Searching for Salem's Early Chinese Community

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Heritage Sites at the Intersection of Landscape, Memory, and Place: Archaeology, Heritage Commemoration, and Practice" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Did Salem, Oregon, have a Chinatown during the late 1800s? In this research paper, Kimberli Fitzgerald documents the three-year investigation to answer to this question with her local colleagues Kirsten Straus and Kylie Pine. The author worked with a local advisory committee, including historians, members of Salem’s Chinese community, and representatives from the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association, the Hoy Yin Association, Friends of the Salem Pioneer Cemetery, and Willamette University. Collectively, the group learned that Salem had a thriving Chinatown for many years that included community leader George Lai Sun and several prominent families. Through a public, community archaeological project a funerary table in Salem’s Pioneer Cemetery was uncovered, one of very few physical remnants of the late-nineteenth and early twentieth-century Chinese community. Together, the project committee and today’s Salem Chinese community reinstated the funerary table's use in the annual Qingming festival.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Heritage Sites at the Intersection of Landscape, Memory, and Place: Archaeology, Heritage Commemoration, and Practice   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 35826.0