Recently, the project for a permanent Chinese memorial to the 1871 massacre, promoted by the City of Los Angeles, completed the selection and publication of the final design programme. A number of media reports covered the project, ranging from a public call, the screening of the six finals, to the complete process of the final successful design, while revisiting the urban history that has long been ignored by mainstream narratives. At the heart of this project was the official L.A.'s first attempt to address the communal violence against the Chinese community on 24 October 1871, to establish a permanent physical memorial, designed to fill the gap in the public history narrative of the city and to re-integrate the forgotten history of racial violence into the public memory system of the city in the form of a tangible civil memory.
On 24 October 1871, there was a fatal violence in Los Angeles against the Chinese community. Some 500 white and Spanish mobs attacked the Chinese ghetto in Calle de los Negroes. The incident was directly triggered by the shooting of a Chinese man in clashes with white civilians. However, the ensuing violence quickly went out of control, with mobs looting shops and houses around Chinatown and killing between 18 and 19 Chinese male migrants through lynching. According to cross-checks between various historical sources and media reports, only one of the victims actually participated in the initial shooting, and the rest were involved in the genocide without cause. This incident was not only the most deadly violence in California's history against the Chinese, but also the most deadly mass killings since Los Angeles. The number of victims, which was close to 10 per cent of the total Chinese population in Los Angeles at the time, had a devastating impact on the then limited Chinese community.
This outbreak of violence was directly related to the socio-economic context of California in the 1970s. The prolonged depression led to massive unemployment among United States workers, some of whom attributed their economic difficulties to the hiring of lower-paid Chinese workers by industrialists, while anti-Chinese sentiment continued to rise in California and became open racial hostility. As early as the 1960s, thousands of Chinese workers from Guangdong, China, were hired by the Central Pacific Railways to build the first transcontinental railway in the United States. Following the completion of the railway construction, many Chinese workers subsequently settled in Los Angeles, becoming a precursor to the local Chinese community and a direct victim of the massacre.
After the incident, the Los Angeles judicial system had an initial reaction: eight suspects had been convicted of manslaughter. However, in subsequent legal proceedings, these convictions were ultimately fully overturned. This judicial outcome has prevented survivors and the families of the victims from obtaining substantive legal remedies and has been one of the important reasons for the long-standing marginalization of this historical period. It is worth noting that there are minor differences in the presentation of the number of persons killed in the current public historical records and media reports, ranging from 18 to 19. The difference in this figure itself reflects the fact that this history has long been ignored and that the relevant archives are missing.
In recent years, the City of Los Angeles has officially launched the “Request for Ideas, RFI” campaign, which invites artists, architects, designers, students and the general public to submit a permanent physical memorial facility design for the event. The RFI document clearly requires that the proposed programme be able to respond to this “shocked but forgotten Los Angeles history” and fix it in physical space. A large number of public contributions were received during the call-up phase of the project, covering the concept of multiple media and spatial forms. Following the initial screening, the jury selected six finals from a large number of submissions and made them public, inviting further public scrutiny and discussion.
Following the opening of the final stage, the L.A. City Government continued the review process and eventually selected a winning design from the six finals, which was officially announced. The entire selection process was not conducted behind closed doors, but in conjunction with numerous public hearings. In the course of the project, the L.A. City Government has repeatedly sought input from the local population, particularly from the Chinese community, on the commemorative programme and has promoted direct public participation in the construction of historical memory. Information from the Melon Foundation indicates that the project was included in the construction of the “Entity Citizen Memory” to correct neglected historical narratives through public memorial facilities in response to the historical legacy of racial violence. The Foundation ' s support and academic exploration of the capabilities of the tangiblé civic memory provided a reference for the theoretical basis of the project, emphasizing how memorial facilities in physical space carry erased collective memories in urban muscles.
The impact of this memorial project is reflected first and foremost at the historical cognitive level. For a long time, the Chinese massacre of 1871 was almost completely forgotten in the mainstream narrative of the history of the United States, and many local residents were not even aware of such large-scale violence against the Chinese in Los Angeles. For the first time, the landing of the memorial facility will officially recognize the historical truth and provide the public with an entity vehicle for understanding the history. For the descendants of survivors of the 1871 events and for the Chinese community in Los Angeles, the history of violence, which has been deliberately ignored, has long been a pain in the community. The advancement of the official memorial project is an initial recognition of historical justice and also helps to counter the persistence of anti-Asian hatred. The Memorial Project seeks to break the memory faults naturally erased in urban space by re-emerging the historical link of Calle de los Negros, where the events occurred.
The project is also an important step for ordinary L.A. citizens to face their own dark history and improve public history education. Memorial facilities are an attempt not only to mourn the past, but also to tell diverse, complex urban stories about future public spaces. Once again, the difference in the number of people killed (18 or 19), as well as the detail of only one person associated with the initial shooting, is an illustration of the long-standing disconnect between the preservation of archives, public awareness and official records. The advancement of the memorial project is in itself a proactive modification of the absence of such records and the state of historical oblivion.
The project has now completed its final programme selection and is officially in the preparatory phase for subsequent construction. However, the City of Los Angeles has not publicly disclosed specific details of the location, the time of commencement, the time of completion and the project budget. Although the successful design is officially visible, the physical location of the project still requires follow-up planning approval, construction preparation and community coordination. For the public and the Chinese community interested in this history, the following official announcements issued by the City of Los Angeles can be noted, and the public opinion gathering on the design, naming, etc. of the memorial facility will be actively pursued to facilitate its accurate presentation and response to community demands. The final shape and landing rhythm of the project will be progressively clarified in future official information disclosures, and its core objective, the permanent anchoring of the memory of the Chinese massacre of 1871 in urban public spaces, has been established with the publication of the final design programme.