Lesson Plan:
Anti-Asian sentiment of the west coast during the late
1800’s
Lesson designer (s):
Marcie Gorsuch
School: Harrison High
Lesson Origin: (web site, modified from, original)
http://sun.menloschool.org/~mbrody/ushistory/angel/exclusion_act/
DIGITAL HISTORY : Hypertext: Guided Readings: The Huddled Masses
The Statue of Liberty
Emma Lazarus
The New Immigrants
Birds of Passage
Chinese Exclusion Act
Angel Island
Japanese Immigration
Contract Labor
Immigration Restriction
Migration and Disease
http://stories.washingtonhistory.org/Railroads/Teaching/MiddleSchool.aspx
Georgia Performance Standard:
SSUSH14 The student will explain America’s evolving relationship with the world at the turn
of the twentieth century.
a. Explain the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and anti-Asian immigration sentiment on the west
coast.
Essential Question: (Learning Question)
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Who was involved in the expulsion of Chinese people from the US?
What motivations did they have? Were they economic, political, social?
What kind of effect did the Chinese Exclusion Act have on the people it
targeted?
OPTIONAL: RELATE TO CURRENT EVENTS AS TIME ALLOWS
How
does this topic relate to us today? What is the role of the United States
government in regard to immigration? What issues are the same as
they were in the 1880’s and what issues have changed? Why is this
topic important?
Compare and contrast the U.S. federal government’s policy towards Chinese
Americans and Japanese Americans during the late 1800’s.
Materials: (include at least one primary source)
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Background reading on Chinese Exclusion Act
Guided readings from Digital History
Common Core Historical Literacy Standards/Skills (LDC Module)
CCRR12 - Determine central ideas or themes of a text and analyze their
development; summarize the key supporting details and ideas.
What Task? Students will examine a series of textual resources as well as a few
cartoons related to antiAsian sentiment as it applies to American 19th century history. They will
have a series of questions to use as prompts.
What Skills? Students will determine the central ideas or information of a primary or
secondary skills.
What Instruction? Students will be given 3-4 different sources to read related to the
topic and will have to identify themes, details and ideas.
What results?
Students will provide an accurate summary that makes clear the
relationships among the key details and ideas.
Technology use (include I-Respond file if used):
Digital History website for guided readings
Suggestions for differentiation/modification:
Use the Venn diagram as the end product for regular level students and a completed
argumentative Documents Based Essay for the higher level students.
Extensions (advanced students):
Document Based Essay: Evaluate the U.S. federal government’s policy towards
Chinese Americans during the late 1800’s.
Depth of Knowledge level: Analysis and synthesis will be required as well as identification
of supporting details related to the topic. Students will be taking an AP exam and so will need to
identify and evaluation America’s policy towards.
Modeling/Guided Practice/Independent Practice elements: The teacher will use the
reading entitled Migration and Disease as a modeling exercise from Digital history. The two
questions given at the end of the reading will serve as same prompts for the students. They will
be asked to identify their own investigative type questions that could be used in addition to the
original two given.
Elements of Teaching American History Grant activities incorporated into the
lesson:
Sourcing - Specifically with the cartoons and interview, students will be expected to
think about what the author’s intention and message would be. Who would support or
appreciate the cartoon? Why did the author create it?
Contextualization – Students will need to consider the location ( west coast) and
situation in time of the documents and cartoons. Each document will need the reader to
consider the dates and visualize what was happening during this time period that led to the
passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act.
Close Reading – Students will need to use this when reading the guided readings and
information related to the Chinese Exclusion Act. Students will need to consider what each
source identifies as motivation for the anti Asian policies. Also, students should be attentive to
the descriptions and stereotypes associated with the Chinese.
Corroboration – Students will use the essential questions given in the lesson to
identify motivations and effects of the Anti Asian sentiment as it resulted in the exclusion and
discrimination aimed at the Chinese in 19th century America.
1.
