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The History of Chinese Americans in New Orleans

With Winston Ho 何嶸

To celebrate AAPI Heritage Month, Winston Ho, a public historian at the Historic New Orleans Collection, leads a discussion via Zoom about Chinese Americans in New Orleans.

The first significant migration of Chinese people into Louisiana took place during Reconstruction after the American Civil War, between 1867 and 1871. Local planters imported hundreds of Cantonese contract laborers from Cuba, California, and directly from China as a low-cost replacement for slave labor. By the mid-1870s, nearly all of these laborers had abandoned the plantations and migrated to Southern cities, especially New Orleans, in search of higher pay and better working conditions. The laborers became workers in factories, workers in levee and railroad construction projects, fisherman, grocers, and especially laundrymen. As they put down roots in the community, they continued to influence the development of New Orleans and its surroundings to this day.

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