FIGHTING FOR CIVIL RIGHTS IN THE SHADOW OF THE CHINESE EXCLUSION ACT
REMEMBERING 1882: FIGHTING FOR CIVIL RIGHTS IN THE SHADOW OF THE CHINESE EXCLUSION ACT CHINESE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA
“Look at Home: The
American Minister
has been instructed
to intercede in behalf
of the persecuted
Jews in Russia.”
Puck, May 17, 1882
(CHSA,Connie Young
Yu Collection)

ii R E M E M B E R I N G 1 8 8 2
In 1882Congress
passeD the nation’s
firstimmigration
legislation – a law
to prevent people
of Chinese descent
from entering the
United States.
FIGHTING FOR CIVIL RIGHTS IN THE SHADOW OF THE CHINESE EXCLUSION ACT 
The law WOULD tear
apart families, cut
the nation’s Chinese
American population
in half, and remove
Chineseimmigrants’
righttobecomeU.S.
citizens.
 REMEMBERING 1882
When many in California are protesting
unemployment, environmental devas-
tation, railroad monopolies, machines
replacing jobs, low wages, and increas-
ingly longer workdays, Governor George
C. Perkins, a large scale hydraulic miner,
land speculator, and owner of railroads,
shipping lines, and whaling operations,
declares Saturday, March 4, 1882, a
legal holiday to allow “one universal
demonstration” in support of the Chinese
Exclusion Act. Saturdays remain part of
the standard, six-day work week for de-
cades to come.

Remembering
1882
explores the historical debate
around the Exclusion Act from its
origins through its full repeal in
1968, the civil rights struggle of
Chinese Americans and allies, and the historic importance
of habeas corpus in the Chinese American community.
The Remembering 1882 project joins CHSA’s ongoing
work to celebrate the long-term positive impact of
Chinese immigration on California’s economic, social and
cultural status; honor the vigilance of those who fought
tirelessly against Exclusion while upholding democracy
for Chinese and other disenfranchised communities; and
examine the complex issues and conflicting interests
surrounding the Exclusion of people of Chinese descent.

FIGHTING FOR CIVIL RIGHTS IN THE SHADOW OF THE CHINESE EXCLUSION ACT 
Up Against
The Law

T
by Connie Young Yu
he huge convention of three thousand distin-
guished delegates had gathered in the Metro-
politan Temple of San Francisco at the invita-
tion of the Board of Supervisors of the city.
There were mayors from cities and towns
throughout the state, Congressmen, labor
and civic leaders, prominent businessmen
and clergymen. The governors of Montana, Oregon, Wash-
ington, Nevada, and California sent telegrams of support.
The Honorable James D. Phelan, Mayor of San Francisco,
announced to the convention that the Chinese population
of the state, “due to the beneficent efforts of exclusion,”
had fallen from 75,000 in the year 1890 to 45,000 in 1900.
He received applause and cheers from the audience. »

 REMEMBERING 1882
 This was the Chinese Exclusion Convention of 1901, a body of
men which, in the estimation of Mayor M. P. Snyder of Los An-
geles, was the most impressive he had ever faced. It was, he said,
“of one mind,” the exclusion of Chinese: “for country, home and
civilization.”[1]
Former Congressman Thomas J. Geary, introduced as “the
framer of the great Chinese Exclusion Act,” was received with re-
sounding applause and launched eloquently into the evils of Asi-
atic immigration. His legislative act, authored in 1892, ten years
after the first Chinese Exclusion Act, required all Chinese in the
United States to register and obtain a certificate of eligibility to
remain in the United States. It further extended all bills in force
against the Chinese for an additional ten years. D. E. McKinlay,
a delegate from the United States Attorney’s office, advocated
strengthening the Geary law to close all loopholes, declaring that
“every crack and cranny of the law has been probed by skillful
lawyers in the pay of the Chinese to widen, if possible, the aper-
ture so that a Chinaman might crawl through; every link in the
chain which guarded us has been tested and strained to the ut-
most in the hope that one link would break. . . .”[2]
The Rev. William Rader gave a blazing speech on the effect of
Chinese immigration on public morals. As other delegates af-
firmed before him, he made the point that the attitude of the
convention was not one of race prejudice; after all, they opposed
Negro slavery in the South (“We have fought for the blacks”).
Rather, he declared, “The issue is that of American civilization
as against the venerable paganism of China. . . .” Also, orated the
reverend: “The class of coolies which make up the rank and file
of the Chinese in California, who come without wives or wealth,
who interfere with American workingmen on the one hand and
affect public morals on the other, should have the door of the na-
tion closed tight against them and locked with a Geary key!” [3]
Congressman Wood responded appreciatively to repeated cheers
and applause for his strong exclusionist stand: “That is the way to do
it, boys. That is the kind of spirit that the boys had at Manila when
George Dewey sank the whole Spanish fleet. (Applause) That is the
spirit of the Anglo-Saxon, that, under God Almighty, has made the
American flag supreme on one side of the world.”[4]
The scores of grand, patriotic speeches repeated over and over
the danger of the invasion by Mongolian hordes, the great destiny

FIGHTING FOR CIVIL RIGHTS IN THE SHADOW OF THE CHINESE EXCLUSION ACT 
of America, the love for California (bravely fighting the effete
snobs of the liberal Eastern establishment who would rob the
Western working man of his pursuit of happiness) and the won-
derful mixture in this melting pot of European countries.
The spirit of this gathering of the Golden State’s most illustrious
leaders had its origins in the rough mining camps a half century ear-
lier when the fathers of many of these delegates, like the Chinese, ap-
peared in California with neither wives nor plans for settling down.
They had come for the purpose of finding gold as quickly as possible.
Those were the days when California was, in the words of a Chinese
observer, “a cesspool for all the elements of the world”:

Fighting and quarreling were the daily amuse-

ments of the early Californians. The condition
of affairs was then like a boiler overloaded with
steam, which seeks for the weakest part of the cyl-
inder to escape. The unfortunate Mongolians were
the weakest element. [5]

When California was admitted as the thirty-first state in 1850,

fifty Chinese merchants were invited to participate in the inaugural
ceremonies. But when in 1852 20,000 Chinese arrived and most
of them appeared in the California mines, encroaching on “white
man’s territory,” many mining districts forcibly expelled them. The
legislature of the “settlers,” who had lost no time in diminishing the
indigenous Californians in numbers and spirit, passed during its
first year of statehood a pioneer anti-Chinese law. It required all
foreign miners to pay a tax of twenty dollars a month.
When the exorbitant tax of 1850 succeeded in driving the
Chinese out of the mines without enriching the State’s depleted
treasury, the law was repealed and re-enacted the next year
with the tax set at $3 a month. In 1852 the tax was raised to $4 a
month. For the Foreign Mining Tax Collector, the law was license
to plunder: he would keep a portion of all taxes collected and
was free to seize and sell the property of or even whip those who
could not pay. The situation gave rise to bogus tax collectors who
roamed through the mining districts with arms and counterfeit
receipts. Mark Twain commented on the situation of the Chinese
miner in Roughing It:

 REMEMBERING 1882
 In California he gets a living out of old min-
ing claims that white men have abandoned as
exhausted and worthless—and then the officers
come down on him twice a month with an exorbi-
tant swindle to which the legislature has given the
broad general name of “foreign” mining tax, but is
usually inflicted on no foreigners but Chinamen.
The swindle has in some cases been repeated once
or twice on the same victim in the course of the
same month—but the public treasury was not ad-
ditionally enriched by it, probably.