2. The Chinese Exclusion Act: A Black
Legacyhttp://sun.menloschool.org/~mbrody/ushistory/angel/exclusion_act/
Passed in 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act was a climax to more than thirty years of progressive
racism. Anti-Chinese sentiment had existed ever since the great migration from China during the
gold rush, where white miners and prospectors imposed taxes and laws to inhibit the Chinese fr
Racial tensions finally snapped in 1882, and Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act of
1882, barring immigration for ten years; the Geary Act extended the act for another ten years in
1892, and by the Extension Act of1904, the act was made permanent.
Racial tensions finally snapped in 1882, and Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act of
1882, barring immigration for ten years; the Geary Act extended the act for another ten years in
1892, and by the Extension Act of1904, the act was made permanent.
created competition on the job market. By 1882 the Chinese were hated enough to be banned
from immigrating; the Chinese Exclusion Act, initially only a ten year policy, was extended
indefinitely, and made permanent in 1902. The Chinese resented the idea that they were being
discriminated against, but for the most part they remained quiet. In 1943, China was an important
ally of the United States against Japan, so the Chinese Exclusion Act was repealed; however, a
lasting impact remained. The act was both cause and effect: it came from decades of Chinese
discrimination, and initiated decades of Chinese exclusion.
The Chinese flocked to America in search of opportunities; most fled from their collapsing
empire for economic reasons. The Gold Rush happened during a period of poverty in China,
which both pushed and pulled the Chinese to emigrate. In California, the Chinese newcomers
soon became an exploited work force, especially since they were predominantly male, but the
wages they received in the burgeoning 1850's economy were still "considerably higher than they
could earn at home" (Daniels 15). Many Chinese became miners, and some developed the
laundry business (highly lucrative in overpopulated San Francisco).
But opposition in California was both immediate and strong. During the Gold Rush, thousands of
Americans from the East, where they had opposed European immigration, frequently came with
nativist attitudes. And non-American whites (Irish, Russian), who had suffered from Eastern
nativism, saw that in attacking the Chinese, they elevated their own (shaky) status. Thus, Chinese
immigrants faced discrimination from many different groups, including American miners, who
felt that the hard-working and low-paid Chinese were reducing their wages.
It is the duty of the miners to take the matter into their own hands and
erect such barriers as shall be sufficient to check this asiatic inundation
The Capitalists who are encouraging or engaged in the importation of these
burlesques on humanity would crown their ships with the long tailed, horned
and cloven-hoofed inhabitants of the infernal regions if they could make a
profit on it. (McLeod, qtd. in Daniels, 34)
Thus, during the financially unstable 1870's, the Chinese became an ideal scapegoat: they were
strangers, wore queues, kept to their own kind, and were very productive (conditions not
inspiring great love, especially among the American laboring class). Legislation, including
immigration taxes, and laundry-operation fees, passed in order to limit the success of the Chinese
workers. Cartoons and other propaganda reinforced the view that the Chinese "worked cheap and
smelled bad" (Daniels 52); demonstrators marched with anti-Chinese slogans.
WE WANT NO SLAVES OR ARISTOCRATS
THE COOLIE LABOR SYSTEM LEAVES US NO ALTERNATIVE
STARVATION OR DISGRACE
3. MARK THE MAN WHO WOULD CRUSH US TO THE LEVEL OF THE MONGOLIAN
SLAVE WE ALL VOTE
WOMEN'S RIGHTS AND NO MORE CHINESE CHAMBERMAIDS (Daniels, 38)
4.
"A Statue for Our
Harbor"
Courtesy of: Choy, Philip.
Dong, Lorraine. Hom,
Marlon. The Coming Man.
University of Washington
Press: Seattle and London,
1994. Page:136
5.
