Chinese Texans and Civil Rights

Edward J. M. Rhoads's Handbook entry traces where the plaque's closing growth went. In the 1950s Houston passed San Antonio as the center of Chinese life, and by 1980 Harris County held 12,048 Chinese residents, 47 percent of the state's. The older families were Cantonese, many running groceries that often served Black and Mexican American customers. The postwar newcomers, often by way of Taiwan or Hong Kong, spoke Mandarin and tended toward science and engineering. The community's center moved from east of downtown to the southeast and, from the early 1980s, to the southwest suburbs now called Asiatown.

What the plaque says

Chinese Texans and Civil Rights Chinese immigrants arrived in Texas in the 1870s and 1880s, primarily to build railroads and work as laborers. These early immigrants faced harsh working conditions and racism from those fearing they would take away jobs. Chinese Texans were also met with violence, punctuated by Judge Roy Bean's reported 1884 ruling that it was not illegal to kill a Chinese. With anti-Chinese sentiment spreading through the western and southern states, Congress restricted immigration through the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882), the only U.S. law to exclude a specific race from immigrating; it also denied citizenship to Chinese Americans. As was true throughout Texas, discrimination against Chinese Texans was common in Houston. However, the Houston Chinese Community, which numbered only 50 in 1930, began to grow as immigrants came here from other southern states. In Houston, Chinese students could attend public schools with whites, and soon, Chinese Texans began attending state universities. Through the efforts of American-born Chinese, economic and social injustices began to be righted. 1937 testimony by Edward K.T. Chen ( ) and Rose Don Wu ( ) helped defeat a proposed Texas law that would have prevented Chinese from owning urban property. In 1943, the Magnuson Act repealed the Chinese Exclusion Act. The Chinese American citizens alliance, including its Houston branch, under the direction of Albert C.B. Gee ( ), helped pass the immigration act of 1965, paving the way for large-scale Chinese immigration. Today, Chinese Texans continue to make a vital impact on politics and culture in Texas, standing as a tribute to the immigrants who withstood discrimination and thrived. (2009)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• The Menil Collection — 6.6 mi
  John and Dominique de Menil's free museum in Montrose: a grey-sided Renzo Piano building among bungalows, holding antiquities, Surrealism and art of Oceania under natural light.
• Rothko Chapel — 6.7 mi
  An octagonal chapel open to all faiths, built by the de Menils around fourteen dark canvases by Mark Rothko, with Barnett Newman's Broken Obelisk standing in the pool outside.
• Museum of Fine Arts, Houston — 6.7 mi
  The oldest art museum in Texas, grown from a 1900 schoolroom art league into a campus of Watkin, Mies van der Rohe and later buildings, with Ima Hogg's Bayou Bend up the bayou.
• Buffalo Soldiers National Museum — 7.6 mi
  A museum in Houston's 1925 Light Guard Armory that tells the service of Black soldiers from the Revolutionary War onward, built from one veteran's thirty years of collecting.

More markers nearby

• Bellaire — 1.8 mi
• Bellaire Streetcar Line — 1.9 mi
• Texan Capture of Mexican Dispatches (San Jacinto) — 2.1 mi
• Hamilton Shirts — 2.8 mi