In 1855 a new law increased the

mining tax for “foreigners” by two dollars per month every year.
The Alta California, the first weekly journal in California, noted
the increase in numbers of Chinese boarding ships for China af-
ter the passage of this law.[6]

. . . it is apparent that under this law it will be

impossible for the Chinamen to pay their taxes
and make a living in the mines much longer. We
may, therefore, expect to see this class of our popu-
lation diminish rather than increase hereafter. [7]

Although the tax was set again at $4 in 1856, the effect of this
discriminatory legislation was decreased Chinese immigration
and labor adjustments by the Chinese who remained. Discouraged
miners who could not afford passage home went to work in the ag-
ricultural counties or to perform menial tasks in towns and cities.
There was no way the Chinese could stop the tide of open violence
and discriminatory legislation. The brutality they confronted in
the gold fields had discouraged them from competing openly with
white men, and they became gap-fillers, willing to work at anything
to survive and for the survival of their families in China who de-

FIGHTING FOR CIVIL RIGHTS IN THE SHADOW OF THE CHINESE EXCLUSION ACT 
California’s Auburn Ravine, 1852 (CHSA, Daniel K. E. Ching Collection, CHSA-04490)

pended on the earnings they sent home. Doing laundry, cooking,

laboring in swamps and fields, they appeared humble and incon-
spicuous, useful, ready-to-please, avoiding any excuse for the white
population to annihilate them or run them off. Incidents such as
these were common in the early history of the Chinese in America:

An American yesterday attacked a Chinaman on

Dupont Street, beating him shamefully. The China-
men in the neighborhood were afraid to interfere and
the Americans, of whom there was a large crowd,
stood by and saw the poor Chinaman abused. The
assailant held the unfortunate Celestial by the queue
and kicked and beat him until he was tired, and when
the poor fellow got loose and was going off a policeman
came up, saw by his bloody face that he had been in a
fight and arrested him. [8]

In 1854 when a white man, George Hall, was convicted of murder

upon the testimony of Chinese witnesses, the judge reversed the ver-
dict, referring to the Criminal Act of April 16, 1850, which provided

 REMEMBERING 1882
that “No Black, or Mulatto person, or Indian, shall be allowed to give
evidence in favor of, or against a white man.” [9] The court reasoned
that the Chinese were in the same category as Indians, on the basis
of the fact that when Columbus discovered America, he called the
natives Indians because he thought he was on the shores of Asia.
“From that time on,” declared Judge Charles J. Murray, “down to a
very recent period, the American Indian and the Mongolian, or Asi-
atic, were regarded as the same type of the human species.” The pe-
dantic opinion of the court, filled with ethnological garble, revealed
its true intention with this conclusion: “The same rule which would
admit them to testify would admit them to all the equal rights of
citizenship, and we might soon see them at the polls, in the jury box,
upon the bench and in our legislative halls.” [10]
Through this ruling, which stood for two decades, private vio-
lence against the Chinese in California was encouraged. Whites
were able to rob, assault and slaughter Chinese with relative im-
punity. Protest by the Chinese could only take the form of man-
nerly appeal, such as the open letter to the people of California,
signed by twenty-seven Chinese merchants, which states that:

Instead of the equality and protection which

seemed to be promised by the laws of a great nation
. . . we find only inequality and oppression. Op-
pression by the law, which subjects us to exorbitant
taxes imposed upon us exclusively—oppression
without the pale of the law, which refuses us its pro-
tection and leaves us prey to vexations and humili-
ations which it seems to invoke upon our heads by
placing us in an exceptional position. [11]

The Chinese had no recourse if they decided on staying in

America but to endure the victimizing rulings of the court and
the harrassment which accompanied them. The humiliating legal
harrassments suffered by the Chinese were not objected to by the
populace who observed such conditions with curiosity, if at all.
B. E. Lloyd, writing his impression of the Chinese in 1876, makes
this colorful comment:

The Chinaman is ever under the vigilant eye of the

tax-gatherer. He is met on the street corner by the

FIGHTING FOR CIVIL RIGHTS IN THE SHADOW OF THE CHINESE EXCLUSION ACT 
 poll-tax collector, who calls out in a commanding
voice, “John you give me two dollars, and I give you
receipt”—or “John, you show me receipt.” If he has not
yet paid his tax, John soon produces the two dollars,
and after receiving a receipt folds it up neatly and
places it in some mysterious receptacle or pocket and
the next time he is called upon by the collector—no
matter if it be in the mines of Nevada—that identical
receipt will be produced as proof that he has paid his
tithe. Again that voice is heard at the ferry-slips, as
John is hurrying aboard the boat, starting on a jour-
ney to the interior in search of a job—“John, you got
receipt?” and straightway to that hidden pocket go
the nimble fingers of John Chinaman, and the receipt
is brought forth. As he is stepping aboard the eastern
bound train, across the bay, his blanket in one hand
and bag of provisions in the other, that ever-present
voice is again heard—“John, le’ me see receipt;” and
the receipt is again produced. So persistent are the
collectors, that John seldom escapes, and if he be so
unfortunate as to lose his receipt, he will be com-
pelled to replenish the public treasury by a second
payment. [12]

Ridiculed for their appearance, language, customs and clan-

nishness, the Chinese were rejected in all their efforts to assimi-
late. In 1859 the California Superintendent of Education asked
that state school funds be withheld from schools which enrolled
Chinese. In March 1866, the law was changed to permit Chinese
to attend public schools if the parents of white children did not
object. In the case Mamie Tape v. Jennie M. A. Hurley, a Chinese
won his case to send his daughter to public school in 1884. A sep-
arate school was then established in San Francisco’s Chinatown
by the Board of Education [13] and Chinese were not allowed to
attend other public schools in the city. After the turn of the cen-
tury legal segregation of Asians and whites ended on the West
Coast, although de facto segregation remained. Discrimination
continued for Chinese children in the South in the 1930s. In the
Chinese Digest of June 1937, the plans were announced for an all-
Chinese school in the Delta region of Mississippi.

