Ohio History Journal
SHIRLEY SUI LING TAM
Police Roundup of Chinese in Cleveland
in
1925: A Case Study of a Racist Measure
and the Chinese Response
On September 22, 1925, a Chinese waiter
named Yee Chock was found
dead with his head chopped off in the
Chinatown section of Cleveland,
Ohio. Identifying such a hatchet murder
as being connected with rivalry
among tongs (a kind of Chinese
association in America), the Safety Director
of Cleveland, Edwin D. Barry, ordered a
wholesale arrest of all the Chinese
in Cleveland the next day. Shops and
homes in the Chinatown were broken
into without warrants by policemen. On
September 23 and 24 sanitary and
fire wardens checked the Cleveland
Chinatown, and on September 24 the
Immigration Department sorted out
Chinese with illegal residential status
for deportation.
While the Police and Immigration
Department of Cleveland tried to
associate nearly every Chinese with the
murder and regarded the roundup as
an opportunity to clean up the vice
district in the Chinatown, the local
Clevelanders did not respond in a
similar manner. They disapproved of the
extralegal roundup and expressed much
sympathy and support for the
victims. The Chinese in Cleveland,
unlike the submissive stereotype imposed
upon them, sought compensation or
redress through legal channels and held
mass meetings to air their grievances.
The response of both the Americans and
Chinese in Cleveland presents a
different picture from that generally described
in the studies about the
Chinese in America.1 Present
studies on the development of Chinese-
American society between the 1840s and
1940s are basically divided into
two parts. One school of thought believes that Chinese Americans
encountered difficulties because the
Chinese were bound by their own
traditions and were not willing to adopt
American ways of life, and their
behavior was determined by the ethnic
institutions that perpetuate Chinese
Shirley Sui Ling Tam, Ph.D., is an
editor of Chinese Christians for Justice Periodical which
covers social issues both in America and
abroad.
1. See Shirley Sui Ling Tam's earlier
"Police Round-Up of Chinese in Cleveland in 1925:
A Case Study in a Racist Measure and the
Chinese Response" (M.A. thesis, Case Western
Reserve University, 1988.)
6 OHIO
HISTORY
culture.2 The other school
maintains that the American environment, which
included racism and violence, curtailed
the normal development of Chinese
society in America.3 Both schools tend to regard either
the Chinese
tradition or the American environment as
a constant in influencing Chinese-
American society from the 1840s to the
1940s. However, they tend to
overlook the fact that as time passed,
both the Chinese and Americans would
develop different modes of behavior and
perceptions. Furthermore, the two
schools tend to generalize about the
Chinese experience in America, when
more specific regional studies about
particular periods and events are
necessary. This paper attempts to
correct the shortcomings of these two
schools by focusing on the results of a
racist measure on Chinese Americans
in a large Midwestern city in the year
1925.
This paper also demonstrates how
detrimental it is to a minority when the
formulation of public policy becomes
based on negative and unfounded
images. The wholesale roundups in the
Chinatowns in the East and
Midwestern cities in the mid-1920s
provide a clear example of how
government officials used the commitment
of a single crime as the occasion
for a thorough-going effort to
"clean up" their Chinese districts. The raids,
which influenced the indiscriminate
arrest of all Chinese, the checking of all
the residents' legal status, and a
thorough search of Chinatowns'
commercial and residential buildings,
reflected the prevalent impression
that the Chinese were unreliable
persons, illegal settlers, and unhygienic
inhabitants.4 The Chinese
were particularly hard hit because they were
denied naturalization rights, putting
them in an extremely defenseless
situation. To have second generation native-born Chinese was nearly
impossible because of miscegenation laws
and the barring of entry to
women. However, the findings as well as
the reaction of the Chinese
community after the Cleveland raid
showed that the Chinese were not as
pictured by contemporary literature,
illustrating the gap between image and
reality as well as the danger of
popular belief if translated into public policy.
2. See Gunther B. Barth, Bitter
Strength: A History of the Chinese in the U.S., 1850-1870
(Cambridge, Mass., 1964); Stanford M.
Lyman, Chinatown and Little Tokyo: Power Conflict
and Community Among Chinese and
Japanese Immigrants in America (New
York, 1980);
Lyman, Chinese Americans (New
York, 1974); Chu Chai, "Administration of Law Among the
Chinese in Chicago," Journal of
Criminal Law, 22 (March, 1932), 806-18; Paul C.P. Sui, The
Chinese Laundryman: A Study of Social
Isolation (New York & London,
1987); Rose Hum
Lee, The Chinese in the United States
of America (Hong Kong, 1960).
3. Mary R. Coolidge, Chinese
Immigration (New York, 1969); Ching Chiao Wu.
"Chinatowns: A Study of Symbiosis
and Assimilation" (Ph.D. dissertation., University of
Chicago, 1928): Roger Daniels, Asian
Americans: Chinese and Japanese in the United States
since 1850 (Seattle and London, 1988); Dennis Katsushi Fukumoto,
"Chinese and Japanese in
California, 19001920: A Case Study of
the Impact of Discrimination" (Ph.D. dissertation,
University of Southern California,
1976).
4. Richard H. Dillon, The Hatchet Man
(New York, 1962), 212.
Police Roundup of Chinese in
Cleveland in 1925 7
From California to Cleveland:
Chinese-American
History to the 1920s
The 1920s were a watershed in American
immigration history. Anti-
foreign sentiment was at a peak, with
foreign-born residents regarded as
unwelcome elements of society. America
for the first time imposed a quota
on the number of European immigrants.
But the situation was even worse
for Asians; they were virtually barred
from entering America. The Asian
target in this period was essentially
the Japanese, who had come to fill the
labor vacuum after the Chinese were
excluded from entering America as
early as 1882. Nevertheless, the Chinese
were not spared. Not only were
they the first racial group not
permitted to enter America, those Chinese
already here were also victims of
extreme nativist sentiment in America.