"The Last Load"
Courtesy of:Choy, Philip. Dong, Lorraine. Hom, Marlon. The
Coming Man. University of Washington Press: Seattle and London,
1994. Page:157
But immigration still went on; however, as the exclusion
laws were frequently bypassed. After the earthquake fires
destroyed all family records in 1906, Chinese immigrants
effectively donned false names and identities, and came to
their "relatives" already in the US as paper sons and
daughters. In response to this continuing Chinese influx,
the city of San Francisco created a prison-like detention
center for incoming immigrants at Angel Island in 1910, where officials screened and deported
dubious incomers.
Americans justified their actions with two main claims. First, the Americans claimed that jobs
were scarce, and the Chinese were stealing the only jobs that there were because of there
willingness to work for smaller wages. Americans also claimed that the Chinese were sending
too much gold back to China-they believed that the wealth should remain within the United
States (Knoll 24). Anti-sentiments against the Chinese were high in the United States, however,
Chinese continued to immigrate to the United States. Not only was the majority of Chinese
excluded from immigrating, however, the few Chinese that did immigrate were treated
inhumanely. Many of their customs and traditions were violated, they were insulted, they were
imprisoned, beat and in some cases killed.
Why did we have to depart from our parents and loved ones and come to stay in
a place far away from our homes? It is for no reason but to make a living. In
order to make a living here, we have to endure all year around drudgery and
all kinds of hardship. We are in a state of seeking shelter under another
person's face, at the threat of being driven away at any moment. We have to
swallow down the insults hurled at us. (Knoll, 28)
The Chinese resented the fact that they were being discriminated against, yet they continued to
immigrate to the United States because they felt their opportunities in the United States were still
better than in China.
For sixty-one years, the Chinese were excluded from entering the United States and becoming
natural citizens when on December 17, 1943, the United States Congress pass the Chinese
Exclusion Repeal Act, which allowed Chinese to enter the United States legally once again.
The Chinese Exclusion Act was repealed mainly for political reasons rather than for human
rights reasons. The main political reason was that the Chinese became an ally of the United
States extremely fast when World War II broke out. Since the Chinese were viewed as allies
now, the American government wanted to keep sentiments between the two countries high, so
the Chinese Exclusion Act was repealed, and Angel Island no longer remained a detainment
center for Chinese immigrants. This was a victory for people from China and ChineseAmericans; however, the American reputation remains tainted by its inhumane and racist
exclusion policies towards the Chinese in the latter part of the 19th century and the early part of
the 20th century.
Bibliography: BOOKS:
Choy, Philip. Dong, Lorraine. Hom, Marlon. The Coming Man. University of
Washington Press: Seattle and London, 1994.
Daniels, Roger. Asian America. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1988.
Jones, Maldwyn Allen. American Immigration. The University of Chicago Press:
Chicago, 1960.
Knoll, Tricia. Becoming Americans. Coast to Coast Books: Portland, 1982
6.
7. The Huddled Masses Chinese Exclusion Act Period: 1880-1920
From 1882 until 1943, most Chinese immigrants were barred from entering the
United States. The Chinese Exclusion Act was the nation's first law to ban
immigration by race or nationality. All Chinese people--except travelers,
merchants, teachers, students, and those born in the United States--were barred
from entering the country. Federal law prohibited Chinese residents, no matter
how long they had legally worked in the United States, from becoming naturalized
citizens.
From 1850 to 1865, political and religious rebellions within China left 30 million
dead and the country's economy in a state of collapse. Meanwhile, the canning,
timber, mining, and railroad industries on the United States's West Coast needed
workers. Chinese business owners also wanted immigrants to staff their laundries,
restaurants, and small factories.
Smugglers transported people from southern China to Hong Kong, where they
were transferred onto passenger steamers bound for Victoria, British Columbia.
From Victoria, many immigrants crossed into the United States in small boats at
night. Others crossed by land.
The Geary Act, passed in 1892, required Chinese aliens to carry a residence
certificate with them at all times upon penalty of deportation. Immigration officials
and police officers conducted spot checks in canneries, mines, and lodging houses
and demanded that every Chinese person show these residence certificates.
