“Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future, and renders the present inaccessible.” – Maya Angelou
“As long as there is racial privilege, racism will never end.” – Wayne
Gerard Trotman
“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” James Baldwin
“Ours is not the struggle of one day, one week, or one year. Ours is not the struggle of one judicial
appointment or presidential term. Ours is the struggle of a lifetime, or maybe even many lifetimes,
and each one of us in every generation must do our part.” – John Lewis
COLUMBIA versus COLUMBUS
• 90% of the 14,000 workers on the Central Pacific were Chinese
• By 1880 over 100,000
Chinese residents in the US
YELLOW PERIL
https://iexaminer.org/yellow-peril-documents-historical-manifestations-of-oriental-phobia/
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/14/us/california-today-chinese-railroad-workers.html
BACKGROUND FOR USA IMMIGRATION POLICIES
• 1790 – Nationality and Citizenship
• 1803 – No Immigration of any FREE “Negro, mulatto, or other persons of color”
• 1848 – If we annex your territory and you remain living on it, you are a citizen • 1849 – Legislate and enforce immigration is a FEDERAL Power, not State or Local • 1854 – Negroes, Native Americans, and now Chinese may not testify against whites
GERMAN IMMIGRATION
https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/FT_15.09.28_ImmigationMapsGIF.gif?w=640
TO LINCOLN’S CREDIT
CIVIL WAR IMMIGRATION POLICIES
• 1862 – CIVIL WAR LEGISLATION ABOUT IMMIGRATION
• Message to Congress December 8, 1863
• 1864 – INDENTURED SERVITUDE
REPUBLICAN PARTY PLATFORM 1864
“That foreign immigration, which in the past has
added so much to the wealth, development of resources, and increase of nations, should be
fostered and encouraged by a liberal and just policy.”
https://www.lincolncottage.org/lincolns-forgotten-act-to-encourage-immigration/
NEW WAVES OF IMMIGRATION and
IMMIGRATION POLICY
• During the 1870’s every Midwest state had an Immigration Board
• The South welcomed immigrants who were “pure of white, Protestant society.”
• 1866 is the founding of the KKK
IMMIGRATION POLICIES DURING THE BUILDING OF THE TRANSCONTINENTAL RAILROAD
• 1868 Burlingame Treaty
• 1870 The Naturalization Act
How soon we forget…
ANTI-CHINESE SENTIMENTS GROW IN AMERICA
• 1875 PAGE LAW • 1875 CHY LUNG VS FREEMAN • 1880 ANGELL TREATY
“The Chinese are inferior to any race God ever made. …These people have got the perfection of crimes of 4,000
years. ...I believe the Chinese have no souls to save, and if
they have, they are not worth saving.
Denis Kearney