On a spring morning along Lynn Common, a parade of dancers in gilded costumes moves past the old bandstand, and for a few hours a New England city that once shod the world becomes something else entirely. The Cambodians in Lynn, Massachusetts have made this corner of the North Shore a centre of Khmer life, second in the state only to nearby Lowell. They arrived as refugees, fleeing one of the twentieth century’s darkest chapters, and built temples, markets and a place in city hall.
The Place
Lynn sits about ten miles north-east of Boston, on the shore of Massachusetts Bay. For a century it was known simply as Shoe City, the global capital of women’s footwear, with more than 170 shoe factories clustered downtown by 1880.
The other great employer was electricity. In 1892 a merger of local interests helped create General Electric, whose vast Lynn plant built the first American jet engine in 1942 and at its peak employed more workers than the shoe trade ever had.
Then the work left. The last shoe factory in the city burned to the ground in 1981, and the GE workforce shrank with it. What remained was a city of brick mills, triple-deckers and cheap rents, and that combination would shape who came next.
That pattern, of immigrant communities filling the affordable housing left behind by departed industry, runs through the old manufacturing towns of New England. It drew the Greeks of nearby Peabody and the Portuguese of Taunton in earlier generations, much as it would draw the Finns of Fitchburg to another mill city to the west. Lynn’s Cambodians were the latest chapter in a very old Massachusetts story.
How It Became Cambodian
The story begins not in Massachusetts but in Cambodia, in April 1975, when the Khmer Rouge marched into Phnom Penh. Over the next four years, under the rule of Pol Pot, perhaps two million Cambodians died from execution, starvation and disease. The survivors scattered.
From the camps to the North Shore
After Vietnamese forces drove the Khmer Rouge from power in 1979, hundreds of thousands of Cambodians fled west into refugee camps along the Thai border. From those camps, sponsored by churches, charities and American families, they were resettled across the United States.
The Refugee Act of 1980 opened the door, and the federal Cambodian refugee programme would run until 1994, admitting roughly 150,000 people in all. A share of them found their way to greater Boston, and to Lynn.
Lynn offered what refugees needed most: housing they could afford. The collapse of the shoe and electrical industries had left the city poorer than its suburban neighbours, but it had also left rooms to rent and modest houses within reach of working families.
The temple comes first
As elsewhere in the Cambodian diaspora, faith arrived before almost anything else. In 1984 newly settled residents began raising money for a temple of their own, a place to anchor a community still grieving and still finding its feet.
In 1985 the group acquired a former church, the old Calvary Baptist on Chestnut Street, and set about converting it into a Theravada Buddhist temple. The choice of location was deliberate: the building stood in the middle of the city’s emerging Cambodian neighbourhood.
A temple needs monks, and the community in time bought a house across the street to serve as their residence. The presence of resident monks, and the cycle of ceremonies they kept, turned a converted church into a true centre of gravity that drew Cambodian families to settle nearby.
A community takes root
Through the eighties and nineties the numbers grew. More than two thousand Cambodian refugees and immigrants settled in Lynn across those two decades, and chain migration did the rest as relatives followed relatives to a city where they already had kin, a temple and familiar faces.
By the 2010 Census the count stood at 3,489 Cambodian-Americans in Lynn, part of a wider Asian-American population of 6,292, though community leaders have long argued that official figures undercount the true total. More recent estimates put the Cambodian community closer to 7,000 people, making Cambodians the largest Asian-origin group in the city.
That is enough to make Lynn the second-largest Cambodian community in Massachusetts, behind only Lowell, where some 35,000 people of Cambodian descent make up roughly a third of the population. The parallel between the two former mill cities is no accident, and the connection between them runs deep. Families with relatives in both places move easily between the larger and older community in Lowell’s Cambodian neighbourhoods and the tighter-knit one on the North Shore.
The pattern repeats wherever Cambodian refugees landed in numbers. On the opposite coast, the country’s largest Khmer community grew in California among the Cambodians of Long Beach, settled by the same wave of refugees and the same chain of sponsorship that brought families to the mill towns of Massachusetts.
From refugees to representatives
The clearest sign of the community’s coming of age arrived at the ballot box. In November 2011 Hong Net, a Cambodian refugee who had lived in Lynn for fourteen years, won an at-large seat on the city council, finishing fourth in an eight-way race for four positions.
His own journey traced the community’s. Born in Cambodia, he spent part of his childhood in a Khmer Rouge labour camp, fled to Thailand in 1979 as the regime fell, and after about three years in a refugee camp was sponsored by an American family to come to the United States.
Net was sworn in early in 2012, one of only a handful of Cambodian-Americans elected to public office anywhere in the country at the time. On election night roughly a hundred Cambodian-American supporters gathered at his campaign headquarters. “I want to unite the city,” he said. “There are some communities that still feel disconnected and isolated.”
