215 South Liberty St. (parking lot), site of Chinese Mission, New Orleans 70112
I am of Chinese descent and these buildings represent the last significant physical structure tied to the once and largely forgotten Chinatown. I watch uncomprehendingly as these buildings are treated with callous disregard and threatened with the same fate in the new millennium as the old Chinatown in the 1930s – torn down to make way for a parking garage.
Shaie-Mei Deng Temple (2000)
This parking lot was the site of the Chinese Mission, established in 1882 by the Canal Street Presbyterian Church. The mission taught English to hundreds of Chinese and other Asian immigrants and became the social anchor for the small Chinese community who settled in this heterogenous working-class neighborhood of African Americans, Eastern European Jews, and Sicilians. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 – not repealed until 1943 – restricted further Chinese immigration, barred Chinese citizens, and separated the mostly male immigrants from their wives and families. The Chinese businesses that opened in the adjacent blocks catered to these men with imported fabrics, food, and merchandise from home, as well as dried shrimp processed by Chinese laborers in coastal Louisiana.
All races and classes of New Orleanians patronized the Chinese laundries and restaurants that included Chinese and soul food on their menus. Adhering to the practice of Jim Crow, African Americans were segregated in Chinese restaurants, and the Chinese held an in-between status in the city’s racial hierarchy. New Orleans’ Chinatown was primarily a business district, as the immigrants dispersed throughout the city, often living above their businesses. In 1937, most of the merchants were forced out after losing their lease for the construction of a parking lot. Some of them joined other Chinese businesses on Bourbon Street to form a smaller Chinatown that lasted for another forty years. In the ensuing years, the original Chinatown was redeveloped as part of urban planning projects that expanded the central business and medical districts. In 2000, the community activist Shaie-Mei Deng Temple launched “Operation Lotus Roots” to preserve the remaining buildings of the original Chinese Quarter. Though unsuccessful, her work helped to recover the forgotten history of New Orleans’ Chinese community.
Nearby Sites of Interest
Main Public Library: 219 Loyola Ave., New Orleans 70112 (504) 596-2560 (www.nolalibrary.org)
The flagship branch of New Orleans Public Libraries houses the system’s largest collection of materials, including the African American Resource Collection and the Louisiana Division/City Archives and Special Collections.
To Learn More
- Richard Campanella, Geographies of New Orleans: Urban Fabrics before the Storm. University of Louisiana at Lafayette Press, 2006.
- Richard Campanella, “The Lost History of New Orleans’ Two Chinatowns.” Times-Picayune, March 6, 2015.
- “Save Last Vestige of Chinatown,” Times-Picayune, December 10, 2000.
- Shaie-Mei Temple, “Lotus Roots Project,” AsianBayou.com, https://apasnola.com/page-1353228.