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Chinese workers standing in the streets.

The Long Shadow of the Chinese Exclusion Act

The true cost of the immigration policy can be measured in the generations of Chinese Americans who were never born.
by Jane C. Hu via The New Yorker on January 23, 2025
Photo of Wong Kim Ark and document about Chinese Exclusion.

History’s Lessons on Anti-Immigrant Extremism

Even Trump’s recent assertion that he would use executive action to abolish birthright citizenship has a historical link to the Chinese American experience.
by Michael Luo via The New Yorker on January 5, 2025
Chinese laborers engaged to work on the American Transcontinental Railroad system.

America's First Major Immigration Crackdown and the Making and Breaking of the West

Chinese immigrants sacrificed to create America's first transcontinental railroad. Its completion contributed to a backlash that led to immigration clampdown.
by Greg Rosalsky via NPR on November 19, 2024
Letter from Wong Gin Fu to Wong Kim

Sadness of the Paper Son: The Travails of Asian Immigration to the U.S.

Despite the Chinese Exclusion Act, about 300,000 Chinese gained admission to the U.S. between 1882 and 1943. How did they do it?
by Ryan Reft via Tropics of Meta on October 3, 2024
Chinese immigrants and American immigration officers at Ellis Island.
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The Perils of Vilifying Chinese Migrants

As Chinese migrants arrive at the U.S.-Mexico border, politicians are reviving old anti-Chinese rhetoric that has done lasting harm.
by Meredith Oyen via Made By History on August 13, 2024
Wong Gin Foo to Wong Kim (in Chinese), March 31, 1930.

Paper Sons in the Era of Immigration Restriction

Chinese immigration and the Immigration Act of 1924.
by Ryan Reft via Library of Congress Blog on May 23, 2024
Photo of a young Chinese worker carrying tea.

Inside the Diet That Fueled Chinese Transcontinental Railroad Workers

Denied the free meals of their Irish counterparts, Chinese laborers learned to thrive on their own.
by Shoshi Parks via Atlas Obscura on November 30, 2022
Vintage stereogram of Chinatown, San Francisco, ca. 1920s-30s.

How a California Archive Reconnected a New Mexico Family with its Chinese Roots

Aimee Towi Mae Tang’s Chinese American family never talked about the past. She decided to change that.
by Wufei Yu via High Country News on April 1, 2022
Victor Duhem, Woo Dunn and two other men (1910), posed in a portrait studio as if they were driving a car.

The Photos Left Behind From the Chinese Exclusion Era

The California Historical Society contrasts how Chinese people were portrayed in the press with the dignified studio portraits taken in Chinatown.
by Emily Wilson via Hyperallergic on March 13, 2022
Photograph of Chinese man in Sierra County with his name and description next to him.

The Dark Purpose Behind a Town Constable’s Journal

Why did a local official, at the turn of the twentieth century, maintain a ledger tracking Chinese residents?
by Michael Luo via The New Yorker on January 28, 2022
Harvesting on a Louisiana sugar plantation, 1875; an overseer monitors laborers in the field, while a factory billows smoke in the background.

Making Sugar, Making ‘Coolies’

Chinese laborers toiled alongside Black workers on 19th-century Louisiana plantations.
by Moon-Ho Jung via The Conversation on January 13, 2022
Tarred as a “coolie race,” the Chinese were cast as a threat to free white labor. Train with fire around it and a face in the back.

America Was Eager for Chinese Immigrants. What Happened?

In the gold-rush era, ceremonial greetings swiftly gave way to bigotry and violence.
by Michael Luo via The New Yorker on August 20, 2021

How Chop Suey Saved San Francisco's Chinatown

For Chinese immigrants, surviving in America has always required intense strategy.
by Sarah Nasr via AJ+ on August 15, 2017
A racially diverse group of children saying the Pledge of Allegiance while one holds an American flag.

Who Gets to Be an American?

Since the earliest days of the Republic, American citizenship has been contested, subject to the anti-democratic impulses of racism, suspicion, and paranoia.
by Michael Luo via The New Yorker on May 20, 2025
Collage of Chinese laborers.

When an American Town Massacred Its Chinese Immigrants

In 1885, white rioters murdered dozens of their Asian neighbors in Rock Springs, Wyoming. 140 years later, the story of the atrocity is still being unearthed.
by Michael Luo via The New Yorker on March 3, 2025
Senator John Conness.

