and support John received were invaluable in giving him confidence in his potential.
        None of the letters that John wrote to these mentors are available.  John recalled that he usually rambled over many topics, as adolescents tend to do.  He usually wrote about new experiences, schoolwork, tourist sights, career plans, the weather, and, of course, how much he missed his Georgia friends

Jack Ong - Portraits of Pride - James Wong Howe - Nancy Kwan

Portland's Old Chinese Burial Grounds

Lone Fir Cemetery in Portland, Oregon

CHINESE BURIALS and BLOCK 14

We tend to whitewash history, viewing the past as an era of innocence. Portland was no different from many places, formed by people eager to better their lives, often at the expense of others. All the greed and cruelty in the world today was around long before Portland was born.The building that once stood on the southwest corner of the cemetery was built in 1952 by Multnomah County. Prior to that time, this was Block 14 of Lone Fir Cemetery. This section was set aside for Chinese immigrants, and referred to as the Old Chinese Burial Ground. Chinese have been in Portland since 1850 and were integral in the building of the city. They performed much of the most brutal work building railroads, mining, and in Portland also built the seawall, the original sewer system and chopped the stumps out of the roads after the ancient fir trees were cut. They chopped firewood and ran laundries and grew produce for the entire town.
According to Chinese custom, immigrants were buried here for a short time, with their bones later dug up and returned to China, to be reunited with their ancestors. This went on for a time, until the County wanted the land for use as a maintenance yard for the highway department. In 1948, this block was excavated with a bulldozer. All remains found were packed off to China and the building was built shortly thereafter.
In January of 2004, Multnomah County held a hearing, planning to sell the property as surplus, to the highest bidder, presumably for a high-rise condo/business establishment. Friends of Lone Fir Cemetery was able to notify community members and packed the hearing room with 150 people. Over the course of the next six months, information was gathered which indicated that intact burials might well exist beneath the asphalt here.
Records at the Oregon Historical Society and the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association (CCBA) showed that not all of the Chinese buried here were meant to be returned to China, and had probably been left when the excavation occurred in 1948. County Commissioner Maria Rojo de Steffey commissioned an archaeological investigation. Using ground-penetrating radar for a preliminary test, several anomalies were identified. In January 2005, a team of archaeologists found two intact burials. At this point, it became clear that this land, still classified as a cemetery and a historical landmark, could not be sold for commercial development. The County recognized its civic duty to remove the building and repatriate it with the rest of Lone Fir Cemetery.
In 2007, the building was removed; the ground was leveled and returned to grass. Multnomah County and the City of Portland of Portland collaborated to complete the project and then deeded Block 14 over to Metro, which manages the rest of Lone Fir Cemetery.
In 2008, the Block 14 Work Group comprised. Coordinated by Metro, the work group comprises representatives from Friends of Lone Fir, CCBA, Buckman Neighborhood Association and other community groups. Lango Hansen Landscape Architects is leading efforts to create a memorial to honor the Chinese who helped build Portland. With more than 130 of Dr. Hawthorne’s patients buried nearby, a memorial to the asylum patients who died without family, and were given a decent burial by the good doctor, has also been designed. Creating an entrance to the cemetery that reflects its original look and feel as well as an interpretive area that shares the history of Portland through a timeline of Lone Fir Cemetery, are also a part of the plans being considered. These enhancements to the cemetery will elevate its significance to Portland. Like many great cities around the world that encourage the community and visitors from around the world to learn about its oldest cemeteries, Portland will do the same with Lone Fir.

Founded in 2000, Friends of Lone Fir Cemetery is an all volunteer, 501(c) 3 organization dedicated to education, preservation and restoration efforts for the cemetery. With its first burial dating back to 1846, Lone Fir is the oldest cemetery in the Portland area and the largest of 14 pioneer cemeteries managed by Metro regional government. Through fundraising events, monument repair workshops, clean up days and historic tours, Friends of Lone Fir strives to raise dollars and awareness to overcome the inevitable deterioration that many of America’s oldest cemeteries face. Metro still coordinates burials nearly every week in the cemetery, and Friends of Lone Fir seeks to honor the deceased and their survivors through encouraging community involvement in this treasured greenspace. Lone Fir Cemetery is on the National Register of Historic Places and was named one of the top 10 cemeteries in the world to visit by National Geographic Traveler Magazine..

---

Come Together Home  

was selected to screen at both the Astoria International Film Festival and the Minneapolis / St. Paul Asian Film Festival.

---

Discover the remains of early Chinese immigrants, and their extraordinary final journey from Portland to Hong Kong. Block 14 in Lone Fir Cemetery, the first Chinese burial ground in Portland—and site of as many as 1,500 burials—now stands as a fenced off void of gravel after most of the remains were exhumed and shipped back to China in 1928 & 1949. Sixty years later, Director Ivy Lin follows the footsteps of the missing 1949 shipment in an extraordinary journey from Portland to Hong Kong.
Film review from Aaron Mesh of Willamette Week, 07/21/2010:

"Portland documentarian Ivy Lin has a patient, naturalistic eye for the boarded-over and fenced-off bits of the city;s history; her camera is an unflashy reservoir of lost places. As in her first movie (Knowing All of You Like I Do, which chronicled the shuttering of Northwest 23rd Avenue's Music Millenium), she has a direct narrative to propel her along: The story of Chinese railroad workers buried at the edge of Lone Fir Cemetery, the removal of their bones when the Multnomah County decided to build a warehouse, the traditional (and desired) shipment of those remains back to China, and the now-confirmed possibility that not every body was dug up when they were supposed to be. She gets strong assistance—and most of the hard reporting—from Brent Walth of the Oregonian, who is an excellent storyteller. Lin's eventual journey to Hong Kong doesn't quite get to where the bodies are buried, but the mystery slides smoothly into an understanding that when it comes to honoring the dead, it's the thought—any thought—that counts. Her movie should, at the very least, leave smug Portlanders a little uneasy about the city's liberal inheritance."

