Reclaiming the legacy of Asian Americans in Dallas

With no major river or seaport, it is sometimes said that Dallas had no reason to exist. That is, until the Houston & Texas Central (H&TC) Railroad was completed. On July 16, 1872, a ceremonial train arrived in Dallas to celebrate the state’s first major rail line.

According to the Museum of the American Railroad, “Dallas’ population more than tripled within ten years of the first train.” Merchants traveled on the railroad from Houston, establishing businesses in Dallas that helped the city flourish economically. 

The story of Chinese laborers who built most of the railroad that made Dallas Dallas is missing from the annals. In 1870, around 250 Chinese immigrants arrived in Texas to work on the H&TC, much to the chagrin of the White working class.

“We would rather see every railroad in Texas abandoned, than that one man from the Celestial Empire should be imported in their construction,” wrote The Calvert Enterprise. “We hope they will rouse the negroes to work . . . Outside of this we see no particular need of them.”

Chinese workers filed a lawsuit against H&TC when the rail company stopped paying their wages. Left in Texas without employment or income, some opened laundromats—many located in downtown Dallas—and formed a small “Chinese colony.” The earliest person of Asian descent listed in Dallas records was a Chinese man named J.L. Chow (proprietor of Chow Laundry) in the 1873 Dallas City Directory. (1873 was also the first year Dallas published a city directory). 

Growing anti-Asian sentiment culminated in the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which was the first federal law to suspend immigration based on nationality explicitly. “The Chinese Must Go!” was the National Workingmen’s Party slogan and depicted in an 1888 Dallas Morning News advertisement by the Eureka Steam Laundry company. 

In 1891, 41 out of 49 laundries in Dallas were Chinese-owned. A racist propaganda campaign spearheaded by White competitors drove Chinese laundromats out of business. The Dallas Daily Times Herald printed an editorial in the spring of 1894 claiming that the employees of “inferior” Chinese laundries “run the risk of contracting some vile disease.” By 1913, only one Chinese laundryman was identified in the city directory.

Some former laundrymen turned to the food service industry, opening Chinese restaurants throughout Dallas. The only remnants of the since-closed businesses are leftover matchbooks, menus, and photos safeguarded by families of the early restaurateurs. 

The Dallas Asian American Historical Society featured some of these artifacts and stories last summer in our first public exhibition, Leftover. We partnered with Preservation Dallas to borrow their space in the historic Wilson House, because—despite Asian Americans being the fastest-growing population in North Texas—our community does not have a designated cultural or resource center in the city.

The absence of such a space was especially palpable following the Allen Premium Outlets mall shooting this time last year when a swastika-tattooed shooter murdered eight people, four of whom were Asian. Asian American community leaders organized quickly to respond but soon realized we had no physical location to convene. 

We relied on the generosity of partners like Dallas Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation, Union, and Oak Lawn United Methodist Church, who lent us their buildings for a press conference and memorial vigil. It was both a powerful demonstration of community care and a painful reminder of how much the city has rendered us invisible.

A master plan was developed in the early 2000s for a Dallas Asian American Cultural Center. Its proposed existence seems to have disappeared from the city’s collective memory, much like the stories of its first Asian residents or any physical trace of our existence pre-1970s. Without historical markers, preserved buildings, or cultural institutions, record-keeping is left to individual community members and families. 

Perhaps that is why this month of May is dedicated to Asian American “heritage” rather than history. Merriam-Webster dictionary defines “heritage” as “something transmitted by or acquired from a predecessor: LEGACY, INHERITANCE.” 

The Dallas Asian American Historical Society hopes to secure a home within the next year for our growing collection of Asian American research, books, and artifacts, with an oral history studio and digitization equipment to preserve more stories from the community. We imagine it could someday evolve into a full-blown history museum and resource center. Dallas’ Asian American Culture Center seems both a forgotten memory from the past and a distant dream for the future. But if there’s one thing we inherited from our predecessors, it is their will to persevere and create within spaces built to exclude them. Their legacy, our legacy is here. We’ll reclaim our rightful place in the city and its narrative, even if it’s as the early Chinese railroad workers did, laying one track at a time.