It is difficult to understand the
Chinese in America in the 1920s without
tracing their history here. Formal records
of Chinese arrivals begin in
1820.5 A considerable number
of Chinese started to come to America in
response to the Gold Rush in California.
As more Chinese settled in
America, they grouped together within
the cities and formed what later were
called Chinatowns. The Chinese were
initially accepted by the local people,
but the situation was very quickly
reversed when they began competing
with Californians for jobs. Starting in
1850, California's government
imposed various types of taxes on the Chinese
and subjected them to
discriminatory legislation. They were
denied rights of naturalization, of
suffrage, and of giving evidence against
whites in court, and were excluded
from public schools.6 When
they sought jobs in the other fields, they found
the way blocked by various regulations.
In 1863 the Chinese were able to
join a work force without opposition by
the local people-the construction
of the Central Pacific Railway. After
many Caucasians quit due to the
danger involved, these Asians showed
outstanding ability and courage in
completing such a hazardous task,
performing beyond the expectation of the
owners of the Railway.7 Upon
completion of the railroad in 1869, a large
Chinese labor force remained in the
market. Some were employed in other
sections of railways, while others moved
on to work in mines or factories or
on farms. Their presence in the West
became unbearable when the 1872
panic struck America. Unemployed
Westerners in many cases regarded the
Chinese as taking their jobs, although
not many jobs held by Chinese had
ever attracted Caucasians.
5. William L. Tung, The Chinese in
America 1820-1973: A Chronology and Fact Book
(New York, 1974), 7.
6. Coolidge, Chinese Immigration, 80.
7. Stan Steiner, Fusang: The Chinese
Who Built America (New York, 1979), 130.
8 OHIO HISTORY
From the 1870s onwards, anti-Chinese
Westerners began to press for
exclusionary immigration policies
against the Chinese. Politicians,
counting votes, yielded to Sinophobia
during state and national elections.
Eventually the 1882 Exclusion Act was
passed. From then onwards,
Chinese, except for a few
"respectable" exempted classes such as officials,
teachers, students, and merchants, were
suspended from entry for ten years.
The same act also denied those Chinese
already in America naturalization
rights. The 1882 Exclusion Act was
renewed in 1892 and again in 1902, and
finally in 1904 all exclusions and
restrictions concerning Chinese were made
permanent. With anti-Chinese sentiment
sanctioned by federal authority,
Westerners' hostility reached a boiling
point. Already in 1875, violent anti-
Chinese mobs spread from California to
other states along the Pacific. Such
violence eventually persuaded many
Chinese to escape by moving to the East.
Up to 1920, the American government's
immigration policy was mainly
aimed at restricting the entry of
Asians. No restriction was specifically
imposed on Europeans. In 1882 and 1885,
acts applying to all immigrants
were passed forbidding entry of
undesirable elements like prostitutes,
convicts, criminals, lunatics and
contract labor. But in the 1920s,
restrictions were applied not just to
Asians, but also to Europeans. In 1921,
a Quota Act was put into effect so that
the immigration of any nationality
was limited to 3 percent of those
residing in the United States according to
the 1910 census of the foreign-born
population. In 1924, the annual quota
from any one nation was reduced to 2
percent, and the basis was changed to
that of the 1890 census. The shift of
the basis from the 1910 census to the
1890 census was a deliberate attempt to
restrict the entry of the Southern
Europeans since their population in
America had not taken substantial
shape in the late nineteenth century. At
the same time, a special provision
of the Act was added so that all
Asian peoples were barred from entry. Even
wives of American citizens were refused
admission. Although the Chinese
had been excluded from immigration
permanently in 1904, this new act still
affected the Chinese in America because
wives of Chinese citizens had not
been excluded before.
American anti-foreign nationalists in
the 1920s believed that the great
source of evil lay outside of their own
society.8 Besides setting restrictions
on immigration, they aimed at combating
crimes which they believed were
associated with foreign residents in
America. In this period, Chinese tong
wars broke out in the Midwest and the
East Coast. In response, American
city police and federal immigration
officers initiated the massive arrest of
Chinese in the Chinatowns.9
8. John Higham, Strangers in the Land:
Pattern of American Nativism, 1860-1925 (New
York, 1975), chapters 10 and 11.
9. "In Chinatown and in
China," The Nation, 121 (October 14, 1925), 398.
Police Roundup of Chinese in
Cleveland in 1925 9
Tong Wars in the 1920s
What are "tong wars"? A tong
is a kind of Chinese ethnic association.
Like other immigrants, the Chinese
established their own associations to
help them adjust to their new
environment. Because of regional differences
in local dialects and customs among
Chinese in China, the newly arrived
immigrants in California tended to form
district associations of their own.
Gradually several district associations
joined together, forming the Chinese
Six Companies (representing the six
districts in the Guangdong Province of
Southern China from which most Chinese
immigrants came) in the 1850s;
after the 1880s this organization became
known as the Chinese Consolidated
Benevolent Association. Settlers with
the same last name who thus shared
the same ancestors also formed clan (or
lineage) associations. The Chinese
Six Companies or Chinese Consolidated
Benevolent Association (CCBA),
with most Chinese as members, emerged as
the leading Chinese association.
Such associations first appeared in San
Francisco, and later were established
in other cities as the Chinese moved to
different parts of America.
The "tongs" were formed on a
different basis. Chinese joined the tongs
for mutual help and protection against
the domination of large clans or
district associations. Chinese
dissatisfied with their own associations or not
belonging to any dominant group found
the tongs, which were based on
fraternity rather than geographic or
family origins, to have great appeal.
The first tong developed in California
around 1852-54.10 The tongs were
most active between the enactment of the
first Exclusion Act in 1882 and
the last Exclusion Act in 1924.11 After
the 1880s, tongs became involved in
smuggling Chinese into America because
very few Chinese could make
legal entry under the exclusion laws.