Am J Public Health. 2009 March; 99(3): 440.

doi:  10.2105/AJPH.2008.145813

PMCID: PMC2661442

The Anti-Chinese Cubic Air Ordinance

Joshua S. Yang, PhD, MPH

Author information ► Article notes ► Copyright and License information ►

Out of the frying pan into the fire. Courtesy of the Bancroft Library.

AS CALIFORNIA'S ECONOMY slowed in the late 1860s and job opportunities dwindled, White laborers in San Francisco actively created an environment hostile for Chinese immigrants, who were seen as the source of their inability to find work. Organized labor groups used, among other strategies, public health measures to create an environment so hostile as to “persuade” Chinese immigrants to return to China. One such law was the Cubic Air Ordinance, a city ordinance requiring 500 cubic feet of space for every person residing in a lodging. This illustration from The Wasp,¹ a popular San Francisco magazine of the time, shows a caricature of the enforcement of the Cubic Air Ordinance: a White official removing Chinese men from their sleeping quarters into the even more crowded county jail by order of the Cubic Air Ordinance. Published in 1878, the Cubic Air Ordinance had its origins in the anti-Chinese agitation earlier in the decade.

In June of 1870, after a labor dispute between White laborers and San Francisco's local government,^2–5 Thomas Mooney and Hugh Murray—President and Vice President, respectively, of the Anti-Coolie Association—seized upon the dissatisfaction of White workers and submitted a request to the county board of supervisors for a sanitary measure against the Chinese.⁶ Their request for the measure was based upon the health officer's report on Chinatown. In his annual report to the board of supervisors in 1870, the health officer wrote of the Chinese that “their mode of life is the most abject which it is possible for human beings to exist.”^7(p233) They “live crowded together in rickety, filthy, and dilapidated tenement houses, like so many cattle or hogs.”^7(p233) In Chinatown, “the most absolute squalidness and misery meets one at every turn.”^7(p233) Recognizing that “the Anti-Coolie feeling is rapidly growing,”^8(p1) and that it was possible that “the horrible demagogues who are stirring up the bad passions of men, may succeed and riots ensue,”^8(p1) San Francisco's board of supervisors passed an order regulating lodging houses on July 25, 1870.⁹ Order 939, Regulating Lodging Houses, popularly known as the Cubic Air Ordinance, was approved on July 29, 1870.¹⁰ The ordinance required every house, room, or apartment used for lodging within the limits of San Francisco, except public prisons and hospitals, to contain 500 cubic feet for each person residing in the lodging. Owners of lodgings would also be held responsible under the order. Violating the order was considered a misdemeanor, punishable by a fine of between $10 and $500, 5 days to 3 months in prison, or both.

County police records show that arrests for violation of the Cubic Air Ordinance began in May 1873,¹⁰ and hundreds of arrests were made under the ordinance during the rest of the year until the county court found in favor of a Chinese hotel owner who challenged the ordinance, essentially rendering the county ordinance unenforceable. Arrests resumed in 1876, however, after the state adopted its own Cubic Air Ordinance. In all, thousands of Chinese in San Francisco were jailed from 1873 to 1886 under a public health law driven by anti-Chinese sentiment. “Anti-coolie” groups would eventually be successful in passing the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the first restrictive immigration law in US history, quieting the nativist clamor around Chinese immigration that would, in short order, be redirected at other Asian and European immigrants.

Go to:

Acknowledgments

This study was supported by funding from the University of California, Los Angeles Institute for American Cultures.

Go to:

References

1. Out of the frying pan into the fire. The San Francisco Illustrated Wasp March 2, 1878: Vol. 2 (83).

2. The unemployed. Daily Alta California March 23, 1870:1.

3. Work for the unemployed poor. Daily Alta California March 29, 1870:1.

4. The unemployed. Daily Alta California April 5, 1870:1.

5. Meeting of workingmen. Daily Alta California April 8, 1870:1.

6. Mooney and the Chinese. San Francisco Evening Bulletin June 14, 1870:1.

7. San Francisco Board of Supervisors San Francisco Municipal Reports, 1869-70. San Francisco, CA: Cosmopolitan Printing Company; 1870.

8. The Chinese matter. San Francisco Evening Bulletin July 19, 1870:1.

9. Lodging-houses. San Francisco Evening Bulletin July 26, 1870:1.

10. San Francisco Board of Supervisors San Francisco Municipal Reports, 1872–73. San Francisco, CA: Spaulding & Barto Printers; 1873.

---

Articles from American Journal of Public Health are provided here courtesy of American Public Health Association

Formats:

• Full Text
|
• PDF (862K)

Related citations in PubMed

• Racialized bodies. [Rev Am Hist. 2006]
• Family and marriage of late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century immigrant women. [J Am Ethn Hist. 2000]
• Of medicine, race, and American law: the bubonic plague outbreak of 1900. [Law Soc Inq. 1988]
• Drugs and race in American culture: Orientalism in the turn-of-the-century discourse of narcotic addiction. [Am Stud (Lawrence). 2000]
• Sterilized in the name of public health: race, immigration, and reproductive control in modern California. [Am J Public Health. 2005]

See reviews... See all...

Links

• PubMed

Recent activity

Clear Turn Off

• The Anti-Chinese Cubic Air Ordinance
  PMC

See more...

Write to the Help Desk