[Chinese] are uncivilized, unclean, and filthy beyond all conception, without any of the higher domestic or social relations; lustful and sensual in their dispositions…. The first words of English they learn are terms of obscenity or profanity…. Clannish in nature, they will not associate except with their own people, and the Chinese quarter of the city is a by-word for filth and sin. Pagan in religion, they know not the virtues of honesty, integrity or good-faith.

—Horace Greeley, “Chinese Immigration to California,” New York Tribune, September 29, 1854

Amid fears that the country was being overrun by hordes of immigrants from the Far East who would corrupt the American way of life, in May 1882 Congress took the extraordinary step of banning Chinese laborers. It was the first significant legislation in American history in which a group of migrants were excluded from settling on US soil based solely on their race and class. The anti-Chinese hostilities would not end until the early twentieth century, when all migrants from China were banned. Passage took place at a time when scientists thought that the world was divided into racial groups. The existence of superior and inferior peoples was a cornerstone of the curriculum in high school and university biology classes across Europe and North America. The Chinese were believed to be a branch of the Asiatic “Mongol Race,” a step above the “Negro,” but well below whites. In 1866, the editor of the prestigious Anthropological Review described them as an inferior “infantile” race, as evidenced by their “backward” art, literature, and government. “They are beardless children, whose life is a task, and whose chief virtue consists in unquestioning obedience,” he wrote.1 A few years later, in 1871, attitudes had changed little, as Ohio Congressman William Mungen stood on the floor of the House of Representatives and complained about the wave of Chinese immigrants who were taking jobs from more worthy Americans, referring to them as “a poor, miserable, dwarfish race of inferior beings.”²

Many newspapers and scholarly journals of the period published apelike images of the Chinese, implying that they were lower on the evolutionary scale. There were many comparisons to insect swarms, especially bees, ants, and locusts. They were portrayed as mindless followers who looked alike and acted with a common purpose.³ This imagery frightened white Americans. Perhaps more than any other factor, the belief in different racial types is what fueled the anti-Chinese hysteria, although economic factors certainly played a role. The initial ban was for ten years, but it was renewed and eventually expanded to include all Chinese by 1902. The policy would not be abolished until the Second World War, when politicians finally relented after the United States and China found themselves as allies in the fight against Japan.

The backdrop of the scare was the sudden influx of Chinese immigrants arriving on the West Coast during the second half of the nineteenth century, as they fled civil war, economic turmoil, and political unrest in their native land. Many took jobs in the California gold mines, where tensions soon boiled over. The views of San Francisco attorney John Boalt were typical of the period. He wrote that white and Mongolian races were incompatible, observing that their physical peculiarities were so repulsive as to “prevent any intimate association or miscegenation [sexual intercourse] of the races.”⁴ California politicians shrewdly capitalized on the anti-Chinese mood to gain votes.5 They did not fear a backlash from Chinese voters, because foreign-born Asians were ineligible for citizenship and could not cast ballots.⁶

INVASION!

The initial surge of Chinese migrants was in response to the California gold rush of 1848, and later to build the western branch of the transcontinental railroad. Others took jobs in the agricultural and fishing sectors. For company bosses, they were a welcome supply of cheap labor who had a reputation for hard work. Most were willing to do any job, including those that their white counterparts were reluctant to fill. During the 1850s, an Anglo American earned about three dollars a day in the gold fields. Their Chinese counterparts were paid as low as $1.25 for the same work, and most were paid at least a dollar below that of a white laborer.⁷ In 1850, a mere 660 Chinese were living in California, most hoping to make their fortune mining gold.⁸ Within two years, 25,000 more would pour into California. By 1880, more than 105,000 Chinese had made the voyage across the Pacific in search of a better life in America—most in California. Only one in five was an American citizen.⁹ In 1868, Congress passed the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution to ensure equality for the recently freed black slaves. It stated that all persons born or naturalized in the United States were American citizens, including blacks. This allowed Chinese immigrants the chance to obtain citizenship, which was for the courts to decide, on an individual basis. That changed in 1878 when a California court ruled that members of the Mongolian race were of neither Anglo nor African descent. While Chinese born in the United States could still become citizens, those born outside the country were now prohibited from applying.¹⁰