The tongs, offering protection to these
illegal immigrants, were able to command
loyalty from them. On the other
hand, the CCBA was unable to fight the
legislation. In 1892 yet another act,
the Geary Act, named after Thomas J.
Geary who was a Democratic
Congressman from California, was passed
with new anti-Chinese regulations
including the requirement that every Chinese
had to apply for a certificate of
residence within one year; Chinese
without certificates were liable to depor-
tation. The CCBA, in protest against the
new immigration law, advised the
Chinese not to register as residents;
but the Supreme Court declared the Geary
Act constitutional, putting many Chinese
following CCBA advice in danger
of being deported. Although the American
government extended the grace
period to half a year longer for registration,
the CCBA had lost face and the
10. Charles C. Dobie, San Francisco's
Chinatown (New York, 1936), 139; William Hoy,
The Chinese Six Companies (San Francisco, 1942), 8; Dillion, The Hatchet Man,
185.
11.
Lee, The Chinese in the United States of America, 162.
10 OHIO HISTORY
tongs immediately seized the opportunity
to assume a leading role in the
Chinese communities. Because of
residential and occupational segregation,
Chinese had to compete for limited
resources within the confines of
Chinatowns. Competition among tongs
always led to rivalries, which became
"tong wars" as described in
the American press, spreading from one
Chinatown to the other. Through the
efforts of Chinese merchants, the police
and church in America, as well as the
Peace Society formed by conscientious
Chinese in 1913, the tong wars gradually
came to an end. The last tong wars
occurred in Santa Barbara in 1926 and in
Boston in 1933.12
In 1924-1925, serious rivalries broke
out between On Leong Tong and
Hip Sing Tong; the On Leong was an East
Coast tong while the Hip Sing
commanded national membership.13 The
Chinese "On Leong Tong" means
"Chamber of Tranquil
Conscientiousness," and "Hip Sing Tong" means
"Hall of Victorious Union."14
The origins of this tong war centered around
a man called Chin Jack Lem. He was the
national president of On Leong
Tong, but was expelled for mishandling
funds at a national convention of
the tong held in Boston in 1923. Yee Hee
Kee, president of the Cleveland
On Leong Tong, and nine other members
were also discharged. At first
Chin Jack Lem formed a tong of his own,
but later Chin and other expelled
members joined the Hip Sing Tong. But
Hip Sing's acceptance of Chin was
a violation of the previous agreement
between Hip Sing and On Leong that
neither party would accept the other's
expelled members.15
Chin Jack Lem eventually went to
Cleveland. In June, 1924, he extorted
property from the On Leong Treasurer,
named Wong Sing, in Cleveland by
threatening to shoot him. Chin gained
the title to a tract of land in Ohio, an
On Leong property worth at least
$70,000, then tried to transfer the money
to Hip Sing. Eventually he was sentenced
to imprisonment for extortion,
but only after he started the tong war
which lasted from 1924 to 1925.16
The Murder and the Raid in Cleveland
Historically, Cleveland was rarely the
scene of tong wars. The first tong
conflict in Cleveland occurred in 1911
after a Hip Sing shot an On Leong.17
12. H.M. Lai and P.P. Choy, Outlines:
History of the Chinese in America (San Francisco,
1973), 125; Peichi Liu, A History of
the Chinese in the United States of America, II (Taipei,
1981), 660, 645-46.
13. Lee, Chinese in the United
States,163.
14. Dobie, San Francisco's Chinatown,
155.
15. Cleveland Plain Dealer, October
23, 1924, February 10, 1925; "Chinese War Here,"
Literary Digest, 83 (December 13, 1924), 13; New York Times, October 20,
1924.
16. Cleveland Plain Dealer, February
19, 1925; "In Chinatown and in China," The Nation,
121 (October 14, 1925), 398; New York
Times, August 25, 1925.
17. Cleveland Plain Dealer, February
1, 1912.
Police Roundup of Chinese in
Cleveland in 1925 11
After this incident, no more tong
assassinations were recorded until 1924
when the deposed president of On Leong,
Yee Hee Kee, was shot nearly to
death.18 Actually Cleveland
had only a relatively small Chinese population.
According to the U.S. Census, in
which Chinese and Japanese were recorded
collectively, only twenty-three Chinese
and Japanese lived in Cleveland in
1880. Thirty-eight were reported in Cleveland
in 1890 who had been born
in China while there were 103, 228, and
275 Chinese recorded in 1900,
1910, and 1920, respectively. But by
1925 the number had increased to
700.19 Cleveland's Chinatown did not
have as many Chinese district or clan
associations as New York or San
Francisco. Up to 1925, the On Leong and
Hip Sing Tongs were the only prominent
associations among Cleveland
Chinese. The Chinese Consolidated
Benevolent Association had not yet
been established in Cleveland in the
1920s.20
Following the attempted assassination of
Yee Hee Kee in 1924, another
Chinese, Yee Chock, was attacked the
next year. But, less fortunate than Yee
Hee Kee, he died. Yee Chock, a waiter,
was found dead with his head nearly
chopped off at 1283 Ontario Street on
the evening of September 22, 1925.21
The On Leong declared that Yee Chock was
an On Leong and was killed by
Hip Sing, whereas the Hip Sing
proclaimed that the On Leongs had killed him
because he was about to desert to Hip
Sing.22 Mark Ham (also named Mock
Hem), an On Leong, was the only witness
of the murder. Like his On Leong
fellow members, he claimed that three
Hip Sings who were former On Leongs
were the guilty parties, but later he
changed his statement by saying that the
three murderers were not Hip Sings but
other people. He said that he had
served as 'lookout' for the murderers
and made false testimony against Hip
Sings so as to get a job in the gambling
house of the On Leong Tong. But then
later, he again repudiated his statement
and testified that the Hip Sings were
indeed the murderers. The truth was
never revealed because Mark Ham
committed suicide in jail before the
trial had reached its final state.23
No matter who the murderers were, the
Chinese population in Cleveland
paid a great price. In this period when
much urban crime was attributed to the
18. Ibid., August 27, 1924.
19. U.S. Census, 1890,
Population, Part I, 673; Ibid., 1920, Volume II, Population, 76.