Due to intense anti-Chinese discrimination, many merchants' families remained in
China while husbands and fathers worked in the United States. Since Federal law
allowed merchants who returned to China to register two children to come to the
United States, men who were legally in the United States might sell their
testimony so that an unrelated child could be sponsored for entry. To pass official
interrogations, immigrants were forced to memorize coaching books which
contained very specific pieces of information, such as how many water buffalo
there were in a particular village. So intense was the fear of being deported that
many "paper sons" kept their false names all their lives. The U.S. government
only gave amnesty to these "paper families" in the 1950s.
Copyright 2006 Digital History
Japanese Immigration
Period: 1880-1920
Overpopulation and rural poverty led many Japanese to emigrate to the
United States, where they confronted intense racial prejudice. In California,
the legislature imposed limits on Japanese land ownership, and the Hearst
newspaper ran headlines such as 'The Yellow Peril: How Japanese Crowd
out the White Race.'
The San Francisco School Board stirred an international incident in 1906
when it segregated Japanese students in an 'Oriental School.' The Japanese
government protested to President Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt
negotiated a 'gentlemen's agreement' restricting Japanese emigration.
Contract Labor
Period: 1880-1920
During the 19th century, demand for manual laborers to build railroads,
raise sugar on Pacific Islands, mine precious metals, construct irrigation
canals, and perform other forms of heavy labor, grew. Particularly in
tropical or semi-tropical regions, this demand for manual labor was met by
indentured or contract workers. Nominally free, these laborers served
under contracts of indenture which required them to work for a period of
time--usually five to seven years--in return for their travel expenses and
maintenance. In exchange for nine hours of labor a day, six days a week,
indentured servants received a small salary as well as clothing, shelter,
food, and medical care.
An alternative to the indenture system was the "credit ticket system." A
broker advanced the cost of passage and workers repaid the loan plus
interest out of their earnings. The ticket system was widely used by
Chinese migrants to the United States. Beginning in the 1840s, about
380,000 Chinese laborers migrated to the U.S. mainland and 46,000 to
Hawaii. Between 1885 and 1924, some 200,000 Japanese workers went to
Hawaii and 180,000 to the U.S. mainland.
Indentured laborers are sometimes derogatorily referred to as "coolies."
Today, this term carries negative connotations of passivity and
submissiveness, but originally it was an Anglicization of a Chinese work
that refers to manual workers impressed into service by force or deception.
In fact, indentured labor was frequently acquired through deceptive
practices and even violence.
Between 1830 and 1920, about 1.5 million indentured laborers were
recruited from India, one million from Japan, and half a million from China.
Tens of thousands of free Africans and Pacific Islanders also served as
indentured workers.
The first Indian indentured laborers were imported into Mauritius, an island
in the Indian Ocean, in 1830. Following the abolition of slavery in the
British Empire in 1833, tens of thousands of Indians, Chinese, and Africans
were brought to the British Caribbean. After France abolished slavery in
1848, its colonies imported 80,000 Indian laborers and 19,000 Africans.
Also ending slavery in 1848, Dutch Guiana recruited 57,000 Asian workers
for its plantations. Although slavery was not abolished in Cuba until 1886,
the rising costs of slaves led plantations to recruit 138,000 indentured
laborers from China between 1847 and 1873.
Areas that had never relied on slave labor also imported indentured
workers. After 1850, American planters in Hawaii recruited labor from
China and Japan. British planters in Natal in southern Africa recruited
Indian laborers and those in Queensland in northeastern Australia imported
laborers from neighboring South Pacific Islands. Other indentured laborers
toiled in East Africa, on Pacific Islands such as Fiji, and in Chile, where they
gathered bird droppings known as guano for fertilizer.
Steam transportation allowed Europeans and their descendants to extract
"surplus" labor from overpopulated areas suffering from poverty and social
and economic dislocation. In India, the roots of migration included
unemployment, famine, demise of traditional industries, and the demand
for cash payment of rents. In China, a society with a long history of longdistance migration, causes of migration included overpopulation, drought,
floods, and political turmoil, culminating in the British Opium Wars (18391842 and 1856 and 1860) and the Taiping Rebellion, which may have cost
20 to 30 million lives.
