Annual Chinese Picnics at Alcyon Lake

TW/CW: Racially offensive language in the original source text.

Alcyon Lake hosted annual “Chinese Days”. Earliest mention is found in a June 1906 Special to the Courier article reporting on the upcoming annual “family wash brigade”.

Courier-Post Camden, NJ 23 Jun 1906

The first mention of the event found makes certain to the reader of the impending multitude of Celestial visitors, with and without their tails. It reports of the “two kinds of Chinese”, and that it will be only the Christian ones arriving with their instructors on a special train from Philadelphia and surrounding cities.

A near drowning of a Chinese man at the picnic was referred to as a “Chinese wash for sure”.

At least one woman was angry about the references made to the event. In a letter to the editor titled “SHE’S REAL ANGRY AT THAT REPORTER”, Ada James of Germantown, PA sought to correct assumptions cast in a write-up of the event.

She stated that there was no observed Chinese men with “colored” or “American” wives, and no inappropriate dalliances as reported. She continued that “Chinamen…were the soul of honor, and… can teach lessons worth learning to the American Nation. And she trusts in the future…anything concerning these people only the truth will be used.”

*I was unable to find the article that enraged Ada, and will share if/when I do.

The 1906 picnic mentioned the lack of Chinese women in this country. This was due to the 1875 Page Act prohibiting the immigration of Chinese women into the United States. Created to "end the danger of cheap Chinese labor and immoral Chinese women", it was the first restrictive immigration law enacted marking the end of open borders.

The first Chinese immigrants came during the Gold Rush in 1848 and were majority male. It was common to borrow money to immigrate and repay the loan over several years with interest from wages. Without sufficient funds to send home to their wives and family, the environment gave rise to rampant prostitution, indentured servitude, and slavery of Chinese women.

At the time, the American Medical Association had believed Chinese immigrants carried germs which only whites would die from. This fear became focused on Chinese women; specifically the prostitutes entertaining white men. With the practice of polygamy among Chinese men; the sale of secondary wives or concubines during difficult times was commonplace. Coupled with concerns over Chinese children allowed citizenship under the Fourteenth Amendment, cultural practices were seen as “serious threats to white values, lives, and futures".

At the Seventh Annual Message to the U.S Senate and House of Representatives, Ulysses S. Grant stated, “While this is being done I invite the attention of Congress to another, though perhaps no less an evil--the importation of Chinese women, but few of whom are brought to our shores to pursue honorable or useful occupation.” -December 7, 1875

In 1882, building on the Page Act, President Chester A Arthur signed into law the Chinese Exclusion Act. Prohibiting the immigration of all Chinese laborers, it remains the only law on the books ever to prevent an entire specific ethnicity or nationality from immigrating into the United States. Initially a temporary law, it was strengthened in 1892 with the Geary Act, and made permanent in 1902.

In April 1905, it was reported the U.S. Commissioner General of Immigration was taking a special census of Chinese people in New Jersey, Delaware, and Pennsylvania. It was believed there was a “large number of Chinamen in this locality that lack the legal requirements to remain in the country.” The article continued “the Chinese are the most peaceable foreigners on this soil, and are seldom violators of the law”, and there must be a stronger motive for the move.

The Immigration Act of 1907 expanded on the Chinese Exclusion Act. Section two of the act redefined “moral character” and stated the following not worthy of entry:

“All idiots, imbeciles, feebleminded persons, epileptics, insane persons, and persons who have been insane within five years previous; persons who have had two or more attacks of insanity at any time previously; paupers; persons likely to become a public charge; professional beggars; persons afflicted with tuberculosis or with a loathsome or dangerous contagious disease; persons not comprehended within any of the foregoing excluded classes who are found to be and are certified by the examining surgeon as being mentally or physically defective, such mental or physical defect being of a nature which may affect the ability of such alien to earn a living…”

The Chinese Exclusion Act was eventually repealed in 1943 with the Magnusan Act, allowing 105 Chinese people entrance into the United States per year, before being expanded in later years.

Courier-Post Camden, NJ

25 Jun 1907

Rev Lee Hong was the organizer of the annual picnics here in Pitman. He was the first Chinese Baptist Minister ordained in Philadelphia, and created their first Chinese Baptist Church in 1898 serving there for 32 years.

While referenced in 1906 as being the annual picnic, I haven’t yet found an earlier reference to the event in a newspaper.

Here in 1907, it appears that hundreds of white Pitmanites welcomed throngs of Chinese people from all the surrounding cities.

Courier-Post

23 Jun 1908

Here it’s written that great fun was produced watching some of the Chinese visitors attempt roller-skating, and the many “antics of the Chinamen”.

The commonalities between the articles are numerous. All, while using degrading terms and offensive names, highlight the money spent to “impress American women”.

Author’s Opinion

Researching this, I felt a multitude of emotions. I can’t imagine a reader not wincing when looking at even a headline. But, upon examining the timeline of laws enacted and the systematic racism raged against Chinese people of the time, I realized something.

Pitman appears to have been quite progressive by hosting these picnics. Everything from the verbiage of the articles, to the terminology commonly used then, to hosting a “Celestial Day” at Alcyon Lake for the Christian Chinese is prejudiced. And yet, Pitman seems to have been on their own hosting a Chinese Day. I’ve scoured newspapers from that era, and have yet to find another New Jersey town offering such an affair.

There is no shortage of offensive articles or rampant hates crimes of that day. I imagine Pitmanites felt they were doing the right thing through their missionary work. While federal laws were being enacted to limit the Chinese population, Pitman was rolling out the welcome mat. Albeit, for one day a year, to the converted.

It’s worth noting, the next time I find the picnic mentioned in 1911 it lacks some of the offensiveness the above newsletters have. The noisiest picnic that ever struck Alcyon Park, Rev Lee Hong ensured everyone had great fun with fireworks and a dragon show performed for the Sunday school children. It did seem baby steps had been made at dismantling biases, but alas, it was the last annual Chinese picnic I can find referenced. Multiple fraternal organizations and social clubs appeared on the scene after Pitman’s incorporation in 1905, and soon monopolized picnic days at Alcyon; including The Order of Redman, Loyal Order of the Moose, and the Masonic Club. By the early 1920’s the KKK had taken up residence and exacted their influence.