In order to develop lands west of the Mississippi River during the 1800s, Americans needed foreign labor. This demand for labor was an important factor for Chinese immigration to the United States after 1840. They filled the roles of railroad workers, cooks, launderers, grain farmers, fruit growers, tide-land drainers, miners and other laborers needed in Western frontier communities.
Most of the Chinese workers in the United States during the late 1800s were married. They supported a family back in their homeland and were lured to America by the thought of finding gold in California. Their reality included homelessness and poor wages. In Arkansas, the Chinese immigrants primarily came from Canton province in Southern China , Hong Kong and Taiwan.
They settled in a variety of small towns in the Delta including Holly Grove, Helena, Blytheville, Hughes, Pine Bluff, Turrell, Dermott and Round Pond. In the 1870s and 1880s, these immigrants worked in the cotton fields of Lincoln, Jefferson and Pulaski counties as part of a work force brought in by the Arkansas Valley Immigration Company that specifically targeted this group for the cotton fields of Arkansas. Gov. Powell Clayton noted that, "Undoubtedly, the underlying motive of this effort to bring in Chinese laborers was to punish the Negro for having abandoned the control of his master." They were contracted to work for no more than five years and were paid the equivalent of several months of wages and the passage that the plantation owner paid for his voyage to Arkansas.
Between 1900 and 1940, many Chinese became small businessmen. They owned grocery stores, laundries and restaurants in many Arkansas communities. Many of these businesses were successful family ventures that included nephews, cousins, wives and children. Employment discrimination against the Chinese was not as harsh as with other ethnic groups, but neither was it cordial. As a result, many Chinese felt they did not have a choice as to their occupations. One immigrant noted, "you know at that time [1920s] Chinese people didn't have too much choice or option…about having their own business so…they had a laundry or restaurant or grocery. It wasn't too much choice."
With the success of the Chinese merchant class in the early 20th century, the offspring of the first immigrants to Arkansas were able to acquire education, prestigious jobs and political positions within their respective communities. Today, those success stories are exemplified in the many Chinese families that still reside in the Delta.
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