What A Murder In My Family Reveals About Chicago’s Chinese Gangs

Editor’s Note: This story was first published in 2018. On a warm September night, a gunman walked into a West Side restaurant, greeted the manager, and shot him three times. Hours after the murder, Chicago cops were still trying to figure out if the shooting was gang-related, the Chicago Tribune reported. This may sound a lot like Chicago in 2018. But the murder actually happened in 1936. The alleged gangs were Chinese — and the killer was after my family. That’s one of the reasons I recently took on a Curious City question about the history of Chicago’s Chinese gangs — also called tongs. The questioner didn’t leave their name, but they wanted to know how these powerful gangs got started, what they did, and what happened to them. I wanted to know the answers to these questions to help me finally understand why my family members were targeted for murder back in 1936. But as I dug into the history of Chicago’s Chinese gangs, I realized that my family’s story offers insight into the social structure and unwritten rules that defined Chicago’s Chinese-American community during much of the 20th century. How did these Chinese gangs get started in Chicago? It turns out that the tongs my family got caught up with in Chicago actually originated as secret societies in China. They were divided into two main factions: the On Leong and the Hip Sing. These rival gangs first arrived in the U.S. in the 1860s with Chinese railroad workers. They operated in cities from San Francisco to Chicago to New York, and in just about any town with a large Chinese population. Part of their role was to provide protection for members within Chinese immigrant communities. This protection was essential when low-wage Chinese workers came under attack for bringing down railway worker pay, says Gangland Chicago author Richard Lindberg. “As a means of self-protection, the Chinese community organized extensions of the tongs of Imperial China here,” he says. “And then they divided along traditional tong lines of the Hip Sing and the On Leong, which were the principal rivals of 17th-century China.” In his book, Lindberg writes extensively about the operations of Italian and Irish gangs, but says he found much less open information on Chinese gangs. “Asian crime in Chicago is not well-documented simply because it was conducted under the veil of secrecy for most of its history,” Lindberg says. Historian Huping Ling offers one of the few detailed accounts of Chicago tongs in her book, Chinese Chicago: Race, Transnational Migration, and Community Since 1870. She describes On Leong as a  “self reliant, quasi-legal and social organization of Chinese immigrants.” Ling says Chinese immigrants relied on organizations like On Leong and Hip Sing because they “received little protection from the homeland government or the host country authorities.” The On Leong Merchants Association Building on Wentworth Avenue in Chicago’s Chinatown was once the organization’s headquarters. (Today, the building is a community center.) On Leong was one of two rival Chinese gangs that first arrived in the U.S. in the late 1800s. Courtesy of Chicago Daily News negatives collection and Chicago History Museum Not just crime, but also social services While these gangs were most closely associated with crime, Ling points out they also operated as social service agencies in the Chinese community. Among other things, they helped with translation, education, burials, business licenses, and immigrant resettlement. They also served as de-facto courts, resolving a wide range of community and family disputes. While I’m not sure if my family ever relied on the tongs for these services, Chicago arts advocate Nancy Tom says hers did. In the 1950s she married into the prominent Tom family, who served as business and civic leaders in Chinatown and beyond.  At that time, she says, the On Leong was a central force their community. “If anyone got into trouble or anything, they would go to the On Leong and