Anti-Chinese hostilities grew steadily in the 1870s. Once the transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869, thousands of Chinese workers flooded the West Coast job market at a time of economic hardship. Attempts to address concerns over the growing number of Asians entering the labor force prompted Congress to act in 1875, banning the immigration of convicts or prostitutes from any country. It was a thinly veiled attempt to reduce the number of unskilled Chinese laborers from entering, and to stop the flow of Chinese women to lower their birth rate. At the time, Chinese women were portrayed as sexually promiscuous and natural prostitutes who posed a threat to the morals of America's youth. The law did little to slow the arrival of Chinese immigrants.11 As fears grew over cheap Chinese labor taking jobs from white citizens and corrupting American values, calls to address the issue grew louder. William Locklear observes that the Chinese migrant was viewed as “a slave of another color,” willing to undercut white labor. To him, they were a cunning and godless race with no respect for American morals. “He lived in ‘herds’ amid squalor, gambled, smoked opium and forced Chinese women into prostitution, thus endangering the health and morality of the community.”¹² Anti-Chinese sentiments reached such levels that many Anglo Americans vowed never to live in a house previously occupied by “filthy” Chinese, and complaining that whenever they moved into a neighborhood, property values dropped.¹³ The Chinese were demonized by politicians and journalists alike, culminating in the Exclusion Act of 1882. The act was a form of scapegoating for the wage decline of the 1870s, but the reality was very different. The presence of Chinese workers had little impact on the overall economy. In the 1880 census, those of Chinese descent comprised a mere 0.002 percent of the nation's population—just over 100,000 out of 50 million. While the law was worded in economic terms, it had racist overtones.¹⁴

The 1882 ban exempted the Chinese upper class: diplomats, merchants, students, teachers, and travelers, but it prevented all immigrants from China from becoming naturalized citizens.¹⁵ These well-to-do newcomers were believed to have had better breeding by virtue of their wealth. It was assumed that those who were financially better off were naturally smarter than poorer Chinese, as their intelligence had allowed them to accumulate wealth. In 1888, the law was expanded to bar the return of Chinese immigrants who had temporarily left the country, stranding about 25,000 of their compatriots overseas. By 1893, amid the continuing clamor from white voters to address the so-called Yellow Invasion, lawmakers expanded the definition of laborer to include merchants, miners, laundry owners, and those in the fishing industry. By 1902, the issue was emphatically resolved when all Chinese immigration was prohibited.16

It was no small irony that the better life so many Chinese had come searching for was itself a fiction, an embellished image that was packaged and sold by shipping companies to promote their self-interests: making as much money as possible by filling their vessels to capacity for the voyage to America. As they docked in port cities like Canton and Hong Kong, broadsheets were handed out to lure locals into taking the voyage. One company urged residents to seek their fortune in the California goldfields. Their handbill read: “Americans are very rich people. They want the Chinaman to come and will make him welcome. There will be big pay, large houses, and food and clothing of the finest description…. Such as wishes to have wages and labor guaranteed can obtain the security by application at this office.”¹⁷ Dreaming of gold and wealth, many sold their homes and fishing boats, or borrowed money from relatives to make the long journey. They were soon to be disillusioned by what they found.

