AsiaTown Cleveland: From Tong Wars to Dim Sum

For years, Cleveland's Chinese residents struggled to find a secure place in the city. Immigrants came with dreams of building a better life, but without English proficiency, prospects dimmed, and emigres often earned poor pay for long hours of strenuous work. In 1925, Cleveland police responded to an especially brutal outbreak of the tong war violence ravaging the community by arresting every Chinese person in the city, creating an international scandal. In spite of the anti-Asian sentimen...