Image courtesy Walnut Hills Historical Society
On May 6, 1882, United States President Chester A. Arthur signed into law the Chinese Exclusion Act, prohibiting the immigration of almost anyone from China for the next decade and denying citizenship to Chinese residents currently living in the United States. The act was renewed in 1892 and again, with no expiration date, in 1902.
Among the people who objected to this law, in addition to the residents of Chinese extraction already in the United States, were the evangelical churches, who had aggressive plans to convert the “heathen Chinee.” In response to this new legal impediment, more than a few Christian congregations organized Chinese Sunday Schools to help assimilate and convert the Chinese people living in America with the intention of sending them back to China as missionaries.
Although labeled by white Americans as superstitious and ignorant, and although confined almost exclusively to restaurant or laundry jobs, the Chinese who arrived in the later 1800s were among the more educated class in their home country, according to the administrators of the Chinese Sunday Schools.
The 1880 census records only 44 residents of Cincinnati who claimed Chinese origin. Nevertheless, a Chinese Sunday School was convened at the Second Reformed Presbyterian Church on Clinton Street in the West End. The sponsor of this school was Henry Martin, a wealthy merchant who owned a very large and very prosperous store purveying dry goods and carpets at the corner of Twelfth and Main.
Born in Ireland, Mr. Martin is credited with vastly increasing the value of property in Cincinnati’s hilltop suburbs, especially Mount Auburn and Avondale, by building a cable car line up the treacherously steep Sycamore Hill. Deeply religious and scrupulous to a fault, every Saturday night Mr. Martin signed over ownership of his cable company to the line’s superintendent. Every Monday, the superintendent dutifully returned the ownership of the line to Mr. Martin. This curious arrangement allowed Mr. Martin to avoid any hint of engaging in business on the Sabbath.
Inspired by the same zeal, Mr. Martin financed any number of missionary and evangelical initiatives, including the Chinese Sunday School at his church. He was so committed to educating Cincinnati’s very small Chinese community that he arranged for his daughter Margaret, known as Madge, to become the principal of Cincinnati’s Chinese Sunday School.
The school at the Second Reformed Presbyterian Church was active into the 1890s, when operation of the Chinese Sunday School moved to the Ninth Street Baptist Church and continued into the 1920s. While still located in the West End, the pupils would gather each Sunday at Tong Hop’s laundry at the corner of Central Avenue and Clinton Street and march in formation down Clinton Street to the church.
One Sunday in August 1887, only three of the usual fifteen or eighteen pupils showed up. The faculty—all young and single women with some standing in society—prowled some of Cincinnati’s seedier dives and located their errant scholars in the backroom of a laundry, engaged in a game of cock-a-loo. They played hooky, they said, because a dozen of them had been arrested throwing dice at a Plum Street hangout the week before and they were too embarrassed to face their teachers.
It was fairly typical for Chinese Sunday Schools in the United States to be managed and taught by the young women associated with the host church. When a Cincinnati Enquirer [February 1, 1885] reporter visited the school, he found all the teachers to be women:
“The troupe of Chinamen were distributed around the room, each one of the Celestials seated beside a lady, who was ostensibly his teacher. The teachers were all young, most of them pretty, and the reason why few of the Celestials rarely missed a meeting was plainly apparent.”
Image extracted from "Puck", Volume 31, Number 796, June 8, 1892
The preponderance of young and attractive teachers raised eyebrows across the United States. One national magazine published a cartoon depicting a distinguished gentleman attempting to walk off a wharf, restrained by a policeman. The old gent pleads, “Let me jump off—the family’s disgraced. My daughter teaches a Chinese Sunday School pupil!”
The Enquirer reporter devoted several paragraphs to a description of one Chinese pupil fondling the floating end of his teacher’s hair ribbon while gazing lustily at her as she attempted to show him how to distinguish an O from a Q. The American Israelite [July 1, 1909] printed a letter from one Lurana Sheldon accusing Chinese Sunday Schools of inflaming the lusts of the uncivilized pupils:
“Is not the young woman missionary a highly emotional, sentimental, affectionate person, prolific in the making of opportunities and situations that would tax the blood temperature of any man, not alone the Chinaman, and has she not the overconfidence of ignorance in her own ability to handle successfully such opportunities and situations?”
Image extracted from "Puck", Volume 31, Number 796, June 8, 1892
In Cincinnati, at least, the leadership of Madge Martin and the sterling reputation of her devout father neutralized some of the gossip, but not entirely. All this lascivious tut-tutting ignored the many unromantic benefits derived by the immigrant pupils of the Chinese Sunday Schools. Federal agents rounded up and deported Chinese men (there were very few Chinese women in the United States at that time) when they were accused of entering the country after 1882. Proficiency in English and familiarity with American customs provided strong evidence of extended residency.
The Chinese Sunday Schools also connected the pupils to a trusted network of Caucasian citizens who could assist them in a pinch. Such was the case in 1893 when four Chinese men were arrested in Cincinnati and charged with illegal immigration. Henry Martin himself appeared as a witness for one of the men, attesting that he knew him from years ago at the Sunday school. The lawyer for the four arrested men was John H. Martin, Henry Martin’s son.
It appears from newspaper reports that Cincinnati was, for many years, a way station on what might be called the “Silk Railroad,” the Chinese version of the Underground Railroad. It was almost impossible in the 1880s and 1890s for Chinese to enter the United States through major ports like New York and San Francisco, creating an alternate route that ran from Canada through Detroit to Cincinnati. Canada had no restrictions on Chinese immigration, so Chinese intent on the United States landed at Victoria or Vancouver and made their way eastward.
The border near Detroit was only lightly patrolled and the journey from Detroit to Cincinnati was convenient. Once in Cincinnati, the smuggled men hid in the basements or attics of Chinese-run business. One such way-station was Loy Sing’s laundry on Main Street just south of Liberty. Within days, the local “conductor” arranged train tickets to send the immigrants on to Chinatowns in New York or California.
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