Overwhelmingly male, many indentured workers initially thought of
themselves as sojourners who would reside temporarily in the new society.
In the end, however, many indentured laborers remained in the regions
where they worked. As a result, the descendents of indentured laborers
make up a third of the population in British Guiana, Fiji, and Trinidad by
the early 20th century.
Some societies, such as the United States, passed legislation that hindered
the migration of Asian women. In contrast, the British Caribbean colonies
required 40 women to be recruited for every 100 men to promote family
life.
Copyright 2006 Digital History
Immigration Restriction
Period: 1880-1920
Gradually during the late 19th and early 20th century, the United States imposed additional
restrictions on immigration. In 1882, excluded people were likely to become public charges.
It subsequently prohibited the immigration of contract laborers (1885) and illiterates
(1917), and all Asian immigrants (except for Filipinos, who were U.S. nationals) (1917).
Other acts restricted the entry of certain criminals, people who were considered immoral,
those suffering from certain diseases, and paupers. Under the Gentlemen's Agreement of
1907-1908, the Japanese government agreed to limit passports issued to Japanese in order
to permit wives to enter the United States; and in 1917, the United States barred all Asian
immigrants except for Filipinos, who were U.S. nationals. Intolerance toward immigrants
from southern and eastern Europe resulted in the Immigration Act of 1924, which placed a
numerical cap on immigration and instituted a deliberately discriminatory system of national
quotas. In 1965, the United States adopted a new immigration law which ended the quota
system.
During the 20th century, all advanced countries imposed restrictions on the entry of
immigrants. A variety of factors encouraged immigration restriction. These include a
concern about the impact of immigration on the economic well-being of a country's
workforce as well as anxiety about the feasibility of assimilating immigrants of diverse
ethnic and cultural origins. Especially following World War I and World War II, countries
expressed concern that foreign immigrants might threaten national security by introducing
alien ideologies.
It is only in the 20th century that governments became capable of effectively enforcing
immigration restrictions. Before the 20th century, Russia was the only major European
country to enforce a system of passports and travel regulations. During and after World War
I, however, many western countries adopted systems of passports and border controls as
well as more restrictive immigration laws. The Russian Revolution prompted fear of foreign
radicalism exacerbated by the Russian Revolution, while many countries feared that their
societies would be overwhelmed by a postwar surge of refugees.
Among the first societies to adopt restrictive immigration policies were Europe's overseas
colonies. Apart from prohibitions on the slave trade, many of the earliest immigration
restrictions were aimed at Asian immigrants. The United States imposed the Chinese
Exclusion Act in 1882. It barred the entry of Chinese laborers and established stringent
conditions under which Chinese merchants and their families could enter. Canada also
imposed restrictions on Chinese immigration. It imposed a "head" tax (which was $500 in
1904) and required migrants to arrive by a "continuous voyage."
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Xenophobia: Hatred of foreigners and immigrants
Nativism: The policy of keeping a society ethnically homogenous.
Copyright 2006 Digital History8.
8.
Wong Tung Jim Interrogation, 1928. Testimony of Wong Tung Jim (Jimmie Howe),
page 1,
December 29, 1928, Chinese Exclusion Act immigration case files, Records of the
Immigration
and Naturalization Service, Record Group 85, National Archives-Pacific Alaska Region
(Seattle), Case 29160, ARC Identifier 298955.
9. “The Chinese Question"
February 18, 1871
Thomas Nast
Modeling assignment. Migration and Disease
Period: 1880-1920
Throughout history, the movement of people has played a critical role in the transmission of
infectious disease. As a result of migration, trade, and war, disease germs have traveled
from one environment to others. As intercultural contact has increased--as growing
numbers of people traveled longer distances to more diverse destinations--the transmission
of infectious diseases has increased as well.