The Landmarks
Sanghikaram Wat Khmer, 109-110 Chestnut Street. The spiritual heart of Cambodian Lynn, this Theravada temple occupies a former Baptist church the community acquired in 1985. Resident monks living in a house across the street officiate at the year’s great ceremonies, from the Buddha’s birthday to the autumn robe-offering, and at the spring New Year that draws families from across the North Shore.
Lynn Common. The long green spine of downtown becomes the stage each spring for the Khmer New Year Community Fair, organised by the Khmer Cultural Planning Committee. A parade of dancers in angel and traditional dress sets off in the morning, followed by a full day of food stalls, classical dance, music and a fashion show.
Mekong Market, 863 Western Avenue. A South-East Asian grocer stocked with the herbs, fish sauce, rice and fresh produce that Khmer cooking demands. For Cambodian households across Lynn it is a weekly fixture, the place to find ingredients that no chain supermarket carries.
Thmor Da, 38 Bennett Street. A small family-run storefront serving authentic Cambodian food, the kind of unpretentious kitchen where the cooking tastes of home. It sits among a cluster of Khmer restaurants that have made Lynn a destination for the cuisine.
The Kakrona Center. A Cambodian community organisation on the North Shore that, alongside the Cambodian Community of Massachusetts, helps residents navigate housing, services and cultural life. Such groups carry forward the mutual-aid tradition that helped the first refugees survive.
The New American Center. Established in 2002, this resettlement and support organisation has helped Cambodian and other refugee families with housing, employment and English-language classes, smoothing the path for newcomers arriving into an unfamiliar city.
Where They Came From
The Cambodians of Lynn did not come from a single province so much as from a single catastrophe. They are the survivors of the Khmer Rouge years and their children, drawn from villages and towns across Cambodia and funnelled together through the same border camps.
That shared history matters more than any regional origin. Many spent years in camps such as those along the Thai frontier before resettlement, and the bonds formed in flight often outlasted older village ties.
What they brought was Theravada Buddhism, the Khmer language, and a determination to preserve both in a new country. The temple on Chestnut Street and the New Year on Lynn Common are the visible results, deliberate acts of cultural survival by a people who had watched their homeland’s institutions destroyed.
Lynn Today
Lynn today is a working city still, more diverse than at any point in its history, with Cambodian, Latino, Dominican and other communities living alongside one another in its dense downtown neighbourhoods. The Cambodian presence is woven into the everyday: the grocers, the restaurants, the temple bells, the children who grew up bilingual.
The community faces the same pressures as immigrant Lynn generally, from rising housing costs to the long shadow of past deportation policies that have separated some Cambodian-American families. The first refugee generation is ageing, and the second and third generations are charting their own paths, some staying, some moving on.
Yet the institutions hold. The temple still keeps the calendar, the New Year still fills Lynn Common each spring, and the markets still stock lemongrass and prahok. Lynn is no longer the city that shod the world, but for thousands of Cambodian-Americans it has become something the old shoe barons never imagined: home.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many Cambodians live in Lynn, Massachusetts?
Estimates put the Cambodian community in Lynn at roughly 7,000 people, making Cambodians the largest Asian-origin group in the city. The 2010 Census counted 3,489 Cambodian-Americans, though community leaders believe official figures undercount the true number. Lynn has the second-largest Cambodian population in Massachusetts after Lowell.
Why did Cambodians settle in Lynn?
Cambodians came to Lynn as refugees fleeing the Khmer Rouge genocide, resettling there mainly in the 1980s and 1990s. The former Shoe City offered affordable housing after the collapse of its industries, along with refugee support services and, from 1985, a Buddhist temple that became a magnet for Khmer families.
Is there a Cambodian Buddhist temple in Lynn?
Yes. Sanghikaram Wat Khmer at 109-110 Chestnut Street is a Theravada Buddhist temple housed in a former Baptist church the community acquired in 1985. Resident monks officiate at ceremonies throughout the year, including the spring Cambodian New Year that draws families from across the North Shore.
When is the Khmer New Year celebrated in Lynn?
The Khmer New Year Community Fair is held on Lynn Common in the spring, organised by the Khmer Cultural Planning Committee. Cambodia traditionally observes the New Year on 13 to 15 April, but in the United States the celebration is usually held on a weekend, with a parade, dancing, food stalls and music.
Where can I find Cambodian food in Lynn?
Lynn has a cluster of Khmer restaurants and grocers serving the community. Thmor Da on Bennett Street is a well-regarded family-run spot for authentic Cambodian food, while Mekong Market on Western Avenue stocks the herbs, sauces and produce that Khmer home cooking requires.
Have Cambodians held office in Lynn?
Yes. Hong Net, a Cambodian refugee who survived a Khmer Rouge labour camp as a child, won an at-large seat on the Lynn City Council in November 2011 and was sworn in early in 2012. He was among the first Cambodian-Americans elected to public office in the United States.
If your family’s story passed through Lynn, or any of the places Cambodians have made home in America, Atlas of Home can trace that journey. From the refugee camps of the Thai border to the temple on Chestnut Street, to wherever you are now.