442: Denver’s bloody Chinatown riot

A riot erupted as the mob attacked every Chinese person and business they came across that night in Chinatown. Look Young, a Chinese laundry worker, was hanged and a number of others were brutally beaten. Almost all of the Chinese properties in town at the time were destroyed. It is hard to find many details about Young’s life and what happened but one account says the mob that night forced Young from his house and dragged him through the town by a rope wrapped around his neck. The mob beat him before they lynched Young.

After the transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869, Chinese families looked for work in Wyoming and came to Colorado. Gil Asakawa wrote about the legacy of Denver’s Chinatown in 2022, explaining how the state’s mines gave them opportunity and the neighborhood around Union Station in Denver led to the establishment of a Chinatown district with businesses and residences rooted along streets and alleys between 15th and 17th streets, as well as Blake and Market streets.

"It was a wondrous place,” Martinez said in the CBS Colorado report. "There was romance here, there was drama and intrigue here."

In 2022, community members and leaders from all backgrounds from across the state came together to remove a plaque in downtown Denver, which they saw as problematic.

“We wanted to really tell that story, because no one knew about it,” says Joie Ha, the executive director of Colorado Asia Pacific United (CAPU), the organization that was behind removing the plaque and formed in part to correct the record of that night.

The plaque referred to the event as the “Chinese Race Riot” and called Chinatown “Hop Alley,” a term with negative connotations because of its reference to opium. There was no history about Chinatown on the plaque—instead, it highlighted the few white people who were helpful during the riot. For many years, it was the only remnant of Denver’s Chinatown still in the city.

“In a lot of ways, it's a reclamation of the space, both physically and metaphorically,” Ha says about removing the plaque.

In addition, Denver Mayor Michael Hancock signed a letter in April 2022 officially apologizing to Chinese immigrants and their families for the city’s role in the riot, more than 140 years after it happened. The Denver Office of Storytelling also filmed a documentary as part of the work to rectify the city’s past mistakes. One of CAPU’s long-term goals has also started to take shape, with three historical markers across Denver. One made up of mixed materials including wood has been installed outside a saloon on 16th Street, the former heart of Chinatown, with text explaining what happened on the day of the race riot. Another marker with a similar design is at the intersection of 19th Street and Lawrence Street, where Young was murdered, has text about the racial violence as well as a map of Chinatown. A third is a mural that celebrates a Chinese proverb on the side of a fire station.

“Something that we've just been really proud of is the way that we are so absolutely integrated in the community,” Ha says.

CAPU’s work continues to create a historical survey in the area that once was Denver’s Chinatown. Other projects include a fourth grade social studies curriculum about Chinatown that they are currently finishing up, and a long-term goal is to have a museum in Colorado that celebrates the arts, culture, and history of the AA+PI community, similar to the Wing Luke Museum in Seattle. 

While the once thriving Chinatown of the 19th Century is gone in Denver, new ethnic enclaves have emerged around the metro area including a Little Saigon on the western edge of the city and a Koreatown in nearby Aurora.

“I think that Denver is in a very interesting place, especially after the pandemic, in figuring out what its identity is,” Ha says. “We do have this very great opportunity, and we hope we can partner with the city on it to make sure that as Denver is forging this new identity and path, that they do include the histories and the contributions of different communities that have been integral to the creation of Denver.”