About 700 Chinese were arrested by the
Safety Director of Cleveland on September 23, 1925.
He ordered the police to arrest all
Chinese in Cleveland.
20. Wah Hing Fong, ex-chairman and
adviser of the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent
Association (CCBA), Cleveland,
interviewed in Cleveland, Ohio, by the author, February 20,
1988.
21. Cleveland, Ohio, Coroner's Office,
Casualty Report of Yee Chock, file no. 31587;
Cleveland News, September 23, 1925.
22. Cleveland News, September 23,
1925.
23. Cleveland Plain Dealer, September
30, 1925, December 2 and 3, 1925; Cleveland
Press, September 29, 1925, December 2, 1925; Cleveland
News, December 2, 1925; Cleveland,
Ohio, Coroner's Office, Casualty Report
of Mark Ham, file no. 31935.
12 OHIO
HISTORY
foreign-born, all Chinese were held
responsible for any crime committed by
their fellow countrymen. As early as in
the 1880s San Francisco had initiated
a standard policy in dealing with tong
murders-the police would indiscrim-
inately arrest Chinese in the Chinatown;
city officials would check the health
and fire safety standards of Chinese
quarters; and federal officials would
investigate the residential status of
Chinese. The Midwest and the East Coast
followed suit although at a much later
date, around the 1920s.24 The reason
for such a gap was probably due to the
fact that tong wars in the East started
during the 1900s, while those in the
West appeared as early as the 1850s.25
Police forces in the Midwest and the
East launched wholesale massive arrests
which were denounced as an
"epidemic of lawlessness" in The Nation,
because in the course of the arrests the
police did not present warrants.26 In
New York City, 600 Chinese were arrested
without warrants on September
14-15, 1925, and 500 were caught four
days later; in both cases the police
arrested indiscriminately without
warrants.27 The Boston police arrest of
ninety-one Chinese on August 29 of the
same year was another example.28
The raid in Cleveland took a similar
pattern. The day after the murder,
the Safety Director of Cleveland, Edwin
D. Barry, ordered the arrest of all
Chinese in the city.29 About
700 Chinese, including women, children, as
well as university students, were
arrested by the Cleveland police.30 In
Cleveland, as elsewhere, the police did
not present warrants when they
broke into shops and homes in the
Chinatown. Policemen were stationed in
the Chinatown and closed the shops.31
Those Chinese arrested were jailed,
24. Dillon, The Hatchet Man, 218;
Tung, Chinese in America, 23. An exception was the
Boston raid in 1903, in which police
arrested 234 Chinese to check their resident status. For
a case study of the 1903 Boston raid,
see K. Scott Wong," 'The Eagle Seeks a Helpless
Quarry': Chinatown, the Police and the
Press, the 1903 Boston Chinatown Raid Revisited."
Amerasia Journal, 22 (1996), 81-103. In 1902, the Chinese Exclusion Act
was renewed for
the third time and there was great
demand for permanent restriction of Chinese immigration
into America.
25. Dobie, San Francisco's
Chinatown,139; Cleveland Plain Dealer, October 22, 1934;
New York Times, October 19, 1924.
26. "In Chinatown and in
China," The Nation, 121 (October 14, 1925), 398.
27. Ibid., New York Times, September
15 , 16, 19 and 20, 1925.
28. "To Kick Out the Tong
Murderers," Literary Digest, 87
(October 3, 1925), 14; "In
Chinatown and in China," The
Nation, 121 (October 14, 1925), 398; New York Times, August
31, 1925.
29. William Rowland Hopkins papers,
1849-1931, Safety Department Correspondence,
1924-1925, Western Reserve Historical
Society, Cleveland, Ohio, Mss 3774.
30. Cleveland News, September 23,
1925, There was some confusion over the number of
Chinese arrested. The Cleveland Plain
Dealer reported 612 (September 26, 1925), the
Cleveland Press recorded 800 (September 23, 1925), and the Safety
Director of Cleveland
estimated the number to be 750. See the
minutes of the Foreign Trade Committee of the
Cleveland Chamber of Commerce, pp.10 and
20, The Case Western Reserve Historical Society,
Cleveland, Ohio, Mss 3471.
31. Russell T. Herrick, "The Police
Run Wild in Cleveland," The Nation, 121 (October 14,
1925), 401. Actually two more reporters
had submitted articles to The Nation criticizing the
Police Roundup of Chinese in
Cleveland in 1925
13
fingerprinted and photographed in the
Central Police Station, after which
U.S. Immigration officials investigated
their residential status. Despite the
expected big harvest, only thirteen out
of all those arrested were discovered
to be illegal immigrants. Sanitary and
fire wardens checked the Cleveland
Chinatown on September 23 and 24,
resulting in nine buildings being
condemned as not hygienic and below fire
safety standards.32
The city officials who conducted the
raid, Safety Director Edwin D. Barry
who ordered the arrests and City Manager
William R. Hopkins who backed
up Barry's roundup, defended their
actions both publicly and privately. Their
arguments reflected the prevalent
anti-foreign sentiment as well as the popular
stereotype about Chinese residents in
America. They clearly thought that the
tongs were Chinese associations that
engaged in criminal activities, that most
Chinese were tong members, and that the
tongs tried to control law-abiding
Chinese.33 The city checking
of hygienic and fire safety standards in
Chinese quarters reinforced the picture
of a dirty and overcrowded
Chinatown. Federal examination of
residential status also coincided with
the popular notion that substantial
amounts of Chinese entered the country
illegally despite the permanent
exclusion immigration policy.