10 REMEMBERING 1882
 Joe Hing Lett, a young prominent store owner
here, succinctly explained the urgent need of a
Chinese school in the following words: Mississippi
is the only state in the Union in which the law is
so worded that in the operation of schools Chinese
children are discriminated against. In only a very
few communities are they allowed to attend the
white schools! [13]

Chinese who petitioned the courts for naturalization as citizens

were refused on the basis of the first naturalization law of 1790, mak-
ing such a privilege available only to “any alien being a free white per-
son.” After the Civil War, when naturalization was extended to those of
African nativity and African descent, Chinese petitioners were refused
on the basis that they were neither “free white persons” nor black.
In the 1860s the Chinese frequently took their grievances to
the courts, testing the legality of discriminatory laws. In 1862 Lin
Sing, a Chinese resident of San Francisco, brought action to the
Supreme Court of California (Lin Sing v. Washburn) to recover
the sum of five dollars, being two months of the “police tax” (a
poll tax for aliens) imposed upon him by the state of California.
Lin Sing won his case, but the Attorney General of California,
the great anti-Chinese orator Frank M. Pixley, delivered a strong
exclusionist speech “on the grounds of self-interest and self-pres-
ervation against this inundation of barbarism.”

The Anglo-Saxon race will carve out its own des-

tiny, in its own way, on the continent where Provi-
dence has placed it, will make its own laws, mould
its own character, choose its domestic associates
and will claim to exercise the privilege of deter-
mining, among its incidental privileges, how much
money a Mongolian, or Chinese shall pay each
month for the protection of our State Government
and for the privilege of conducting their avocations
within its jurisdiction. [14]

The Alien Poll Tax law was again enacted by the California Leg-
islature during the session of 1921, requiring alien registration
and a tax of $10 a year for every alien male inhabitant over 21 and

FIGHTING FOR CIVIL RIGHTS IN THE SHADOW OF THE CHINESE EXCLUSION ACT 11
under sixty. A Japanese, Heikichi Terui, was arrested for refusing
to pay the tax. His lawyer, using Lin Sing v. Washburn as a prec-
edent, pointed out that the poll tax of 1862 was declared uncon-
stitutional even before the passage of the 14th Amendment. The
Twentieth Century Alien Poll Tax Law was thereby also declared
unconstitutional.
Refused housing in other areas of the city, the Chinese were
forced to live in crowded buildings and squalid enclaves of China-
towns. In San Francisco in 1873 the police authorities harrassed
the Chinese by activating a city and country ordinance regulating
lodging houses, requiring 500 cubic feet of space for each occu-
pant. In their first raid on Chinatown the police hauled fifty-one
lodgers out of a basement on Jackson Street. The violators of the
ordinance were fined, but they were advised by their lawyers not
to pay to try to render the law impossible to enforce. The San
Francisco Bulletin of May 22, 1873, reports:

There was a good deal of dificulty in enforc-

ing this ordinance on account of the number of
Chinese who violated it, and their ommission to
pay the fines imposed. They were arrested in great
numbers, and packed in cells where they had
not 100 cubic feet of air to the person. They over-
crowded the jails, and it was thought necessary by
the authorities of the city to adopt a policy which
would compel the Chinese to pay their fines.

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors met to create new,

more oppressive measures to force the Chinese to pay their fines.
The new rulings were:

1. Each and every male prisoner shall have the

hair of his head cut to an inch of his scalp.

2. No person or persons shall remove any remains

from any cemetery without a permit.

3. Laundries “who employ no vehicle drawn by

animal power” shall pay $15 a quarter for their
licenses. [15]

12 R E M E M B E R I N G 1 8 8 2
 The word “Chinese” was not used, but the rules were obviously
contrived with the Chinese in mind: cutting off a queue would
shame a Chinese deeply, forbidding the sending of his brethren’s
remains to his native village in China would frustrate him, taxing
his meagre laundry business (he delivered his wash on foot) would
impoverish him. Although Mayor William Alvord of San Francisco
vetoed the queue and laundry ordinances, the laundry ordinance
was enacted over his veto and drove hundreds of Chinese laundries
out of business. The queue ordinance was enacted under the suc-
ceeding Mayor Bryant. Such experiences with American justice
instilled in the Chinese an enduring distrust of white man’s law
which was repeatedly altered and used as a weapon against them.
In the case of the People v. Soon Kung in the County Court of
San Francisco, July 9, 1874, the laundry ordinance was declared
invalid on the ground that it was unequal in its operation. Two
years later the supervisors passed another laundry ordinance
which was tested and declared void. In 1880 an even more severe
measure against Chinese laundries was enacted in San Francisco,
making it illegal to carry on a laundry business in buildings not
made of brick or stone. Scores of Chinese were arrested, but
white laundry owners who operated in wooden buildings were
left alone. A laundryman, Yick Wo, was tried, found guilty and
fined $1000. His case was carried to the Federal Supreme Court,
which reversed the decision on the basis of the 14th Amendment,
but only after many Chinese were driven out of business.
During the economic depression in the latter part of the 19th
century, there was no occupation other than that of a domestic
servant in which Chinese were safe, legally or otherwise. Chinese
vegetable and fish peddlers were attacked by an ordinance forbid-
ding persons from carrying goods in baskets suspended from a
pole, and this measure was upheld by the State Supreme Court.
Various measures threatened the Chinese in fishing industries,
such as regulating the size of nets and preventing the importa-
tion of dried fish and shrimps. In some cases higher courts threw
out discriminatory laws. A law forbidding “aliens ineligible for
citizenship” from fishing in the waters of California was declared
unconstitutional. [16] An attempt to confine the Chinese to
the ghetto by passing an ordinance forbidding them to live or
do business in other areas was declared a violation of the 14th
Amendment and the Burlingame Treaty with China. [17]

FIGHTING FOR CIVIL RIGHTS IN THE SHADOW OF THE CHINESE EXCLUSION ACT 13
 In 1879 Ho Ah Kow, found lodging in crowded quarters with
much less than 500 cubic feet of space to himself, was convicted
and sentenced to pay a fine of ten dollars. He refused and was im-
prisoned for five days, during which time Sheriff Matthew Nunan
cut off his queue, under the auspices of the hair-cutting ordinance
of June 1876. The Judge, Steven J. Field, declared that this law was
a violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1870, the 14th Amendment
and the Burlingame Treaty:

