History of the Hmong in Merced, California facts for kids

The Hmong are an important group of people living in Merced, California. In 1997, many Hmong people lived in Merced compared to the city's total population. The Hmong community chose Merced because a leader named Dang Moua told other Hmong families across the United States about it. By 2010, about 4,741 Hmong people lived in Merced. This made up 6% of Merced's total population.

Hmong Culture in Merced

In 1997, Merced was home to fourteen Hmong family groups, also called clans. These included the Cheng, Fang, Hang, Her, Kong, Kue, Lee, Lor, Moua, Thao, Vang, Vue, Xiong, and Yang clans. Because there were so many different clans, young Hmong people could easily find marriage partners from different families.

Hmong people often travel between cities in the Central Valley of California. Hmong families who moved away from Merced still visit for special family gatherings. This is much like how Hmong people in Laos used to travel from smaller villages back to their home villages.

Because Merced was a central meeting place for Hmong families, author Anne Fadiman once said that other Central Valley cities like Fresno and Sacramento felt like "suburbs of Merced."

Having a large Hmong community in Merced means it is easy to find important people. You can find a Hmong clan elder to help solve disagreements. You can also find a txiv neeb, who is a traditional Hmong healer, or a Hmong herbalist. It is also easy to find someone who plays the qeej, a special Hmong musical instrument. Since bamboo is not common in Merced, qeej instruments are often made from PVC plumbing pipes.

How Hmong People Settled in Merced

Hmong families began to settle in Merced during the 1970s and 1980s. They came to Merced and other parts of the Central Valley of California after the Laotian Civil War ended. During that war, the Hmong had supported the United States. When the Communist forces won, they treated the Hmong badly. Many Hmong people then fled to refugee camps in Thailand before moving to the United States.

A Hmong community leader named Dang Moua helped many Hmong families settle in Merced. He used to work at the Embassy of the United States in Laos. Anne Fadiman said that from the Hmong point of view, Moua was as important to Merced as Daniel Boone was to Kentucky.

When Moua first came to the United States, he lived in Richmond, Virginia. He studied different states, looking at their weather, crop yields, and soil. His brother, who lived in Southern California, told him that the Central Valley had good weather and many different ethnic groups. Through the Hmong community network, Moua learned that General Vang Pao planned to buy a farm near Merced. So, Moua moved to Merced in April 1977.

Even though General Vang Pao's plan to buy the farm didn't work out, the Hmong community shared good things about Merced. Soon, Hmong people from all over the United States started moving there. An anthropologist named Eric Crystal was surprised by this. He told a reporter that it was "wild" to see cars with Arkansas license plates pouring into Merced. Because Hmong people had already started living in Merced, it remained a popular place for new Hmong families to move.

In April 1982, about 1,800 Hmong people lived in Merced County. By October 1982, officials said there were 5,800 Hmong people. Most of them had arrived in the previous six months. Officials even thought this number might be too low.

Many Hmong people thought Merced was a farming community. However, they soon found that most of the land was already owned by others. This meant they could not farm as they had hoped. Many Hmong people who moved to Merced became unemployed. They could not get high-paying farm jobs because they did not speak enough English. Also, Mexican migrants already held many of the lower-paying farm jobs. The Hmong arrived just as Merced was facing an economic slowdown in the early 1980s.

In October 1982, Hmong refugees in Merced County had not lived there long enough to get unemployment benefits. They were not counted in the county's unemployment rate, which was 13.5% and included 8,000 jobless people already there. At a meeting, officials were told that the arrival of the Hmong increased tensions in Merced County.

Eric Crystal also noted how amazing it was that the Hmong language was spoken so much in Merced. Just fifteen years before, it was hardly spoken anywhere in the Western world.

Growth of the Hmong Community

As Hmong families lived in Merced, some bought land and started farming. Over time, the Hmong community grew and changed. When a law called the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act was passed in 1996, some Hmong families left Merced. They moved to states like Minnesota, North Carolina, and Wisconsin.

When Hmong women first came to the United States, they often married at a young age. In 1990, the average Hmong woman in Merced had 8.5 children. By 2000, this number had changed to 3 children. More women began attending universities and finishing their education before getting married.