Image and Reality
The belief that tong crime was tightly
associated with all Chinese and
that all Chinese were controlled by
tongs was proved to be wrong by the
Chinese community in Cleveland. After
being released, about 150 Chinese
held a mass meeting on September 28,
1925, five days after the raid in
Chinatown. The meeting was presided over
by a Chinese merchant not
claiming any Chinese association or tong
relationship.34 The merchant, H.
Kingsey Wong, proprietor of the Golden
Pheasant Restaurant, issued a
statement defending those Chinese
merchants who had no connection with
the tongs but were nevertheless arrested.35 Although Barry did not
wholesale arrest of the Chinese in
Cleveland, but The Nation managed to publish only one. "In
Chinatown and in China," The
Nation, 121 (October 14, 1925), 398. Cleveland News and
Cleveland Press, September 23, 1925.
32. Cleveland Press, September 23
and 24, 1925; Cleveland Plain Dealer, September 24,
25 and 26, 1925; Herrick, "Police
Run Wild," 401. The nine buildings were at 1273, 1277,
1279, 1291, 1295, 1297, 1301, 1305 and
1307 Ontario Street. See figure 1 for the approximate
location of Chinatown in Cleveland in
1925.
33. Cleveland Plain Dealer, September
25 and 26, 1925; Greater Cleveland Growth
Association, Minutes of the Foreign
Trade Committee, September 28, 1925, pp. 4-6, and 10,
the Western Reserve Historical Society,
Cleveland, Ohio, Mss 3471. The Committee reassured
Edwin D. Barry, the Safety Director of
Cleveland, that there was no reporter in the committee
meeting, and he was encouraged to air
his opinion on the roundup.
34. Cleveland Plain Dealer, September
29, 1925.
35. Cleveland News, September 29,
1925; Cleveland Plain Dealer, September 26, 1925.
14 OHIO
HISTORY
apologize for the indiscriminate arrest
of all Chinese, he later admitted that
students, women, and children who were
not tongs were imprisoned as well
during the raid.36 He simply
placed the blame on policemen despite his
order to the Chief of Police Jacob Graul
that he was to bring in "every
Chinaman in the City of
Cleveland...."37 Nevertheless, the 150 Chinese
attending the mass meeting publicly
denied any connection with the tongs.
Associating tong affairs with the whole
Chinese population simply failed to
apply to the Cleveland Chinese
community.
Due to residential segregation and the
threat of mob violence if they
chose to live apart from their
countrymen, most Chinese had to stay within
the boundaries of Chinatown. Although
most Americans had never been to
Chinatown, even those who had dined or
dared to venture into this
mysterious Oriental settlement never
knew what the community life was
actually like. Tours into the Chinatown,
especially in the West, were mostly
designed to attract curious Americans.38
Nevertheless, the mass media of the
1920s shaped the image of
Chinatown as unhygienic, crowded, and
worst of all, seedbeds for crime.39
Dark rooms with no windows and secret
winding underpassages suggested
all kinds of criminal activities. The
complex tunnels underground and the
peculiar warning signals upon the
arrival of strangers, said the media, were
the safest bulwark against any police
intrusion. Opium and gambling dens
as well as prostitute hostels could be
found behind these intertwining dark
passages. However, Cleveland city
officials who investigated the sanitary
and fire safety standards of Chinatown
found this untrue. For example, The
Cleveland Plain Dealer wrote:
There was no romance or mystery left
when Barry and his men had completed their
explorations. There were not even any of
the secret tunnels and hiding places
commonly attributed to the district.
There was nothing but squalor and inconceivable
barrenness.40
36. Greater Cleveland Growth
Association, Minutes of the Foreign Trade Committee, 28
September 1925, pp. 3, 10, the Western
Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, Ohio, Mss 3471.
37. William Rowland Hopkins' Paper,
1849-1931, Safety Department Correspondence,
1924-25, Edwin D. Barry's (Safety
Director) order to Jacob Graul (Chief of Police), the
Western Reserve Historical Society,
Cleveland, Ohio, italics by author.
38. For example, "Spectator," Outlook,
65 (August 11, 1900), 859-60: John S. Lopez,
"China for the 'Country
Trade,' Harper's Weekly, 53
(March 13, 1909), 12-3; Herbert
Asbury, "Doyers Street," American
Mercury, 8 (June, 1926) 228-36.
39. For instance, Frank Marshall White,
"The Last Days of Chinatown," Harper's Weekly,
51 (August 17, 1907) 1208-09; Chester H.
Rowell, "Chinese and Japanese Immigration-a
Comparison," Annals of the
American Academy of Political and Social Sciences, 34
(September, 1909) 223-30; Oscar Lewis,
"A Transplanted Section of the Orient," Overland
Monthly, 70 (July, 1917), 24-27; Nora Sterry, "Housing
Conditions in Chinatown L.A.,"
Journal of Applied
Sociology, 7 (November-December,
1922), 70-75.
40. Cleveland Plain Dealer, September
24, 1925.
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Police Roundup of Chinese in Cleveland in 1925 15 |
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16 OHIO HISTORY |
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Police Roundup of Chinese in
Cleveland in 1925 17
Indeed nine buildings were condemned,
but there were no official
statements or press reports of any
extraordinary features as described in the
sensational tales about Chinese
residence in America. The Chinese were
allowed to regain their rights of
residency, and they renovated those
buildings that needed it.41
Response of Chinese in Cleveland
The manner in which the Cleveland
Chinese reacted to the massive
arrests helped rectify the popular image
of Chinese as being unassimilable
and victims of Chinese ethnic
institutions.42 Nevertheless, Chinese in
America were regarded as passive to
offenses and submissive to their
traditional organizations. They could
only solve conflicts, it was said,
through the arbitration of their
countrymen without resort to any American
legal means. The Chinese in Cleveland,
however, attempted to deal with the
situation on their own initiative,
without relying on the ethnic associations
either in Cleveland or in the other
cities with a greater Chinese population.
Moreover, they sought redress for their
grievances through the American
legal system, filing cases as
individuals or under business titles. The
Cleveland Chinese further proved their
independence from any Chinese
associations by forming an association
of their own.