The ordinance is known in the community as the

‘Queue Ordinance’ being so designated from its
purpose to reach the queues of the Chinese, and it
is not enforced against any other persons. The rea-
son advanced for its adoption, and now urged for
its continuance is, that only the dread of the loss of
his queue will induce a Chinaman to pay his fine.
That is to say, in order to enforce the payment of a
fine imposed upon him it is necessary that torture
should be superadded to imprisonment. [18]

The judge warned that “hostile and spiteful” legislation by the

city and state could not discourage immigration, which is deter-
mined by the federal government.
But in an attempt precisely aimed at discouraging immigration
the Second California State Constitutional Convention in 1878
adopted a four-section anti-Chinese article: 1) The legislature is
authorized to enact necessary measures to protect the state from
aliens who are dangerous and detrimental; 2) No corporation
may employ directly or indirectly any Chinese or Mongolians; 3)
No Chinese shall be employed on any state, county, municipal,
or other public work; 4) The presence of foreigners “ineligible to
become citizens” is dangerous to the well-being of the State and
the Legislature shall discourage such immigration by all means
within its power. [19]
In 1880 the Legislature passed “an act to amend the Penal
Code” making any officer or clerk of any corporation who hired
any Chinese or Mongolian guilty of a misdemeanor, punishable
by fine or imprisonment. The President of the Sulphur Bank
Quicksilver Mining Corporation, which employed a large num-
ber of Chinese, was arrested for violating the Constitution of

14 REMEMBERING 1882
California. He asked to be discharged on the grounds that the
provisions of the Constitution were passed in violation of the
Burlingame Treaty and the 14th Amendment, and he won his
case. [20] The anti-Chinese articles of the California Constitu-
tion were declared void.
Although the courts in the 1870s established that the Chinese
had constitutional rights, there was no effective way to protect
them from public and private violence. When Chinese landed in
America they were stoned as they emerged from the steamships,
receiving no police protection, since the authorities tacitly ap-
proved the violence. [21] In San Francisco twenty-five laundries
were burned in a single month in 1877. When a white was killed
in a police raid on Los Angeles’ Chinatown a huge mob destroyed
the quarters, killing at least twenty-two Chinese including wom-
en and children, fifty persons hung from the lampposts.

Railroad towns in California,

Utah, and Colorado, where former Chinese railroad workers had
settled, expelled their entire Chinese populations. In 1874 there
were several thousand Chinese in Truckee, Nevada, and neighbor-
ing areas, “and most of them were driven en masse out of these
places and into the midst of other anti-Chinese demonstrations all
over California.” [22] In 1885 twenty-eight Chinese were massacred
in Rock Springs, Wyoming, by a mob of white workers outraged
at the appearance of competing coal miners. The same year in Is-
saquah Valley a number of Chinese hop pickers were killed by
whites while they slept in their tents. In 1893 when one Chinese
appeared in Great Falls, Montana, preparing to open a laundry
business with his life’s savings, he was arrested, jailed, smuggled
out of town at night and threatened with death if he dared to re-
turn. The Great Falls Tribune expressed the sentiment of the town:
“…as long as the stars and stripes float over Great Falls no pig-
tailed saffron will be allowed to call this city his home.” [23]
In 1884 in Tacoma, Washington, the citizens of the town
drove the Chinese out and burned their dwellings. Soon there-

FIGHTING FOR CIVIL RIGHTS IN THE SHADOW OF THE CHINESE EXCLUSION ACT 15
“Chinese Must Go” cap gun, by
Connecticut’s Charles Coester
(CHSA, Gift of Jeffery P. Chan)

after, in 1886, one of the largest anti-Chinese riots took place in

Seattle. An Anti-Chinese Congress for Washington State had is-
sued a manifesto that all Chinese in the area depart by a specific
day. The members of the committee for Seattle were indicted
by a Grand Jury for violating the Civil Rights Bill, but they
were acquitted. Led by this group, a number of men went to
the Chinese quarters with wagons, forced the Chinese to pack
their belongings and drove them to the docks to be loaded on a
steamship bound for San Francisco. The acting Chief of Police
and nearly the entire police force were involved in this action.
[24] An opposing group of citizens organized a “Home Guard”
and fought to prevent the mob’s actions. President Cleveland
summoned the National Guard and several rioters were killed
in the ensuing struggle. After the riot the anti-Chinese leaders
threatened revenge, but in the face of armed opposition, they
decided to work within the system. The captain of the Home
Guard reported:

16 R E M E M B E R I N G 1 8 8 2
 …the leaders succeeded in persuading their fol-
lowers to abandon armed resistance and prepare
for the fall election, at which they believed they
could elect their men to every County office, which
they did, with the exception of one County com-
missioner. [25]

The elected leaders attempted to arrest certain citizens who op-

posed them during the riots, but, according to Captain George
Kinnear, “Gradually the smothered feeling of opposition to good
government subsided and security was restored. . . .”
A Chinese fishing village on the outskirts of Monterey which
had been in existence for a half a century was burned to the
ground on May 16, 1906. When the Chinese tried to return and
rebuild their homes, they were legally run off with a thirty-six
page eviction notice. [26] The Webb Act of 1911 barred aliens
“ineligible for citizenship” from buying land in California, al-
though some Asians held land in their American-born children’s
names. In Texas, Title 5 of the Revised Civil Statute of 1925 also
barred Asians from owning land, with some exceptions for cer-
tain classes of aliens and in certain areas. [27]
The same United States which had pressured the Chinese into
accepting the Burlingame Treaty, [28] to ensure free flow of la-
borers and trade, sought to revise the treaty in order to force Chi-
na into allowing the United States to regulate, limit, or suspend
immigration. Local exclusionist attitudes became national policy
with the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 which suspended the
immigration of Chinese laborers for ten years. The Act specified
that “hereafter no State Court or court of the United States shall
admit a Chinese to citizenship, and all laws in conflict with this
act are hereby repealed.”
Between 1880 and 1924 fourteen different Chinese exclusion
laws were enacted. In 1888 the Scott Act prohibited the entry of
laborers, permitting only certain privileged classes, and classi-
fied Chinese as a member of a race regardless of nationality. Chi-
nese born in the Philippines or France or Brazil were considered
Chinese alike. Laborers who left the United States were denied
re-entry certificates; others were required to re-enter at the same
port from which they had departed and they were interrogated
and detained. The Supreme Court held that the Scott Act violated

