Transcripts For CSPAN3 19th Century Chinese Immigration 2017

Central to american anxieties related to immigration and who could and who could not become a u. S. Citizen. Often chinese immigrants, the issues start in california and from that moment in california in the 1850s and 1860s, comes a National Phenomenon that will ultimately lead to our first legislation on the federal level that targets a particular nation of origin. In terms of the chinese immigration, there are three major issues that people often focused on. That is Racial Attitudes in the 19th century. There are notions of inferiority and superiority that affected chinese immigrants. People of european ancestry often saw asians in general as inferior. They were also concerned about practices. The majority of chinese coming to the United States, although not all, were not christian. They practiced a mixture of it buddism and taoism. In california, people were concerned that chinese immigrants were taking jobs from the white working classes. They were also worried that they were taking claims during the gold rush from the same individuals. There was an idea that something needed to be done to stop them from coming into the country. I added this particular cartoon to this slide. This is liberty protecting the hardworking chinese immigrant from the rabble. If you notice, it is very sympathetic to chinese immigrants. In the background, it looks like an africanamerican school had been burned, and there is more in the background, as well. The racial politics of the 19th century are pointed out, and how the experiences of African Americans and chinese immigrants at the time often overlapped and complemented each other. As i mentioned earlier, chinese immigration and the varieties tied it to chinese immigration started in the 1850s and it started in california. It plays out in three ways. Everyday lives and Popular Culture and local and state laws, and in the courts. In everyday life and Popular Culture, what we see in the 1850s is a language that emerges that denigrates chinese immigrants and their daytoday practices. These often focus on religious traditions and is tied to the types of jobs they had viewed when we talked about chinese immigrants last week, they stepped into what was traditionally womens work, laundrys and restaurants, so people questioned their masculinity. In gold rush california, there were not that many women to do these types of jobs. They were ridiculed because of the way they dressed and their hair. People of european ancestry, men in particular, wore short hair. To where lear longhair at that time was seen as effeminate. Also, food. In the 1850s, chinese food was used as another point of derision among those who wanted to ban chinese immigrants. There is massive violence. This starts run 1852 and served in the digging. We have what are called roundups and drive else pushing chinese immigrants out of the mines. This becomes larger and larger throughout the late 19th century. One of the more famous moments does not happen in the digging but in los angeles in 1871. It is known as the chinese massacre. In the chinese massacre, there were two tongs, if you remember, we talked about those that these Community Organizations that anyone could join but often participated in vice. Two were fighting over who would control prostitution in the city. Two Police Officers got caught in the fray and were killed. Local whites were outraged and decided they needed to clean up los angeles and drive the chinese out. As a result, we had hundreds of people attacked, shot and lynch. 24 died. There will be other incidents like this throughout the west targeting chinese. Finally, we have state and local governments. Many of the anxieties we are seeing in terms of language, violence, will become codified in california both in terms of the law and the courts. What i have here, these are a couple of examples. This is not the full list. I could not fit on one slide we dont have all days to do every single law that affected chinese immigrants in the 1850s in the 1860s. I wanted to give you at least the flavor of the types of laws that were being passed and how they were targeting chinese. First is the foreign minors act miners act. This was based on an earlier law that targeted spanish and french speakers. Basically the law said that if you could not or did not intend to become a u. S. Citizen, you had to pay a monthly tax in order to be a miner. If you remember from monday, we talked about there was one group of people who even if they wanted to become a u. S. Citizen, could not. Those were people of asian ancestry. That is tied to the 1790s naturalization act. That only allowed free, white persons to become naturalized u. S. Citizens. Two years later, the California Supreme Court also deals with this particular issue in terms of chinese immigrants and their role in American Society in people versus hall. George w. Hall, his first name is george, sometimes i forget and call him john but it is george. He had killed a chinese immigrant. There were four witnesses to the event, three of whom were chinese immigrants and one was white. They all testified against hall and he was found guilty of murder. He appealed to the Supreme Court california and set a person of chinese ancestry should not be able to testify against a white person. In california as elsewhere during the antebellum period, africanamericans and native americans cannot testify against white people. The California Supreme Court agrees with hall and says yes, chinese immigrants are also not white, and therefore they too cannot testify against a white person. You see these types of rules all through the american south. Here in virginia, for example, free slaves could not testify against a white person even if they committed murder. Natalie . Student [indiscernible] prof. Moon because there was at least one white person, that charges would stand, but the testimony from the chinese immigrants would not. So decapitation act of 1855, it is interesting the california tried to do this. On monday we talked about the passenger laws the Supreme Court had already ruled on that states could not regulate and manage immigration. Immigration is a federal issue, not a state one. In 1855, california decided to pass a tax that said that see captains pay 50 per chinese immigrant brought in to the United States. 