It was surprising to many that the
Chinese in Cleveland had not even
approached the Cleveland Chinese
associations in combating the racist
policy. Perhaps it was because the
Chinese community in Cleveland was
relatively small and new, and that
ethnic institutions had not yet been firmly
established. According to the 1920 U.S.
Census, only 275 Chinese lived in
Cleveland; by 1925, the number increased
to 700. Thus compared with the
Chinese population in the other American
cities, Cleveland's Chinatown was
small. The Chinese Consolidated
Benevolent Association did not develop its
chapter in Cleveland in the 1920s, and
district and clan associations were not
sufficiently community-wide. Two tongs,
the On Leong Tong and the Hip
Sing Tong, were the main Chinese
associations in Cleveland.
But historical circumstances made the
local Chinese unwilling to rely on
the two tongs. First of all, although
there were actually no tong wars in the
whole of Ohio between 1913 and 1924, it
was the bloody rivalry between
the two tongs that led to the massive
arrest of nearly all Chinese in
Cleveland in 1925. Thus it was
understandable that the local Chinese were
reluctant to rely on tongs for redress.
Moreover, after the massive arrest of
the Cleveland Chinese, the two tongs,
instead of protesting on behalf of
41. Ibid., October 16, 1925; December
18, 1925.
42. Barth, Bitter Strength; Lyman,
Chinatown and Little Tokyo.
18 OHIO
HISTORY
their fellow countrymen, concentrated on
defending themselves by assisting
the police who investigated the murder.43
This further served to alienate the
local Chinese from the tongs.
Additionally, although after the raid both the
representatives of the Chinese
Consolidated Benevolent Association,
located in New York, and the Chinese
Legation in Washington, D.C., came
to Cleveland, there is no evidence that
the local Chinese had asked them for
help.44
But the Cleveland Chinese were not
passive in combating the massive
arrests. Instead of relying on ethnic
organizations from within and without,
the local Chinese took a series of
actions on their own. When arrested on
September 23, 1925, some of the Chinese
quickly sought a writ of habeas
corpus, despite Barry's insistence that
all Chinese should stay in jail until
the murderer was found. Consequently,
forty-four Chinese that night and
forty-six the next day were freed on
writs of habeas corpus. On September
25, 112 habeas corpus actions were filed
in common pleas courts; on
September 26, however, over 100 habeas
corpus actions heard in common
pleas court were dismissed when it was
established that most Chinese had
already been released.45
The merchants also took immediate action
two days after the raid.
Although Chinese shops, restaurants and
laundries could be reopened, freed
Chinese could not return to the
buildings that were condemned. These
buildings were roped off by police,
forcing Chinese residents to stay
elsewhere.46 The merchants did not hesitate to
request injunctions to
restrain the city government from
refusing admittance to their quarters.
Moreover, they did not act under the
name of any Chinese association in
Cleveland's Chinatown. They filed the
cases as individuals or as groups of
individuals. Of ten injunctions filed,
five were by individuals and five were
by companies.47
43. Cleveland Press, September
23, 1925; Cleveland News, September 28, 1925.
44. According to the Cleveland Plain
Dealer, September 28, 1925, Lee Kee, president of
the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent
Association (CCBA) of New York, declared that his
objective in coming to Cleveland was to
prevent further tong conflicts after the murder of Yee
Chock. He did not mention that he came
at the request of the local Chinese. According to the
Cleveland Plain Dealer, September 25, 1925, it was an American, Walter E.
Pagan, who
protested to the Chinese legation in
Washington, D.C. The Secretary of the Chinese legation,
Dr. Clarence Kuangson Young, did not
mention that he was invited by Cleveland Chinese.
45. Cleveland News, September 25,
1925; Cleveland Plain Dealer, September 24-27, 1925:
Safety Director Barry maintained that
the Chinese in Cleveland knew who committed the
murder and they must stay in jail until
the "slayers" were traced. Cleveland Plain Dealer,
September 24, 1925.
46. Cleveland Plain Dealer, September
25, 1925.
47. The injunctions sought by the
Chinese merchants in Cleveland are found in the Court
House. They did not file their cases
under any tongs or other Chinese organizations; rather,
they filed as individuals or groups of
individuals. Court House, Cleveland, Ohio, (Microfilm
Department): Chan Fat (File no. 248605;
F.D. Wong (File no. 248603); Gar Young (File no.
248601): Kung Chong Co. (File no.
248620); Louis W. Chin, Louis Doon and K.H. Louis,
Police Roundup of Chinese in
Cleveland in 1925 19
As mentioned earlier, about 150 Chinese
held a mass meeting upon their
release five days after the raid in
Chinatown, and it was presided over by an
individual Chinese merchant not claiming
any association membership. A
Chinese physician at Lakeside Hospital
drew up a resolution for them which
demanded: first, that Safety Director
Barry be dismissed; second, that City
Manager Hopkins apologize; third, that
all fingerprints and photographs
taken during the roundup be destroyed;
and fourth, that Chinese merchants
who had been forced to close their
businesses be compensated for their
losses.48 At the same time,
they also formed an association of their own,
called the Chinese Residents'
Association.49 One week after the mass
meeting, the Association went one step
further when it circulated a letter to
all the Chinese in Cleveland, asking
them to report the amount of money,
property or business lost that their
arrest and detention had cost them, and
hinting at the possibility of taking
legal action.50
The reluctance of local Chinese to
submit themselves to the two tongs in
Cleveland broke the long-established
myth that the tongs had strong control
of Chinese in Chinatown. The Chinese in
Cleveland also demonstrated that
they were ready to utilize the American
legal framework, dispelling the
general impression that the Chinese
could only settle disputes in a
traditional and passive way with no
trace of being assimilated.
