[BONUS EPISODE] Memorializing the West: 1871 Memorial

A year ago, the second season of Western Edition focused on the past, present, and future of Los Angeles Chinatown. As part of that fascinating exploration, we investigated the horrific 1871 massacre of Chinese and Chinese Americans in downtown Los Angeles.

In October of that year, a mixed-race mob of approximately ten percent of the resident population of Los Angeles killed 18 Chinese men and boys, or about ten percent of that ethnic and national group’s population at the time.

Though the event has burned in the memory of the Chinese and Chinese American community for 150 years, the rest of Los Angeles, people who live or who visit here, generally know nothing about it. But thanks to the collaborative efforts of grassroots organizations and institutions, working in concert with the city of Los Angeles, a fitting and powerful memorial to the victims of the massacre is now well underway.

It made sense to us at Western Edition to add this final episode to our “Memorializing the West” season, as it offers a coda to what we’ve done and where we’ve gone this season and, we think, a bridge to last season’s Chinatown investigation.

Following a summer 2022 public call for ideas and a competition, artist and photographer Nicolás Leong and writer Judy Chung were selected from nearly 200 submissions and, eventually, five other finalists, all of whose thoughtful work sought to redress our city’s amnesia about this event.

Western Edition  host William Deverell spoke with Nicolás and Judy about their design and their process.

To see images related to this episode, please visit dornsife.usc.edu/icw.

Western Edition is hosted by William Deverell and produced by Avishay Artsy, Katie Dunham, Jessica Kim, Elizabeth Logan, and Stephanie Yi. Western Edition is a production of the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West.