By 1997, Merced had about 61,000 residents. Over 12,000 of them were Hmong, meaning Hmong people made up about one-fifth of the city's population. Because so many Hmong lived there, Anne Fadiman called Merced the "most intensely Hmong place in the United States." While Fresno, California and the Minneapolis – Saint Paul area had more Hmong people, Merced had a higher percentage of Hmong residents. Blia Yao Moua, a Hmong leader, said that this concentration helped them keep more Hmong culture alive in Merced than even in Vientiane, the capital of Laos.

Around 2004, about 700 Hmong refugees were expected to arrive in the Merced area. They were coming from Wat Tham Krabok, a refugee camp in central Thailand. In June 2004, most of these new arrivals spoke little English and had little education. More than half of them were old enough to attend primary and secondary school.

According to a 2006 newspaper article, the 2000 U.S. Census showed that Greater Merced had the fifth largest Hmong population among U.S. cities, with 6,148 people.

Because of unemployment, many Hmong people left Merced between 2006 and 2008. Some went to Alaska to work in jobs like crabbing and fishing, which did not require much English language knowledge. Dr. Long Thao, a Hmong doctor in Merced, estimated in 2008 that about 8,000 Hmong lived in Merced. This was about half the number from 1988, which was 15,000.

Economic Activity

In 1988, the Merced County Chamber of Commerce estimated that the Southeast Asian community in Merced County, with over 10,000 people, spent $25 million each year. A Hmong community leader, Dang Moua, believed that if each Southeast Asian refugee spent just $1 per day, the community would spend $36.5 million annually. Moua felt that Merced businesses were not doing enough to attract this market, causing millions of dollars to leave the Merced community each year.

By 1997, the Merced Chamber of Commerce even included a picture of a Hmong woman holding vegetables in its tourist brochure.

Education for Hmong Students

In January 1983, 10% of the students in the Merced City School District (MCSD) were Asian. Most of these students were Hmong refugees. In less than two years leading up to January 1983, over 750 Hmong and Laotian refugee students joined the MCSD. The superintendent, Dave Small, said this number was like adding "the size of one school." At that time, California did not have enough money to build new schools, and the district worried about overcrowding. They used portable classrooms to help with the new students. This overcrowding meant class sizes increased, and several schools faced challenges.

The public schools in Merced also found it hard to pay for English as a second language (ESL) programs for their new students. Merced High School North Campus suddenly received over 200 Hmong refugee students. Almost all of them needed ESL classes. Between spring 1982 and January 1983, the school doubled the size of its ESL program.

The new Hmong students arriving in Merced schools had different levels of learning. Many did not know how to read or write in any language. Some new students also had ear infections that caused some deafness. This meant the district had to place them in special education classes. Ann Simpson, an assistant principal, said that many Hmong students valued education and had almost perfect attendance.

Merced College announced that it would start offering courses in the Hmong language in 1987. It was one of the first schools in the U.S. to offer Hmong language classes.

According to Jonas V. Vangay, Merced College's Southeast Asian coordinator, between 1985 and 1988, 75% of Hmong high school graduates were boys. In November 1990, the Merced Union High School District (MUHSD) had 1,057 students of Southeast Asian origin, with more boys than girls. At that time, fewer Hmong girls were enrolling in high school because of cultural traditions that encouraged them to marry earlier.

By 2004, Merced's school districts had Hmong-speaking teachers and assistants to help the Hmong population. Merced's community college and its two main high schools offered Hmong culture and language classes. Between the early 1980s and 2004, the MCSD learned a lot about Hmong culture, which helped them serve the community better. Also by 2004, Merced's two main libraries had books in both English and Hmong about Hmong culture, history, and language.

Around July 2004, the MCSD expected 150 to 200 children from a closing refugee camp in Thailand to enroll in their schools. The district used a special grant to provide backpacks filled with school supplies for these new refugees. In June 2004, less than 25% of the children at the Wat Tham Krabok camp attended school because there was a tuition fee. These students learned Hmong and Thai, but very little English.

The MCSD created a separate school to give the Hmong refugees intensive English education. In August 2004, the MCSD opened the Newcomer Language Academy. This special school for newly arrived Hmong immigrants served students from Kindergarten to 8th grade. It used portable classrooms at the Burbank School. At the end of the 2004–2005 school year, it had 133 students, and by March 2006, it had 215 students. The MUHSD also prepared for the arrival of these new refugees around June 2004.

Images for kids

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  Qeej, the gourd mouth organ of Hmong music.