Chinese queue artciles12/2/2023 Imagine that,” said May Hong, a Chinese American secretary from San Jose who visited Antioch after reading about the city’s apology online. “Customers are drinking coffee and tea in the same room where people hid from their fellow residents. The tunnel remnants, in the basements of Reign and other downtown businesses, including a cafe, are a reminder of the hard lives that Chinese immigrants led long ago. When the Palace Hotel was demolished in 1926 to make way for a new theater, a section of the Chinese tunnels was uncovered, according to the historical society. Thorpe proposed a slate of policing reforms, which the council passed in February.Ī photocopy of an Chinese worker’s permit from 1895 in Antioch.Ī man known as Ah Young grew vegetables and sold them door to door in the 1920s, also shipping his produce to San Francisco and Stockton, according to the historical society.Īnother Chinese man, Lew Hing, owned a fruit canning company during the same era. The next month, Antioch police killed a 30-year-old man suffering from a mental health crisis. He was elected mayor in November, following a summer of protests after the police killing of Floyd, a Black man. Thorpe, who refers to himself as “Blaxican,” wondered why the past was not more openly discussed in the racially diverse city of about 110,000, which is 33% Latino, 28% white, 22% Black and 12% Asian. Nearly a decade ago, on a driving tour of the city, former Mayor Don Freitas gave him a history lesson about the long-ago Chinese inhabitants as they passed Waldie Plaza, a downtown public square within the old Chinatown boundaries. We need action.”įor Thorpe, 40, who is Black and was raised by a Mexican American family in East Los Angeles, racial injustice is deeply personal. “It was so painful to watch the news, and I kept thinking to myself, ‘It’s not enough to say we stand in solidarity with this group or that group,’” said Mayor Lamar Thorpe, who spearheaded the effort. A map depicts Antioch with markings showing the old Chinatown, where Chinese-born workers lived in 1876 prior to expulsions and burning by vigilante action.Īmid the racial reckoning after the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis and a rise in anti-Asian hate crimes during the COVID-19 pandemic, Antioch is the first city to issue a formal apology.
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