1860, we have the California School law. Some jurisdictions were already segregating schools, but this was a state law that required all School Districts in the state of california to segregate schools. People of african, native american, and asian ancestry could not go to school with white children. We are going to talk about that a little more later on, the implications of that. The pew ordinance, that is tied to the issue of hair, it is a San Francisco City Ordinance that allowed the sheriff, if they arrested and jailed a chinese immigrant, to have the right to cut their hair off. For chinese immigrants, this is usually problematic because of course, they are wearing hair in a braid because of mandates under the ching dynasty, and it is also a Cultural Practice tied to their identity, tied to their chinese citizenship, they cannot become u. S. Citizens. With their hair cut, they cannot go back to china. It is fraught with issues for chinese immigrants. Finally, antimiscegenation amendment that altered laws to include people of mongolian descent. We see this throughout the United States, but california is first to target people of asian ancestry. I know i have been going fast for some of this material, but do you have any questions . Pretty straightforward. You are giving me a yes. This is actually one of the images that emerges related to the politics natalie . Student [indiscernible] is it only against white people that they cant testify . Prof. Moon yes. This starts really in the u. S. South with free slaves not being able to testify against white people and it is just an expansion of that practice. This is a political cartoon tai. Student is that tied to eugenics . Prof. Moon this is before eugenics becomes popular, but that has a long history in the century. This is a political cartoon. This is george gorham, a republican in the state of california who is promoting racial equality. This cartoon is a satire. He is holding the weight of nonwhite people on his shoulder as he is trying to promote the ballot box, which uncle sam has put his hand over and he is wagging his finger at him. This is more tied to your eugenics comment, who is this . Right, it is Charles Darwin with an upright monkey. It is ridiculing people who want racial equality, saying that in the future, monkeys will be voting, as well. Most of what we have been talking about in terms of the antiimmigrant or antichinese immigrant movement has been in california in the 1850s and 1860s. That is going to change and become a National Phenomenon around 1870. There are both cultural and economic reasons for why that is happening. First i will talk about the cultural ones. It is tied to a poem. That is the actual title but most americans knew it by this title. It was basically a poem about two crooked gamblers in the west, one was chinese and one was of european ancestry, who are cheating each other. The chinese immigrant gets caught, and the white gambler calls him a heathen chinese. That is how it ends. For most americans, this poem resonates with the issues and problems tied to chinese immigration. I dont think the intention was to vilify just chinese immigrants, but that is what it became. It became a national success, so popular that people wrote songs based upon the poem, there were variety acts, it was published in newspapers, and people used it to spin off other caricatures on the National Level of chinese immigrants. Many of the same language we talked about before in terms of hair and food and clothing, now thanks to this poem, starts to circulate on the National Level, and become hugely popular. The bigger components are the economic factors tied to chinese immigration that emerge in the late 1860s and early 1870s. That really starts with the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad in 1869. With the completion of the railroad, now both people and goods can travel at rates we have never seen before across the United States. Very quickly by 1870, we see chinese immigrants being recruited out of the west to go and work in factories in the east. Also as strike breakers. This creates a lot of animosity with white workers on the east coast. What also compels the issue is that you have goods from the east coast going to San Francisco and competing in local markets. A market that was once dominated by cities like San Francisco now have competition and you have a mini recession on the western seaboard as a result. All of a sudden, the prices of goods go down because the market is getting flooded, and there are not as many jobs. One additional issue happens in 1873, because of manipulations of the stock market in new york, the United States goes into a massive depression. It affects everybody in the country. This scenario tied to jobs, goods, this depression, basically becomes fodder for people looking for somebody to blame for the economic problems that the country is facing. Instead of looking at the countrys elite, often times the white working classes would target the even more marginalized and dispossessed people than they were. Chinese immigrants. The person who takes that and brings language to it is