No part of the globe has been immune from this process of disease transmission. In the
1330s, bubonic plague spread from central Asia to China, India, and the Middle East. In
1347, merchants from Genoa and Venice carried the plague to Mediterranean ports. The
African slave trade carried yellow fever, hookworm, and African versions of malaria into the
New World. During the early 19th century, cholera spread from northeast India to Ceylon,
Afghanistan and Nepal. By 1826, the disease had reached the Arabian Peninsula, the
eastern coast of Africa, Burma, China, Japan, Java, Poland, Russia, Thailand, and Turkey.
Austria, Germany, Poland, and Sweden were struck by the disease by 1829, and within two
more years, cholera had reached the British Isles. In 1832, the disease arrived in Canada
and the United States.
Epidemic diseases have had far-reaching social consequences. The most devastating
pandemic of the 20th century, the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918 and 1919, killed well over
20 million people around the world--many more people than died in combat in World War I.
Resulting in such complications as pneumonia, bronchitis and heart problems, the Spanish
Flu had particularly devastating impact in Australia, Canada, China, India, Persia, South
Africa, and the United States. Today, the long-distance transfer of disease continues,
evident, most strikingly with AIDS (Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome), which many
researchers suspect originated in sub-Saharan Africa.
Disease played a critically important role in the success of European colonialism. After 1492,
Europeans carried diphtheria, influenza, measles, mumps, scarlet fever, smallpox, tertian
malaria, typhoid, typhus, and yellow fever to the New World, reducing the size of the
indigenous population 50 to 90 percent. Measles killed one fifth of Hawaii's people during
the 1850s and a similar proportion of Fiji's indigenous population in the 1870s. Influenza flu,
measles, smallpox, whooping cough reduced the Maoris population of New Zealand from
about 100,000 in 1840 to 40,000 in 1860.
Fear of contagious diseases assisted nativists in the United States in their efforts to restrict
foreign immigration. The 1890s was a decade of massive immigration from eastern Europe.
When 200 cases of typhus appeared among Russian Jewish immigrants who had arrived in
New York on French steamship in 1892, public health authorities acted swiftly. They
detained the 1,200 Russian Jewish immigrants who had arrived on the ship and placed them
in quarantine to keep the epidemic from spreading. The chairman of the U.S. Senate
committee on Immigration subsequently proposed legislation severely restricting
immigration, including the imposition of a literacy requirement.
Fear that immigrants carried disease mounted with news of an approaching cholera
pandemic. The epidemic, which had begun in India in 1881, did not subside until 1896,
when it had spread across the Far East, Middle East, Russia, Germany, Africa, and the
Americas. More than 300,000 people died of cholera in famine-stricken Russia alone.
To prevent the disease from entering the United States, the port of New York in 1892
imposed a 20 day quarantine on all immigrant passengers who traveled in steerage. This
measure, which did not apply to cabin-class passengers, was designed to halt foreign
immigration, since few steamships could afford to pay $5,000 a day in daily port fees. Other
cities including Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, and Detroit, imposed quarantines on immigrants
arriving in local railroad stations. Congress in 1893 adopted the Rayner-Harris National
Quarantine Act which set up procedures for the medical inspection of immigrants and
permitted the president to suspend immigration on a temporary basis.
A fear that impoverished immigrants will carry disease into the United States has recurred
during the 20th century. In 1900, after bubonic plague appeared in San Francisco's
Chinatown, public health officials in San Francisco quarantined Chinese residents. In 1924, a
pneumonia outbreak resulted in the quarantining of Mexican American immigrants. After
Haitian immigrants were deemed to be at high risk of AIDS during the 1980s, they were
placed under close scrutiny by immigration officials.
Questions to think about?
1. What factors might make a specific population particularly vulnerable to disease?
2. In your view should immigrants be viewed as a possible source of disease? Or is such
a fear overdrawn?
Copyright 2006 Digital History