Yick Wo at 140, and the Chinese laundry’s quiet exit

The laundries that produced Yick Wo were never just storefronts, but legal and economic infrastructure of an immigrant community barred from most other trades.

Yick Wo laundry business. Image via National Archives and Records Administration

The Chinese laundry, once the economic backbone of an immigrant community and site of a landmark civil rights case, is disappearing from American storefronts. Yick Wo v. Hopkins, the 1886 ruling born inside one of those laundries, turned 140 last week.

Trade built on exclusion