THE DRIVE TO PURGE THE HORDE

To the surprise of many, the 1882 Immigration Act not only failed to placate supporters and calm anti-Chinese sentiments but also had the opposite effect—igniting and emboldening opponents. As hostilities grew, many residents living in western states formed anti-Chinese organizations for the purpose of lobbying for even stricter laws to combat the perceived threat to their jobs and the American way of life. Some encouraged boycotts of Chinese goods and businesses, harassed Chinese citizens, and, in several instances, ran Chinese residents out of town. In 1884, Congress made it more difficult for merchants and travelers to obtain an exemption by expanding the definition of merchant to include peddlers and fishermen.18 By 1892, all existing Chinese exclusion laws were renewed for another decade. The racist nature of the act was evident in its language. The law stipulated that any Chinese laborers residing in the country had to register with the government and obtain a special certificate allowing them to stay. Anyone found without a certificate was subject to a year in prison followed by deportation. However, people could be saved from this fate if a “credible white witness” was to testify on their behalf that they were indeed US residents who had a good excuse for failing to register. In 1893, the law was amended to include “one credible witness other than Chinese” to prove residency.¹⁹ By the turn of the century, white animosity toward the Chinese was stronger than ever. In 1901, San Francisco Mayor James Phelan viewed the campaign against Chinese immigrants as a titanic struggle for the future of white humanity. He proclaimed that California government officials were “wardens of the Golden Gate; we must stand here forever in the pathway of the Orient…. It is for us to sound the alarm. I regard the Chinese question as a race question…and above and over all, a question involving the preservation of our civilization.”²⁰

While the most intense hostilities were concentrated in California, other western states were also forced to address the issue. In Montana during January 1886, a group of women who washed laundry for a living placed a notice in a Helena newspaper complaining that “Mongolian hordes” were putting them out of business. Predictably, the editor came out in support of the women and against the “almond-eyed citizens.”²¹ The Montana papers were filled with anti-Chinese sentiments at this time, depicting them as unscrupulous, perverse, unclean, uncivilized, and ungodly. Throughout the state, they were commonly referred to in the press as John Chinaman and Chink Chink Chinaman.²²

FROM MODEL CITIZENS TO INFERIOR MENACE

Historian Stuart Miller found overwhelmingly negative images of Chinese in American books, newspapers, and magazines in the century leading up to the 1882 Exclusion Act. He observes that during the first half of the century, most of what trickled down to the American masses were reports from diplomats, missionaries, and merchants who had visited China, recounting stories of Chinese idolatry, cruelty, infanticide, and sexual perversity.23 However, California newspapers had an overwhelmingly positive description of these strange newcomers. The image would quickly change. These early press accounts held them to be well-dressed, refined, and civilized. For instance, the prominent Daily Alta California had nothing but praise. A typical comment appeared in the paper on May 12, 1851: “Scarcely a ship arrives here that does not bring an increase to this worthy integer of our population…. Perhaps the citizens of no nation except the Germans, are more quiet and valuable.” Another issue described them as possessing a lofty moral and industrious character: “They make good, honest and industrious citizens, and no one of them has ever yet been before the authorities for larceny or any other criminal charge.”²⁴ By 1852, California Governor John McDougal not only praised them as “one of the most worthy classes of our newly adopted citizens,” he pushed for land grants to attract greater numbers of Chinese migrants to America.²⁵ The tide would quickly turn. Later that same year, with the swearing in of Governor John Bigler, anti-Chinese sentiments had well and truly taken hold. Bigler supported a bill that would halt further immigration of unskilled Chinese laborers.²⁶ By 1862, Governor Leland Stanford took up the cause with vigor, referring to local Chinese as “dregs”—worthless people. His position was the height of hypocrisy. At the same time, thousands of low-wage Chinese workers were being imported to construct the Central Pacific Railroad. Stanford was the railroad's president. From 1865 to 1869, over ten thousand Chinese were hired to construct the railway, at two-thirds the wages of whites. They were shamelessly exploited in other ways, such as having to provide their own shelter and food. The use of Chinese workers saved the company an estimated $5 million—an enormous sum at the time.27 The exploitation of migrant workers to cut costs remains prevalent across America today, as does the taking advantage of migrants who are deemed to have illegally entered the country and fear deportation if they complain. For example, during the demolition of a building to make way for the construction of Trump Tower in Manhattan, Donald Trump was aware that many of the construction workers were illegal Poles, whom he threatened with deportation when they complained over a pay dispute.²⁸

