The Origin of Asian and Chinese Gangs in
Chicago's Chinatown

While most chinese began settling in Chicago around 1870, the largest groups moved out to Chicago in the mid 1940’s. Most of the Chinese groups started out west in San Francisco to begin work in the gold mines during the rush in the forties and also to work as manual labor on the transcontinental railroad. By the 40’s, however, anti-Asian racism was raging within the white community, and many fled to the east and the Midwest (Goldsea 1). Although the Chinese, Asians, and their gangs are prevalent all over the country, I would like to focus in particular on Chicago’s Chinatown, the first visible and established town representing Asians, and also how the Chinese flourished into a productive community. The first Chinatown was located on Polk and Congress, however it was not long before it moved to the establishment where it sits today on Wentworth and Cermak. It has become a neighbor of one of the most historical towns, in politics and gangs, in Chicago. In between 1940 and 1950, Bridgeport, Chinatown’s neighbor, was experiencing a time of change and a shift in politics, ethnicity, and race, even through Bridgeport has always been known for its “ethno-religious” distinctiveness (Droel 7). Another factor contributing to the influx of Chinese into Chicago as well as the rest of the country was the liberalization of the United States’ immigration and naturalization laws. Due to the gaining of higher proportion of non-registered Chinese, and also Mexican-Americans, that tend to be apolitical, citywide politics waned, when once this part of the city was full of city workers and served by city services (Droel 8). The massive amount of Chinese immigrants nevertheless became a positive factor for Bridgeport through the development of Chinatown. During this declination of Bridgeport’s economy, the Chinese-American became a “stabilizing economic force” through their restaurants, gift shops, increasing tourism.

“Is Chicago in irreversible decline? The headlines of the past few years suggest it is. But a close examination of 1990 census tract data…tells a much different story…in South Side neighborhoods…there were some interesting developments. One was an unexpectedly sharp rise in home values in Bridgeport and the communities neighboring it, chiefly as a result of an influx of new residents from crowded Chinatown nearby.” -Ed Zotti, Chicago Tribune.

Although Bridgeport’s population in general was decreasing since the 1960s, most of those leaving Bridgeport were the non-Hispanic whites, which only made room for the constantly increasing amount of Chinese-Americans. For example, in 1960, the white community made up about 3,392 people while the Chinese were 1,709. By 1970, the whites decreased to 811 people while the Chinese grew to 3,169. The Chinese were increasingly attracted to this area, Droel gives many reasons why:

1. It was close to Chinatown.
2. It offered better housing values at less cost than in Chinatown or elsewhere.
3. It proved to be an attractive alternative to upwardly mobile Chinese who lived in Chinatown where a house was extremely difficult to buy.
4. It was conveniently located close to Chicago’s downtown expressways and mass transportation.
5. It was seen as having safe streets and providing good security for property owners, residential or commercial.
6. It offered pathways which had already been well used by other Chinese-Americans. (17)

Chinatown was the first town that Asians could live in which their cultures and traditional values were upheld. For the Chinese, it represented their little China in which assimilation was not required or mandatory to survive. It could not be ignored however, that the Chinese were living in an American society in which their children would be raised. It was not long before the Chinese-Americans began to set up their own social institutions as other races before them had.

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