a man called Dennis Kearney. He is an irish and a great immigrant, and he arrives in San Francisco in 1868. He has a small carting business that eventually goes belly up. Because he has some free time, he goes to the sand lots. This is an image of what the sand lots are. This is San Francisco city hall in the background. At the sand lots, you would have massive rallies going on like this one. If you notice the signage, you have signage about the chinese must go sort of thing. Dennis kearney starts turning the sand lots and eventually what he starts to do is speaking out at the sand lots and particularly targeting chinese. He is known for the phrase the chinese must go, which becomes a rallying cry for the white working classes. Eventually he becomes the president of the working mens party of california and goes on a National Speaking tour throughout the country, visiting various working men, Party Members promoting the ban on chinese immigrants. The only way to protect white working classes is to stop chinese immigration. Any questions . Student [indiscernible] that student [indiscernible] that you can pay them less and less as workers . Prof. Moon the issue is twofold, they are taking their jobs well they are on strike and the point of the strike is to hurt the owner, but often times industrialists preferred to hire chinese immigrants because of the racialized pays go, they thought they could pay them less. Im sure they would love to make more money but they werent able to. Any other questions . All right. It is the ideas we see in Popular Culture that are being promoted by people like Dennis Kearney that ultimately lead to conversations within u. S. Congress and the white house for a ban on chinese immigration. Starts about the same time that you have people like Dennis Kearney in the sand lots happening in washington, d. C. It is led surprisingly by members of the california caucus in both the house and senate. But they had some problems. They had major problems. He kept by the 1870s, we have passed the 14th and 15th amendments, which promotes the idea of equal protection under the law. We also have the burlingame treaty of 1868. This was promulgated by a man named anson, i will write his name right here. There you go. Anson burlingame, who had been the u. S. Minister to china. The Chinese Foreign office wanted to renegotiate its treaty with the United States, particularly related to trade relations. Burlingame also had received requests from Chinese Companies to ask them to add special language tied to the experiences of chinese immigrants. You dont need to write this down, but i want to read you the link which that ultimately ends up in the treaty. It says chinese subjects visiting orbital siding or residing in the United States shall enjoy the same privileges, immunities and exceptions in respect to travel or residence, as may be enjoyed by the citizens or subjects of the most favored nation. So basically, this statement in the burlingame treaty made it very clear that chinese immigrants need to be treated equitably in the United States. The idea of pursuing federal law to ban chinese immigration could potentially be a diplomatic nightmare for the United States. Nevertheless, the california caucus very quickly starts to pursue federal legislation come and it starts with a man named horace page. Horace page was a republican member of the house of representatives from the state of california. In 1875, he felt the time was right to submit a whole series of pieces of legislation, hoping one of them might be acceptable to his colleagues and eventually passed. And would somehow curtail chinese immigration. He chose this moment in part because of ulysses s. Grant, he has been making, to the last few years that were clearly directed toward possibly a ban toward chinese immigrants. He was making comments about the problems typed chinese immigration. Also what is lesser known about ulysses s. Grant, he was a member of the know Nothing Party and often held some antiimmigrant views in the past. So he was very hopeful he might be able to get something through. Unfortunately for him, only one day. We call it the page law after him, in 1875. It is racially and nationally neutral, it bans the immigration of prostitutes and criminals. The issue was, and for the chinese, that immigration inspectors basically presumed with the passage of this law that every chinese immigrant woman was by default it prostitute and would be treated as such until they proved to the contrary. Chinese immigrant women started to be targeted. Nevertheless, despite passage of that law, it would take another four years for the california delegation to try to put forth another piece of legislation, and that next one is the 15 passenger bill in 1879. This basically limited the number of chinese could be on any ship to 15 persons. The hope was that this law would be enough of a regulation to curb chinese immigration, but also preserve the 14th and 15th amendment and the early game treaty. Unfortunately for the california caucus and then president of the United States, rutherford b. Hayes refused to sign it. He said you have to change the burlingame treaty before i will touch any sort of limitation on chinese immigration. So that is what they did. In 1880, the then president sent james angel, hence the angel treaty, james angel, to china to revise the burlingame treaty. And in particular, to change the language about equal protection in terms of u. S. Law. Natalie . Student [indiscernible] prof. Moon that is completely different. So james angel is not able to get the chinese to agree to an outright ban, but they do agree to a temporary suspension of chinese immigration. And so that is immediately what the california members of congress