FIGHTING FOR CIVIL RIGHTS IN THE SHADOW OF THE CHINESE EXCLUSION ACT 17
U.S. treaty obligations with China, but it also insisted that Con-
gress had the right to pass such a law. As the Nation commented
wryly in 1893. “In other words a nation, like a man, had the right
to declare that it would not stand by its agreements.” [29]
When the Geary Act was passed in 1892, extending all anti-
Chinese legislation for another ten years, all Chinese were re-
quired to obtain a certificate of eligibility to be in the United
States and to carry this “photo-passport” at all times. The Chi-
nese Six Companies, the protective society for all the Chinese
in America in the first fifty years of Chinese immigration fought
such discriminatory laws in the courts. A Chinese explains the
procedure of the Six Companies:

To test this law in the Supreme Court it certain-

ly needs money for the lawyers’ fees and other ex-
penses, so the Six Companies levied a dollar upon
every Chinaman to meet these expenses. [30]

This legal battle against the Geary Act was viewed by exclusion
enthusiasts as an insidious, immoral means used by the Six Com-
panies to hold on to its thousands of “coolie slaves” and to import
more. Wrote Charles Holder in 1898:

The law of exclusion was obstructed by the cre-

ation of a false sentiment by bribery, and finally
we had the spectacle of the Six Companies fighting
it in the Supreme Court, where they were defeated
after a hard struggle. [31]

The writer observed further on the Chinese in the legal battlefield:

As a race they are astute politicians, and singu-

larly, one of the most active fields for the demon-
stration of their skill is found, not in China, but on
the American continent and among the American
people, where without a vote or even the desire for
citizenship the Chinese political bosses succeed in
defeating justice, retarding the passage of laws,
and adding materially to the financial burden of
the American citizen and tax payer. [32]

18 R E M E M B E R I N G 1 8 8 2
Following organized civil disobedience, the 1893 Supreme Court decision in Fong Yue Ting
v. United States forces registration of people of Chinese descent. (CHSA, Connie Young Yu
Collection, 2006.62.2)

Losing the fight against the Geary Act meant daily harrass-
ment for the Chinese. A community leader named Moy Jin Mun
recalled an incident which occurred to many Chinese: stopped
by immigration officers and asked to produce his certificate of
eligibility or “chak chee” as the Chinese called it, he found that
he did not have it with him. He was thereupon detained for
hours until he could contact a judge who vouched for him. [33]
Men such as Congressman Everis A. Hayes feared that without
exclusion laws the Pacific Coast states would become like Hawaii,
little more than an Oriental colony. He advocated stronger Chi-
nese exclusion laws to apply also to “Japanese, Koreans, Tartars,
Malays, Afghans, East Indians, Lascars, Indoos (sic) and all other
persons of the Mongolian or Asiatic race...” [34]

FIGHTING FOR CIVIL RIGHTS IN THE SHADOW OF THE CHINESE EXCLUSION ACT 19
20 REMEMBERING 1882
Dr. Ng Poon Chew (1866–1931), civil rights lead-
er and crusading newspaper editor of Chung Sai
Yat Po (Chinese-West Daily), co-authored with
Patrick J. Healy 1905’s A Statement for Non-Ex-
clusion. (Louis J. Stellman photo, CHSA, Thomas
W. Chinn Collection)  

The same year

of Hayes’s statement, Ng Poon Chew, editor of the San
Francisco Chinese newspaper Chung Sai Yat Po, de-
clared that “the Exclusion Law has been carried out with
such a vigor that it has almost become an extermination
law...” [35] The question was not the immigration of la-
borers, he maintained, which both sides have agreed
should not be admitted to the U.S. The issue was that
privileged classes should be given the same courtesies
that are extended to newcomers from other nations. He
recounts incidents in which teachers, distinguished mer-
chants, their wives and children, and students of “high
official families” had been detained and humiliated: »

FIGHTING FOR CIVIL RIGHTS IN THE SHADOW OF THE CHINESE EXCLUSION ACT 21
 Ladies of highly respectable families have been
asked all sorts of questions in the examinations
by the immigration officials which they would not
dare mention in the hearing of American ladies.

A Methodist minister was arrested as a laborer, tried, and

ordered deported on the basis that a preacher is a laborer. Ng
Poon Chew made his appeal to the middle-class attitude that re-
spectable, Christianized Chinese should not be badly treated. He
warns of antagonizing China (for America’s own good), quoting
William H. Taft, Secretary of War: “One of the great commercial
prizes of the world is trade with the 400,000,000 Chinese…” [36]
Despite diplomatic protest by China and China’s economic boycott
of U.S. goods to protest anti-Chinese laws, harrassment of the Chinese
continued. In the first quarter of the twentieth century many Chinese
immigrated on false papers, posing as sons of citizens or merchants.
Thousands were deported on petty technicalities; children and wives
were frequently deported while husbands were admitted. Every Chi-
nese entering with or without legal papers was at the mercy of the
immigration examiners who interrogated everyone as a suspected
stowaway. Men often did not want to subject their families to such an
ordeal. In an interview in the early 1920s a Chinese explained why for
ten years he has not sent to China for his wife:

Because my wife come over here, and you Americans

cause her alot of trouble. You pen her up in the immi-
gration office and then have doctors come and say she
has liver trouble, hookworm, and the doctor does not
know anything about it, to tell the truth. When my little
boy come to this country, he was kept in the immigra-
tion office for over two months. Poor little fellow—he
was so homesick. That is the reason why my wife hates
to come over here. It would break her heart to have to
stay so long in the immigration office. [37]

The Immigration Act of 1924 was to make reunions in America

virtually impossible even for those who were willing to endure
the hardships. Previously, wives of American-born Chinese and
wives of the privileged classes were admitted. But the 1924 law,
which was designed to phase Chinese out of the U.S. by prevent-

22 R E M E M B E R I N G 1 8 8 2
 Immigration officials
detain Mrs. Quok Shee
on Angel Island for
two years. Attorney
Dion Holm files a writ
of habeas corpus to
gain a full hearing
of her case. (National
Archives)