Response of Americans in Cleveland
While the police roundup of the Chinese
community reflected how the
negative image of Chinese affected
public policy, the Chinese actions after
the raid cast doubts on generally
accepted myths about traditional Chinese
traits. How strong the popular
stereotype of the Chinese was in the minds
of the local Clevelanders could be seen
in their response to this racist
measure. But contrary to the hostile
attitude of these city officials, many
Cleveland citizens and professional
organizations supported the Chinese.
The Cleveland Bar Association appointed
a committee to investigate the
legal and constitutional aspects of the
arrests. The committee passed a
resolution which declared that the
arrests and the taking of photographs and
fingerprints of Chinese without search
warrants were violations of
fundamental American principles of law.
The resolution called for the
destruction of the arrest records of
those found innocent and an official
doing business as the Sam Wah Yick Kee
Co. (File no. 248598); Sam Wah Co. (File no.
248606); Wing Wah Chong Co. (File no.
248604): Wong Yee Lai (File no. 248602); Wong Sing
(File no. 248579); Yee Hing Co. (File
no. 248607).
48. Cleveland Plain Dealer, September
29, 1925.
49. Cleveland News, September 28
and 29, 1925.
50. Ibid., October 7, 1925.
20 OHIO
HISTORY
apology to the Chinese community in
Cleveland.51
The Foreign Trade Committee of the
Cleveland Chamber of Commerce
also held a meeting to discuss the
matter. Although the Trade Committee
did not disapprove of the arrests, it
did invite a representative of China's
Minister to the U.S. and three
influential local Chinese to form a
subcommittee to explore further the issues.52
Reverend William H. Foulkes of the Old
Stone Church, a Cleveland
Christian church which maintained
friendly relations with local Chinese,
wrote an open letter to City Manager
Hopkins in which he criticized the
illegal actions as violating Christian ideals
and stated that detailed
investigation of the murder did not call
for a wholesale roundup.53
Some newspaper reporters also expressed
their support of the Chinese
through their editorials and
descriptions of the incidents. Three prominent
Cleveland newspapers, the Cleveland
News, Cleveland Press and Cleveland
Plain Dealer, did not as a rule depict the Chinese as criminal types.
Rather,
the reporters helped expose the
injustice inflicted upon the arrested Chinese
and the chaotic, crowded conditions to
which they were subjected at the
police headquarters. The Cleveland
Plain Dealer recorded that the Chinese
had to spend the night "standing up
because the place was too crowded to
lie down," whereas the Cleveland
Press quoted a Chinese woman who
complained that her husband had nothing
to eat for two days.54 The
Cleveland Plain Dealer and Cleveland Press editorials were nearly
unanimous in their support of the
Chinese. The Cleveland Plain Dealer
criticized the raids as being
high-handed and illegal, while the Cleveland
Press denounced the arrests as being discriminatory because
no other
nationality in Cleveland had been
arrested as a group because one of its
countrymen had been murdered.55
The Cleveland public's support of the
Chinese was also noted in the
51. Cleveland News, September 26,
1925; October 31, 1925.
52. Cleveland Plain Dealer, September
28, 1925; October 31, 1925.
53. Cleveland Plain Dealer, September
25, 1925; Minutes of the Foreign Trade Committee,
pp.19.
54. Cleveland Plain Dealer, September
25, 1925; Cleveland Press, September 28, 1925.
Another example could be found in the Cleveland
News, September 23, 1925, which stated
that, "The murderers were being
sought from among scores of frightened and silent Orientals
who huddled together in Central
Station." In the Cleveland Plain Dealer, September 24, 1925,
the Chinese kept in the cells of the
police station were reported to be "hungry and cold. A
detective, thinking to be growled at a
wizened little Chinese shivering...."
55. Cleveland Plain Dealer, September
27, 1925. In the Cleveland Press, September 25,
1925, the editor wrote: "In none of
these murders [the total number of murders in Cleveland
since January 1925 was 22] except the
last one [Yee Chock's murder] have police felt justified
in arresting all the neighbors in the
locality of crimes.... It was only in the Chinese murder that
they did they did those things."
The editor continued to write on September 26, 1925, "Would
the Cleveland police department have
thrown 800 Frenchmen in jail...? We impose on the
Chinese because the Chinese can't help
themselves."
Police Roundup of Chinese in
Cleveland in 1925
21
sympathetic The Nation, which
stated that "contrary to experience
elsewhere, there was a considerable
reaction of indignation on the part of
the public."56 Cleveland
citizens protested by visiting newspaper offices,
voicing human rights principles to the
traffic policemen in the streets, and
writing to the courts and to local
newspapers. According to the letters
addressed to the editors of the three
Cleveland newspapers, local people felt
the raids were unconstitutional,
discriminatory, and constituted official
anarchy.57
Most important of all, the Court of
Appeals of the Eighth District of Ohio
backed the Chinese against Barry and
Hopkins. Judge Willis Vickery of the
Court said that by unanimous consent the
court declared the action of the
police department illegal,58 while
two other judges described the arrest as
not legal and high-handed. Judge Manuel
V. Levine even quoted Bible
verses to criticize the raids, and Judge
John J. Sullivian refused to sit for the
case because of his previous friendship
with the local Chinese. The court
also recommended that the Chinese in
jail be released and that shops be
reopened one day after the police had
ordered them closed.59 As a matter
of fact, even some city officials
involved in the arrests also expressed their
discontent with the roundup. Assistant
City Law Director Burt Griffin,
representing the city in the court of
appeals, admitted in response to a
question by Judge Levine that he could
not defend the action of the police
and safety departments.60
Not all Clevelanders sided with the
Chinese, but those who backed Barry
and Hopkins generally limited their
support to writing to the newspapers.61
Compared to the degree of the
pro-Chinese sentiment in Cleveland, theirs
was relatively inactive.
The Clevelanders' favorable response
towards the Chinese contrasted
sharply with the discriminatory actions
of their city officials and the anti-
foreign feeling at the national level.
The Clevelanders' verbal and written
protests clearly demonstrated that not
all members of American society
were totally xenophobic.
