Memphis, A Launching Place for Chinese in the Mid-South in 1869

The abolition of slavery in 1865 presented a crisis for cotton plantation owners who relied on slaves to pick cotton. At a convention of planters in Memphis in 1869, there was a proposal to recruit Chinese as replacement workers in the fields. As the building of the transcontinental railroad was completed in May, 1869, many Chinese laborers on its construction were out of work.

There were opponents who objected to bringing "Orientals" to the South because "coolies" would, in effect, be slaves.  However, the proposal to bring as many as 1,000 Chinese involved contractual labor rather than indentured service.

The Chinese who came did not work out well as field labor and soon they opened small family-run grocery stores in the region and throughout the Mississippi Delta.

Other Chinese came in 1869 to work on a railroad between Memphis and Covington, Kentucky. It is possible that some of these Chinese settled in towns throughout the South where they opened grocery stores and hand laundries.

In1873 Henry Ying opened what was probably the first Chinese hand laundry in Memphis, and possibly in the South, as noted by 1873 newspaper ads, only four years after Chinese were brought to Memphis to work on plantations.

.