FIGHTING FOR CIVIL RIGHTS IN THE SHADOW OF THE CHINESE EXCLUSION ACT 23
ing them from having families, stipulated that no alien ineligible
for citizenship be admitted to the U.S. This separated husband
and wife, in many cases forever. Miscegenation laws prevented
Chinese from marrying outside their race, and Chinese women in
America were scarce. The alternative to bachelorhood was trans-
Pacific marriage. Such a situation is typified by the family history
of a fifty-five year old cafe owner from Needles, a California rail-
road town. Wing Yee tells of how his grandfather came to Amer-
ica, worked hard, saved his money, went back to China to get
married, and was prevented by the exclusion laws from bringing
his wife back with him. Wing Yee’s father, brought to America by
an uncle, also later returned to China to get married, and again,
because of the laws returned without his wife. She bore a son in
Canton, Wing Yee, who came to America when he was twelve.
Repeating the same cycle, he returned to China in 1935 to find a
wife. A year later he returned to Needles while his wife, who was
pregnant, remained in China “because of the damn immigration
laws.” “We were separated thirteen years. I never saw my oldest
daughter until she was thirteen years old in 1948.” [38]
In every Chinese-American family history there are such stories, of
lives made miserable by the immigration laws, harrassment and fear:
the lonely old single men in condemned hotel rooms, the suicides of de-
portees, the fragmented families. I remember being told frequently how
lucky my father’s father had been because he came to America in 1881,
a 12-year-old laborer, just a year before the Exclusion Act. My mother’s
mother had a less fortunate story: though the wife of an American citi-
zen, she was detained upon her arrival in 1920 on a health technicality
and held prisoner on Angel Island (in San Francisco Bay) for two years.

When China and the

United States were allies in World War II, President Franklin D.
Roosevelt signed the “Act to Repeal the Chinese Exclusion Acts, to
Establish Quotas, and for Other Purposes.” The Chinese in Ameri-
ca became eligible for naturalization, immigration restrictions were
eased, and sojourners became immigrants and finally citizens.

24 REMEMBERING 1882
 Agitation by the active Chinese civic organization, the Chinese-
American Citizen’s Alliance, continued into the 1960s for fairer
immigration laws. In 1952 the McCarren-Walter Act, or the Im-
migration and Nationality Act, was enacted by Congress, elimi-
nating race as a bar to immigration yet still adhering to the na-
tional origins quota, which was particularly restrictive for Asians.
This act was amended in 1965, abolishing the national origins
quota system from July 1, 1968. [39]
California did not repeal its miscegenation law forbidding Chi-
nese marrying whites until 1948. Oregon’s miscegenation law was
repealed three years later and many states such as Idaho, Missis-
sippi and Virginia maintained their laws preventing the marriage
of persons of Mongolian race and whites until the Supreme Court
ruled such laws unconstitutional in 1967.
The history of the Chinese in America is one of continual battles
with discriminatory laws on local, state and federal levels. The para-
noia and distrust caused by discriminatory laws remained after they
were repealed, and the feeling of estrangement from American life
was passed from one generation to the next. The shadow of the poll
tax collector, the immigration interrogator and anti-Chinese legisla-
tors remained to haunt the consciousness of Chinese America.
The Japanese, arriving at the latter part of the nineteenth cen-
tury, bringing their families with intentions of settling, inherited
the anti-Asian obstacles set up against the Chinese. Japanese
immigration hassles were less severe than those of the Chinese
because of the “Gentleman’s Agreement” between the U.S. and
Japan whereby the latter country regulated the flow of its emi-
grants, and because Japan was a strong country. But the Japanese,
too, were “aliens ineligible for citizenship,” were excluded from
labor unions, and were barred from buying land under the Webb
Act. Japanese children, together with the Chinese, attended an
all-Oriental school in San Francisco. In the Ozawa case of 1916, a
Japanese who had lived in the United States for over twenty years
was denied citizenship, the court citing precedent cases of Chi-
nese petitioners and reaffirming that only free white persons and
persons of African descent were eligible for citizenship.
In 1912 a U.S. district court in Pennsylvania declared that Filipinos
were not eligible for citizenship. The 1921 petition of Easurk Emsen
Charr was denied in the U.S. court of the Western District of Missouri
because he was “a native of Korea, owing allegiance to and subject

FIGHTING FOR CIVIL RIGHTS IN THE SHADOW OF THE CHINESE EXCLUSION ACT 25
of the Mikado of Japan” and not a free white person. Natives of the
Hawaiian Islands resident in the United States were considered of the
“Malay, or brown race” and therefore not eligible for citizenship. [40]
An alien who had served in the Navy, whose father was an English-
man and whose mother was one-half Chinese and one-half Japanese
was not white enough to be an American in a New York court in
1909. [41] In 1913 a Wisconsin judge granted naturalization to a
“high-caste” Hindu because he was considered “white” by ethnologi-
cal classification, whereas the judge in a similar case in Pennsylvania
denied a Hindu’s petition, [42] drawing the color line instead.
Citizenship proved to be no protection for the rights of the Japa-
nese on the West Coast in World War II when 110,000 persons,
two-thirds of them American citizens by birth, were rounded up and
sent to concentration camps. This precedent of group proscription
created a wave of fear among the Chinese during the Korean War.
Chinese students studying in the United States on student visas dur-
ing this time were considered poor security risks by the government,
and President Truman invoked laws restraining the departure of stu-
dents who wished to return to China. [43] Title II of the Internal Se-
curity Act (The Emergency Detention Act), passed over the veto of
Truman, provided that in time of war, invasion or insurrection, the
government could incarcerate in detention camps persons it deemed
a threat to the internal security. The act was not repealed until Sep-
tember 14, 1971, and only after continual efforts by Asian-Ameri-
cans, particularly the Japanese-Americans. Two years previously, J.
Edgar Hoover had testified before the House Subcommittee on Ap-
propriations that Chinese either coming to or living in the U.S. could
be a danger, as possible enemy agents. They could, he explained, “be
susceptible to recruitment either through ethnic ties or hostage situ-
ations because of relatives in Communist China.”
Unlike black people, yellow people came to America for the
most part by choice and as free men, but nonetheless suffered
enslavement by repressive legislation and social restrictions. The
Chinese suffered legal persecution longer than other Asians be-
cause they were the first Asians to arrive in America and because
of the tremendous fear of their numbers overrunning the West
Coast. Laws against the Chinese stemmed from the white man’s
greed, his prejudices, and his fears of the Yellow Peril or the Red
Menace. On one level persecution came in the form of mob ac-
tion, stonings, burnings of homes and shops; on another it took