56. Herrick, "Police Run
Wild," 401.
57. Cleveland News, September 25,
29-30, 1925, October 2, 1925; Cleveland Press,
September 26, 1925; Cleveland Plain
Dealer, September 25, 1925, October 3, 1925,
November 15, 1925.
58. "The Arrest of Chinese in
Cleveland," Chinese Students Monthly, 21 (January 3, 1926),
39-54.
59. Cleveland News, September 24,
1925; Cleveland Press, September 24, 1925: Cleveland
Plain Dealer, September 24 and 25, 1925.
60. "The Arrest of Chinese in
Cleveland," Chinese Students Monthly, 42.
61. Cleveland News, September 29,
1925; Cleveland Plain Dealer, September 27, 1925,
October 24, 1925, November 11, 1925.
22 OHIO HISTORY
Aftermath
The efforts of the Cleveland Chinese
were not totally futile. On
September 24, one day after the raid,
the court ordered that shops closed by
police be reopened. On September 25 most
jailed Chinese were released,
and by the next day all Chinese, except
those who were either murder
suspects or illegal immigrants, were
allowed to leave the jail. Those freed
Chinese who could not immediately return
to their homes or business
premises because the buildings had been
condemned by health and fire
safety officials on September 24 were
permitted to do so on September 26
and had renovated the buildings by
October 1925. There were no more
massive arrests in Cleveland, although a
Chinese was hatcheted in
December of the same year,62 and
police roundups continued elsewhere as
late as the 1930s.63 The
raids on the Cleveland Chinese became a national
issue, and the U.S. Secretary of State
Frank B. Kellogg, perhaps sensitive to
possible international repercussions,
demanded a report from the city
manager of Cleveland.64 The
massive arrests of Chinese attracted the
attention of the national press in 1925,
as well as that of later writers.65
Conclusion
The Cleveland police roundup in 1925 was
not an isolated incident as
massive arrests took place in other
cities. Significantly, the arrests provided
a graphic picture of how anti-Chinese
feeling was eventually translated into
public policy. The exclusive immigration
policy against Chinese as early as
1882 and the prohibitive immigration
policy against Southern Europeans
and Asians in the 1920s reinforced
nativist feeling. How Chinese were
treated-the indiscriminate arrests and
follow-up inspections of building
structures and their legal status-could
be traced back to late-nineteenth
century San Francisco Chinatown. The
extension of police harassment of
the Chinese community from the West to
the Midwest and the East in the
1920s depicted the flow of Sinophobia as
the Chinese moved further away
62. Cleveland News, September
25-26, 1925; Cleveland Press, September 25-26, 1925;
Cleveland Plain Dealer, September 25 and 27, 1925, October 16, 1925, December
18, 1925.
63. In April 1926, 700 Chinese were
rounded up in Newark. New York Times, April 12,
1926. In 1930, the police authority of
New York city threatened to raid Chinatown again.
Cleveland Plain Dealer, August 26, 1930.
64. Cleveland Plain Dealer, September
26-27, 1925. There was no more follow-up
recorded in the press.
65. Herrick, "Police Run
Wild," 401: "In Chinatown and in China," The Nation, 398;
Sue
Fawn Chung, "From Fu Manchu, Evil
Genius, to James Lee Wong, Popular Hero: A Study of
the Chinese-Americans in Popular
Periodical Fiction from 1920 to 1940," Journal of Popular
Culture, 10 (Winter, 1976), 534-47; K. Scott Wong, "Eagle
Seeks Helpless Quarry," 81-103.
Police Roundup of Chinese in
Cleveland in 1925 23
from the Pacific Coast, and the raid
also disclosed how the unfavorable
image of Chinese as mysterious,
unassimilable aliens and tong members
influenced police actions and federal
investigations.
However, the findings after the
Cleveland raid and the response of the
local inhabitants and Chinese community
defied the popular negative image
of the Chinese community in America.
What the local and federal level
governments thought about the Chinese
was not substantiated by the
findings. Very few were found to be
illegal immigrants, and there were no
secret underground passages in the
Chinese building structures as had been
assumed. Most important, the Chinese in Cleveland proved to be
independent of tong influence and,
although denied naturalization, were
ready to utilize the American legal
system in redressing grievances. Despite
the general belief that Chinese refused
to be assimilated and stuck to their
traditional institutions, the Chinese in
Cleveland were eager to solve
problems in an American way.
The reaction of the Clevelanders to the
fate of the Chinese residents in
their city presented a different picture
of the anti-foreign scene in the 1920s.
The bold support shown by the
Clevelanders towards the Chinese casts
doubts on whether all Americans rejected
the Chinese in America.
Sympathy expressed by Clevelanders
towards the Chinese contrasted
sharply with the city government's
extralegal action. Their support of the
Chinese also indicates a more positive
interracial relationship than generally
pictured by literature about the 1920s.
Equally important, the response of the
Chinese and Clevelanders
challenged long-time assumptions about
Chinese-American relations. The
growth of the Chinese-American community
was not as a rule conditioned
by ethnic associations, and it did not
exist within a totally hostile
environment. Thus the Cleveland
experience sheds new light on the
evolution of Chinese-American community
life.
Finally, the reaction of the Chinese and
supportive Americans in
Cleveland to the raid sent a strong
message to the city government that
extralegal action was unacceptable to
both races. Their combined effort was
fruitful as there were no more raids on
the Chinese community thereafter.
But the Cleveland case was also unique
in the sense that the Chinese
population in Cleveland was relatively
small and there was no community-
wide Chinese association; the small
Chinese population might cause less
irritation to the Cleveland Americans.
The general feeling in America
towards the Chinese was still hostile,
and there were still raids as late as the
1930s on Chinese communities in cities
of other states in which the size of
the Chinese population was much larger.
Negative images of Chinese were
still popular themes in contemporary
literature and the Cleveland story,
although a step in the right direction,
was not yet a complete turning point
in race relations.