San Francisco Chronicle: 1905
• CRIME AND POVERTY GO HAND IN HAND WITH
ASIATIC LABOR
• BROWN MEN ARE MADE CITIZENS ILLEGALLY
• JAPANESE MEN A MENACE TO AMERICAN WOMEN
• BROWN MEN AN EVIL IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS
• THE YELLOW PERIL—HOW JAPANESE CROWD OUT
THE WHITE RACE
• BROWN PERIL ASSUMES NATIONAL PROPORTIONS
Japanese Farm Workers
• 1868: Meiji Restoration
• 1882: only 86 Japanese in CA
• 1890 quietly imported for sugar beet
production
• Experienced farmers
• Ideal migratory laborers
• No opposition from any source
• New crops: rice, cantaloupes, berries,
reclamation of waste lands
• 1904 Japanese owned 2,442 acres and leased
over 50,000
• Gentleman’s Agreement of 1907
• 1913: Alien Land Law
– 1870 Naturalization Act limits American citizenship to
"white persons and persons of African descent,"
barring Asians from U.S. citizenship.
• 1920: more stringent Alien Land Law
• Story of dairy farmers
• Story of Dorothy
Punjabi Farm Workers
• Punjab province in India:
many former military men
• 1910 arrive in IV for first
commercial cotton crops
• Racism
• Male colonies
• Land owners
• 1915 Jawala Ram
murdered in IV
1925: Story of Pakhar Singh’s 50K
lettuce crop
• Cheated by shippers
• Verbal agreements
• No longer had use of
courts
• Murdered both
shippers by shooting
and with an axe
• Cultural values
KKK
• Second KKK: 1920s
• Urbanization,
industrialization,
immigration
• “100 percent
Americanism”
• 1915: Leo Frank, Birth of
a Nation
• Blacks in South
• 3-4 million members
• 1921 operating in 45
states
• Invested in political
campaigns for local and
state offices
Birth of a Nation Video (Clip 1
and Clip 6)
• two families in Civil
War and
Reconstruction-era
America
• first motion picture to
be shown in White
House
Birth of a Nation
• How is the KKK portrayed?
– What are some reasons for this?
• How are black soldiers portrayed?
• Did any scenes stand out?
• What does this film say about racial views
in the U.S. during the early twentieth
century?
The 1920s
• increasingly urban
Mexican population
• Segregation
• Poor living conditions
• Mexicans as racially
inferior or culturally
inferior
Slum-corrals built in 1913 in Texas and occupied continuously since then. Six outdoor
flush type toilets and one shower are provided for the more than one hundred people.
Entire family groups move from Texas to Wyoming for work in the sugar beet fields. En
route at San Angelo, Texas.
Ben Cortez, who had been in bed at home with tuberculosis for four months. 8,000 cases
of tuberculosis in the county; there are only twenty beds in the county tuberculosis
sanitarium, which is designed to supplement the state sanitarium—at which there is a
long waiting list. Corpus Christi, Texas. (1949)
San Antonio, TX 1930s
San Antonio. Mexican
neighborhood, 1930s
Health Issues
• High infant mortality
• Well baby clinics
• Racial inferiority
blamed
• Racist stereotypes
Education
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
The IQ test
Tracking
Segregation in schools
Racism and education
No-Spanish rule
Vela v. Board of Trustees
Capitalism and
segregation
1919: El Paso Laundry Strike
• Laundry Workers’ Union
– Isabella and Manuela Hernandez
• American Federation of Labor
– International Union of Mine, Mill,
and Smelter Workers
• Dual wage system ($4-$6 per
week)
• 200 women strike---total of 600
including sympathy strikers
• Surplus labor
• Union consciousness,
community solidarity