26 R E M E M B E R I N G 1 8 8 2
the form of “legal” decisions which prevented Asians from having
families, jobs and homes. The legal barriers of a hundred years
left their mark on the Chinese-American character. Prevented
from assimilation by laws and racist attitudes, the Chinese were
continually accused of being “Unassimilable” and were believed
suitable only for certain lowly occupations. (As Wing Yee says,
“Chinese didn’t become laundrymen by choice.”)
It was not the small group of fanatics—charismatic characters
such as Denis Kearny (of “The Chinese must go” fame)—who
created the atmosphere of racism. Deeply ingrained racism was
already present when the first band of yellow men arrived, and it
quickly became institutionalized by law. Experienced, respected
law-makers and leaders—not ignorant rabble-rousers—enacted the
exclusion laws and repressive ordinances. Members of America’s
power elite were involved, such as Leland Stanford, who exploited
the labor of the Chinese to build the Central Pacific Railroad, yet
later, as a Senator, spoke out against Chinese immigration.
In his keynote address at the 31st Biennial Convention of the
Chinese-American Citizens Alliance in 1971, Wilbur K. Woo de-
scribed the legal struggles of the Chinese, saying, “These legisla-
tive battles, some defeats, some victories, best describe our early
climb up the gold mountain.” When discriminatory laws were
challenged, the outcome depended on the skill and the influence
of individual challengers. It is but a cherished myth, a long-per-
petuated fallacy, that the United States is a nation of laws before
which all men are equal. What we have in reality is a nation of
men whose legislative works and courtroom decisions reflect
prevailing biases, a nation which has used the law as a tool for the
persecution and genocidal treatment of minorities.
The Chinese Exclusion Convention of 1901 is an eloquent
testimony to the racist intent of legislation regarding minori-
ties, and the efforts of American legislators to keep the U.S. an
Anglo-Saxon country. This is made very clear in the statement by
the delegate from the United States Attorney’s office to the con-
vention as he advocated strengthening the Geary Law to close all
loopholes to the Chinese, “in order that a perfect exclusion law
shall be placed on the statute books of the nation.” [44]
In challenging such legislation the Chinese showed their desire
to become part of the American experience, and, in the ensuing
struggle, they did. •

FIGHTING FOR CIVIL RIGHTS IN THE SHADOW OF THE CHINESE EXCLUSION ACT 27
NOTES
1. Proceedings. California Chinese Exclusion
Convention, November 21 and 22, 1901, San
Francisco.
2. Ibid., p. 48.
3. Ibid., p. 56.
4. Ibid., p. 64.
5. Fong Kum Ngon, “The Chinese Six Compa-
nies,” Overland Monthly, May 1894, Vol. XXIII,
p. 522.
6. Alta California, October 15, 1855.
7. Alta California, October 27, 1855.
8. Alta California, August 8, 1853.
9. The People v. Hall, October 1854.
10. Ibid.
11. Alta California, September 19, 1855.
12. B.E. Lloyd, Lights and Shades of San Fran-
cisco (San Francisco: A.L. Bancroft and Co.,
1876), p. 252.
13. William Hoy, “Chinese in Mississippi to
Build Own School,” Chinese Digest, June
1937, Vol. 3, no. 6, p. 12.
14. Lin Sing v. E.H. Washburn, Supreme Court
of California, 1862.
15. San Francisco Bulletin, May 27, 1873.
16. Re Ah Chong, 6 Say. 45, 2 Fed. 733.
17. Lee Sing, 45 Feb (1890), 359.
18. Ho Ah Kow v. Matthew Nunan, Circuit
Court of the U.S. District Court of California.
19. John W. Caughey, California (New York:
Prentice-Hall, 2nd ed.), p. 389.
20. In re Tiburcio Parrott on Habeas Corpus,
Circuit Court of the United States, 1880. in California (San Francisco: Chinese Historical
21. Frederick A. Bee, Opening Argument Be-
fore Joint Congressional Committee on Chi-
nese Immigration, San Francisco, 1876.
22. William Hoy, “Moy Jin Mun—Pioneer,”
Chinese Digest, May 15, 1936, Vol. 2, no. 20,
p. 11.
23. The Nation, April 16, 1893, Vol. 56, no.
1449, p. 248.
24. George Kinnear, Anti-Chinese Riot at
Seattle, Wash., Feb. 8, 1886, printed for 25th
anniversary of the riot, Seattle, February 8,
1911, p.6.
25. Ibid., p. 11.
28 R E M E M B E R I N G 1 8 8 2
26. Winston Elstob, Old Cannery Row (Con-
dor’s Sky Press, 1965), p. 26.
27. Chinese Digest, April 1937, Vol. 3, no. 4,
p. 12.
28. The Burlingame Treaty of 1868 “recog-
nized the inherent and inalienable right of
man to change his home and allegiance” and
established that citizens of the United States
visiting or residing in China shall enjoy the
same privileges, immunities, and exemptions
in respect to travel and residence as may be
enjoyed by the citizens or subjects of the most
favored nation and vice versa.
29. Op. Cit.
30. Fong Kum Ngon, Overland Monthly, May
1894.
31. Charles F. Holder, “The Chinaman in Ameri-
can Politics,” The North American Review,
February 1898, p. 229.
32. Ibid.
33. William Hoy, Op. Cit., p. 14.
34. Speech of Rep. Everis Hays, Republican
of California, before the House of Representa-
tives, May 27, 1908.
35. Ng Poon Chew, The Treatment of Exempt
Classes of Chinese in the United States. A
Statement from the Chinese in America, San
Francisco, January 1908, p. 4.
36. Ibid., p. 15.
37. Race Relations Survey Document 241,
quoted by R.D. McKenzie, Oriental Exclusion
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1928),
p. 94.
38. Interview of Wing Yee by Charles Hillinger,
Los Angeles Times, reprinted in EAST/WEST,
April 6, 1971.
39. Thomas W. Chinn, Him Mark Lai, and
Philip P. Choy, eds., A History of the Chinese
Society of America, 1969).
40. In re Kanaka Nian, 21 Pac. 993. Supreme
Court of Utah.
41. In re Knight, 171, Red. 299 (District Court
of New York, July 13, 1909).
42. In re Sadar Bhagwar Singh, 246, Fed. 496,
1917, Penn.
43. Rose Hum Lee, The Chinese in the United
States of America (Hong Kong: Hong Kong
University Press, 1960), p. 309.
44. D.E. McKinlay, Proceedings, California
Chinese Exclusion Convention, November 21
and 22, 1901, San Francisco, p. 48.
The Chinese Exclusion Act
A Legislative Timeline

1868
The U.S. signs the Burlingame Treaty with China, to formally
recognize “the inherent and inalien­able right of man to change
his home and alle­giance.”

1875
While the stated purpose of the Page Law of 1875 is to prevent
Chinese prostitutes from entering the United States, it is instead
used to exclude Chinese women.

1882
In 1882, Congress passes the Chinese Exclusion Act. It prevents
people of Chinese descent from becoming naturalized citizens, or
— except for members of a few narrowly defined professions —
from immigrating to the U.S. at all. Many fami­lies are split, with
wives and children stranded overseas. The act originally passes as
a temporary measure to last for ten years.