This Dead California Senator Can Save Birthright Citizenship

In the 19th century, John Conness defended the 14th Amendment and shut down proto-Trumpians.
by Joe Mathews via Zócalo Public Square on February 11, 2025
Peeling paint.

On “White Slavery” and the Roots of the Contemporary Sex Trafficking Panic

The ruling class used false claims about white women’s sexual virtue to regulate sexuality. But the “white slavery” panic was also about race, class and labor.
by Chanelle Gallant, Elene Lam via Literary Hub on December 12, 2024
Communist Party USA members march for unemployed relief during the Great Depression in San Francisco.

Bring American Communists Out of the Shadows — and Closets

In the 20th century, American Communists were seen as an enemy within. In reality, they were ordinary people with complex lives that deserve to be chronicled.
by David Bacon via Jacobin on August 15, 2024
Tiburcio Parrott sitting holding cane

Birth of the Corporate Person

The defining of corporations as legal “persons” entitled to Fourteenth Amendment rights got a leg up from the fight over a California anti-Chinese immigrant law.
by Evelyn Atkinson, Matthew Wills via JSTOR Daily on March 16, 2024
Martial arts fighting scene from Warrior.

Bruce Lee’s “Warrior,” and the Politics of Kung Fu

The Max series makes a radical argument for what constitutes American history.
by Jasper Lo via The New Yorker on September 12, 2023
Wong Kim Ark's departure statement overlayed with his portrait.

How the Fight for Birthright Citizenship Shaped the History of Asian American Families

Even after Wong Kim Ark successfully took his case to the Supreme Court 125 years ago, Asian Americans struggled to receive recognition as U.S. citizens.
by Hardeep Dhillon via Smithsonian on March 27, 2023
Roger Taney.

On “Mobility and Sovereignty: The Nineteenth-Century Origins of Immigration Restriction”

Examining slavery, Indian removal, and state policies regulating mobility to trace the constitutional origins of immigration restriction in the 1800s.
by Kevin Kenny via Process: A Blog for American History on February 28, 2023
A phot taken by Corkey Lee of an Asian woman dressed as the Statue of Liberty in front of a diamond store with a Statue of Liberty mural.

Corky Lee and the Work of Seeing

Lee's life and work suggested that Asian American identity did not possess—and did not need—any underlying reality beyond solidarity.
by Ken Chen via n+1 on January 25, 2023
Picture of The Pekin Noodle Parlor, America's first Chinese restaurant.

The First Chinese Restaurant in America Has a Savory—and Unsavory—History

Venture into the Montana eatery, once a gambling den and opium repository, that still draws a crowd.
by Richard Grant, Sonya Maynard via Smithsonian on August 23, 2022
A picture of the author as a teenager with his parents, in his bedroom decorated with rock music posters.

My Dad and Kurt Cobain

When my father moved to Taiwan, a fax machine and a shared love of music bridged an ocean.
by Hua Hsu via The New Yorker on August 15, 2022
Black and white photo of San Francisco's chinatown in 1960s.

“Making It” in America: Vanessa Hua Addresses the Myth of the Model Minority

My Chinese-immigrant parents dreamed big for me, their American-born daughter whom they raised in the suburbs east of San Francisco.
by Vanessa Hua via Literary Hub on August 8, 2022
Book cover of "The Chinese Question The Gold Rushes and Global Politics"

Who Digs the Mines?

A new book recognizes the global character of Asian exclusion.
by Andrew Liu via London Review of Books on July 13, 2022
Records of mass anti-Asian violence.

Remembering a Victim of an Anti-Asian Attack, 150 Years Later

Gene Tong, a popular herbal-medicine doctor in Los Angeles, was hanged by a mob during one of the worst mass lynchings in American history.
by Michael Luo via The New Yorker on May 11, 2022
Flowers and signs laid out at a makeshift memorial for the March 19th Georgia shooting.
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Teaching Asian American History in its Complexity Can Help Fight Racism

Asian Americans have been both the victims and perpetrators of racial discrimination.
by Kathryn Gin Lum via Made By History on March 15, 2022
Falling apart neon sign for Lotus Chop Suey, a restaurant in Chicago

The Hidden, Magnificent History of Chop Suey

Discrimination and mistranslation have long obscured the dish's true origins.
by Miranda Brown via Atlas Obscura on November 30, 2021
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