La Fiesta de Los Angeles: Race, Ethnicity, and History on Parade in Los Angeles, 1894-1903

This project uses La Fiesta de Los Angeles, a multiethnic parade, as an entry point into understanding ethnic and race relations in Los Angeles, California from 1894-1903. Expanding upon historical research and theoretical frameworks that explore the intersectionalities of race, gender, class, and nationality within La Fiesta de Los Angeles, this project investigates how the development of a racialized Los Angeles in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries offers important historical perspectives for the United States. It focuses on the Chinese community in Los Angeles and their participation in the parade and endeavors to recognize their exercise of agency, however limited. Photographs and postcards of La Fiesta are used to glean clues about the development of the Chinese American community and how they sought to present themselves. In La Fiesta, the Chinese used their culture as capital to combat prejudice and create business opportunities. In appealing to American Orientalist imagination, the Chinese were able to craft their own representation in a way that increased their popularity (even if temporarily) in American society and staked a claim to a sense of belonging in Los Angeles.