1892
Congress passes the Geary Act which renews the Chinese
Exclusion Act for another ten years, and requires people of Chi­
nese descent to register and carry a Certificate of Residence. The
Chinese of America conduct massive civil disobedience against
the registration scheme, and fight the law in the courts.

1902/1904
Congress renews the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1902, and in 1904
reaffirms and makes permanent “all laws…prohibiting the coming of
Chinese per­sons or persons of Chinese descent into the United States…”

FIGHTING FOR CIVIL RIGHTS IN THE SHADOW OF THE CHINESE EXCLUSION ACT 29
 1907
Congress legislates that a woman who marries is assigned the
nationality of her husband, regard­less of whether she is a native-
born citizen of the U.S.

1917
Congress extends the Chinese Exclusion Act into “Asiatic
Exclusion,” barring from admission any­one born in what
Congress now calls the “Asiatic Barred Zone.” It includes most of
the continent and the Pacific.

1922
The Cable Act reforms the law that removes a woman’s U.S.
citizenship upon marrying a foreign national, but because of
America’s “Asiatic Exclusion” policy, this does not extend to
women who marry Chinese nationals.

1924
The Immigration Act of 1924 again widens exclu­sion, creating
national origins quotas that dis­criminate against immigrants
from southern and eastern Europe and Africa.

1940s
Chinese Americans continue to fight for immigra­tion reform,
lobbying to allow family reunifica­tion. After the U.S. enters
WWII as an ally of China, Congress passes a 1943 “repeal” of
Chinese Exclusion that restores the right to naturalization, but
establishes a national origins quota that per­mits only 105 people
of Chinese descent to enter each year. Until 1947, wives of
Chinese descent are excluded from the War Brides Act of 1945,
passed to facilitate the immigration of wives of U.S. servicemen.

30 REMEMBERING 1882
 1952
Congress passes the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952
to create one comprehensive statute out of the multiple previous
laws, and revises the national origins quota system to be tied to
the composition of the U.S. as recorded in the census of 1920.

1965/1968
In 1965, President Johnson signs the Hart Cellar Act, to abolish
— in 1968 — race, ancestry, or na­tional origin as the basis for
immigration, calling the previous laws “un-American in the
highest sense.”

SOURCES:
Thomas W. Chinn, Him Mark Lai, and Philip P. Choy, A History of the Chinese in California, (San
Francisco: Chinese Historical Society of America, 1969).

Christian G. Fritz, “Bitter Strength (k’ u-li) and the Constitution: the Chinese before the Federal
Courts in California,” The Historical Reporter, published by the Historical Society of the U.S. Dis-
trict Court for the Northern District of California, Autumn 1980, Vol. 1(1).

Bill Ong Hing, Making and Remaking Asian America through Immigration Policy, 1850-1990
(Stanford Univ. Press, 1993); Defining America through Immigration Policy, (Philadelphia: Temple
Univ. Press, 2004).

Charles J. McClain, In Search of Equality: The Chinese Struggle against Discrimination in Nine-
teenth-Century America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994).

Marian L. Smith, “‘Any woman who is now or may hereafter be married…’ — Women and
Naturalization, ca. 1802-1940,” Prologue Magazine, published by the U.S. National Archives and
Records Administration, Summer 1998, Vol. 30(2).

U.S. Government, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, “Historical Immigration and Natu-
ralization Legislation,” www.uscis.gov

FIGHTING FOR CIVIL RIGHTS IN THE SHADOW OF THE CHINESE EXCLUSION ACT 31
 National Asian Pacific American
Bar Association

2007 NAPABA Convention

November 15-18
JW Marriott Las Vegas

Remembering 1882:
Fighting for Civil Rights
in the Shadow of
the Chinese Exclusion Act

Exhibit underwriter
Margaret W. Wong & Associates Co., L.P.A.

Booklet underwriter
Kenneth Lee Family Foundation
Morrison & Foerster, LLP

Remembering1882.org

32 R E M E M B E R I N G 1 8 8 2
On the 125th Anniversary of the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act, the Chinese Historical
Society of America’s Remembering 1882 project combines a traveling exhibit, a museum theater
performance, and a symposium of legal and historical experts.

Remembering 1882 Traveling Exhibit

Drawn from photographs, newspaper commentaries, political cartoons, and other objects in CHSA’s
collections, CHSA’s Remembering 1882 exhibit provides a flavor for the intrigue, passion and poi-
gnancy of this dramatic chapter in American history. Launched in San Francisco at the Phillip
Burton Federal Building, Northern California District Court, 450 Golden Gate, 19th Floor (May 1-11)
and the James R. Browning Courthouse, United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, 95
Seventh Street, 1st Floor (May 14-31)

Remembering 1882: 125th Anniversary Symposium

An exploration of the impacts and legacies of the Exclusion laws featuring Justice Harry Low, Attor-
ney Michael Lee, Law Professor Bill Ong Hing, Immigration Attorney Donald Ungar, and Historian
Connie Young Yu. Presented by the Chinese Historical Society of America and the Historical
Society for the Northern District of California

View articles, video, and historical documents online at Remembering1882.org

CREDITS
Connie Young Yu’s “Up Against the Law” originally appeared as “The Chinese in the American
Courts” in Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, Vol. 4 No. 3, special issue editors Victor and Brett
Nee, Connie Young Yu, and Shawn Hsu Wong, 1972. Used with permission.

cover: Arnold Genthe photo courtesy Library of Congress and John Kuo Wei Tchen, Genthe’s Pho-
tographs of San Francisco’s Old Chinatown, NY: Dover, 1984.
page 2: Arnold Genthe photo of women in Union Square, CHSA, Gift of Wiley Wong, 2005.25.4

Art direction and design © 2007 Jeff Mellin, Big Blue Ox Graphic Art (www.BigBlueOx.net)
© 2007 Chinese Historical Society of America
ISBN: 978-1-885864-34-5
NAPABA edition

FIGHTING FOR CIVIL RIGHTS IN THE SHADOW OF THE CHINESE EXCLUSION ACT 33
“It is impossible to preserve the
integrity of a government like ours if
we deny to any class in our community
the equal protection of the laws.”
— Patrick J. Healy and Ng Poon Chew, 1905, ‘A Statement for Non-Exclusion’

Chinese Historical Society of America

Museum & Learning Center
965 Clay Street, San Francisco, CA 94108
(415) 391-1188 info@chsa.org

ISBN: 978-1-885864-34-5

34 R E M E M B E R I N G 1 8 8 2