UNIT 2 Exclusion and Citizenship MATERIALS
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UNIT 2 Exclusion and Citizenship MATERIALS: • Historical Narrative • e-Comic • Poster • Angel Island Poetry • Audio clip • Assignments & Activities Historical Narrative EXCLUSION ACTS By the latter half of the 1800s, growing numbers of Asians In 1875, Congress passed the Page Act, effectively barring in America—laborers, merchants, shopkeepers, fishermen— female Asians from entering the U.S. Of the 39,579 Chinese banded together in close communities. San Francisco’s who legally entered the country in 1882, only 136 were Chinatown was the primary gateway for Chinese immigrants, women—a reality that kept many Chinese immigrants from boasting a population of about 14,000 in 1882. But fear forming families. continued to haunt Chinese immigrants. The 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, the only U.S. immigration law to ban a people In 1885 in Eureka, California, hundreds of Chinese men by race, banned Chinese from entering and re-entering the and women were rounded up at gun point, marched to the country. wharves, and loaded on to ships for San Francisco. Swift and brutal purges from the 300 Chinatowns across the Migrants from other Asian countries briefly filled the void of Pacific Northwest led to the Chinese filing the first lawsuits cheap labor. In 1924, when the Asian Exclusion Act halted all for reparations, ultimately winning more than half a million immigration from Asia, thousands lived in Chinese, Japanese, dollars from local communities and the federal government. and Filipino enclaves in California. Living conditions were often cramped and squalid, and inhabitants were vulnerable Early immigrants recognized the danger of “sojourner” or to exploitation or assault by outsiders. permanent foreigner status. They began pushing back in the press and through the courts. The 1943 Magnuson Act Between 1850 and 1906 the Chinese were driven out of over repealed nearly seven decades of exclusionary legislation 350 towns across the Pacific Northwest. Faced with violence, against Asians in America. discrimination, and new laws prohibiting them from many jobs on the West Coast, some Chinese immigrants moved to East Coast cities like New York. By 1870, the U.S. Census counted over 63,000 Asians in America, most of them Chinese living in California, where they comprised over 11 percent of the state’s total population. Yet “Asian in America” was not the same as “Asian American”: there was no clear path to citizenship for Asian and Pacific Islander immigrants. Only “free white persons and persons of African descent” could become naturalized citizens. The Geary Act of 1892 required that all 110,000 Chinese immigrants in the U.S. carry a photo-identity card—the first internal passport in the country. Fung Dao, pictured here, worked in the woolen mills in San Jose, California. Credit: National Archives and Records Administration PAGE 1 OF 3 UNIT 2 Exclusion and Citizenship Historical Narrative WONG KIM ARK In 1894, on his way home from a brief visit to China, 21-year-old, California-born Wong Kim Ark was denied entry to the U.S. under the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. He claimed the right to return based on his status as a native-born citizen of the United States and took his fight all the way to the highest court in the land. In 1898, in a landmark decision, the Supreme Court decided in Wong’s favor, ruling that the Constitution clearly states that anyone born in the United States, even a child of undocumented parents, is a citizen. Over the decades, this decision has become one of the most critical in our nation’s history in affirming an expansive definition of what it means to be a U.S. citizen. Shortly afterward, in 1920, an American court approved the citizenship of Bhagat Singh Thind, an Indian Sikh immigrant who had served in the U.S. Army during World War I. But in 1923, the Supreme Court declared Thind ineligible: though “Caucasian,” he did not belong to “the various groups of persons in this country commonly recognized as white.” ENTRY AND DETENTION The 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, a U.S. law that suspended Chinese In the wake of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, immigration immigration, was intended to last 10 years. Yet it was rewritten every from China effectively came to a halt. decade and only repealed by the 1943 Magnuson Act when China, our ally during World War II, objected. Credit: National Archives and Records Administration Then, in 1906, the devastating San Francisco earthquake and fire destroyed years of public records. This destruction opened an unusual window for Chinese to immigrate. With all documentation burnt or buried, some born in China claimed to have been born in San Francisco. As American citizens, their foreign-born children were automatically eligible for citizenship. In subsequent trips to China, fathers returned to the United States and reported the birth of additional offspring—usually male—who came to be known as “paper sons.” Exploiting this loophole proved harsh. Suspicious authorities detained Chinese immigrants, both legal and illegal, at the Angel Island detention center on an island in San Francisco Bay. There the immigrants endured months or even years of harsh interrogation in an effort to expose them as frauds. More than 30 Chinese women and children detained on Angel Island waiting for their interrogation. Credit: California Historical Society percent of detainees were sent back to China. PAGE 2 OF 3 UNIT 2 Exclusion and Citizenship Assignments & Activities POSTER e-COMIC 1. What elements of the poster stand out to you? 1. What stands out about the page on exclusion and citizenship? 2. What kinds of Asian exclusions, legal and otherwise, took place in the late 1800s and early 1900s? 2. Do the panels tell the same stories we find on the poster? How is the comic book page like the poster? How is it 3. How did legal exclusions affect Asian immigrants? How different? did Asian immigrants fight for belonging and citizenship? 3. If you were creating your own comic book page on the 4. How does the poster use image and narrative to tell a theme of citizenship today, how would you craft it? What story? To represent culture and community? images would you use? What stories? What does it mean 5. How does this cultural/historical material relate to your for Asian Pacific Americans to be American citizens own community and family? today? Where would you fit yourself into this page? Plan and draw a single-page comic. 6. Why is this cultural/historical material important? HISTORICAL NARRATIVE ANGEL ISLAND POETRY Visit this webpage: 1. What do you see as key themes or topics? http://www.kqed.org/w/pacificlink/history/angelisland/ 2. Draw some connections between the different sections, poetry between Exclusions Acts, Wong Kim Ark, and Entry and 1. Choose a particular poem from the site. Read it aloud Detention. What do these histories have in common? to the group. Pick a particular line or even word from What people, places, or themes do they share? the poem: what does it seem to suggest about the 3. Pick one of the sections outlined in the narrative and do experience of those detained at Angel Island? some additional research online. What new information 2. How do the poems add to or change what we know can you find about these key moments in Asian Pacific about the experience from the historical narrative section American history? Give a short oral report of your on entry and detention? findings to your group. AUDIO CLIP Historian Jean Pfaelzer discusses Chinese American round ups and women’s stories. 1. What does this audio clip add to what we know about Asian exclusion from the poster? 2. Based on Dr. Pfaelzer’s clip, compare the stories of Asian Pacific American women to those of Asian Pacific American men. How are they similar? How are they different? PAGE 3 OF 3.