These early press accounts fail to mention that trouble was brewing in the gold mines where Chinese workers were resented for their thrift and willingness to accept low pay. Tensions had been building for several years, even if they did not often make the newspapers.²⁹ With few blacks and Native Americans involved with mining, and with the exodus of Mexicans and South Americans due to taxes, Chinese miners became the obvious targets of abuse given their numbers, different physical appearance, and seemingly strange customs. Difference was quickly equated with inferiority. The predominantly white miners also considered the Chinese to be part of a colored race.³⁰ By May 1852, one California newspaper made a reference to them as “cloven-footed inhabitants of the infernal regions” and called for their removal from the mines. In September, a state mining convention voted to call on Congress to protect the industry from Chinese immigrants. They complained about the state policy “by which whole hordes of degraded, dark colored and worthless laborers, of mongrel race and barbarous education, are allowed, and even invited, to come hither merely to rob the rightful owner” of their mining treasures.³¹

By 1853, the Alta California had changed ownership and with it had taken an anti-Chinese stance. In November, the same paper that just two years earlier had characterized Chinese migrants as model citizens was now portraying them as a criminal race. Historian James Evans writes that “a petty crime committed by or blamed on a single Chinaman was publicized as though it evidenced that all Chinese were criminals endangering the state. The Chinese sector of San Francisco was now pictured as a squalid area of filth and vice rather than a place where thrifty immigrants lived quietly.”32 Evans continues: “These diminutive little folk who had previously been an amusing but admirable novelty from a distant land and had been the epitome of virtue, thrift, and picturesqueness in San Francisco were now regarded as pig-tailed barbarians…. Their ability to live cheaply was no longer evidence of the virtue of thrift; it was proof that they could survive at a degraded level unfit for white men.”³³ San Francisco was the epicenter of the anti-Chinese movement since large numbers of new arrivals disembarked and made their home there. Alarmists in the state spread baseless claims that the Chinese were responsible for spreading every disease under the sun, from cholera to small pox and leprosy.³⁴ During this period, in the eyes of many Anglo Americans, the Chinese could do little right. They were deemed to have been a public-health threat, a view espoused by no less an authority than the Police Gazette. Its March 21, 1868, edition described Chinatown as a repulsive cesspool: “That this eye-sore, this great fountain head of disease and death, this corruptor of our youth, this destroyer of morals, this blight upon property, this strain upon the escutcheon of the city itself, this putrid, rotten, ‘damned spot,’ should be allowed to lay and fester, spreading its death smell, like the deadly upas tree, all around…[is] a profound mystery.”³⁵ Ironically, many of the rundown buildings in Chinatown were being rented out by prominent white citizens.

Depictions of the Chinese in California would soon reach new levels of vitriol, even among those entrusted to be neutral and maintain law and order. In the April 4, 1868, issue of the California Police Gazette, the editor described the Chinese as “the rat-eating, mooneyed, lying, thieving Mongolians, who have no affinity with us either in race, religion or customs.” Such attitudes highlight the racist feelings held by not only many California police officers but also the criminal justice system, as Chinese were at a disadvantage in court. They could not testify against whites after an 1854 ruling in the California Supreme Court that gave them the same legal status as American Indians. In 1869, the same court ruled that Chinese could not even testify in court against the “lowly Negro.”36

On August 8, 1853, the Alta California—a paper now known for its anti-Chinese stance, published a story about the treatment of a Chinese man, which even it described as disgraceful. It underscores the injustice of the period, and the intensity of anti-Chinese feelings: “An American yesterday attacked a Chinaman in Dupont street, beating him shamefully. The Chinamen 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…. [Soon] a policeman came up, saw by his bloody face that he had been in a fight and arrested him. Unlucky John slept in the Hotel de Ville last night; the fellow that beat him was lucky enough to get off without being arrested.” Even the editor of the Alta California had to admit the unfairness of a legal system that barred Chinese from giving testimony against non-Chinese. On March 26, 1854, he noted his opposition to the law, even though he considered them a lower race: “justice to ourselves, as well as to them, demands that they should be permitted to testify like persons of other colors. Their evidence should not carry…so much weight with a court or jury as that of a white man; but it does not follow that their evidence should be excluded entirely…. Although the majority of the negroes, Chinese, Malays, and Indians are not reliable witnesses, yet, there are exceptions.”

During the latter half of the nineteenth century, Californians commonly referred to the Chinese as “heathens,” not because of their non-Christian beliefs, but because it was a derogatory term.³⁷ The word heathen became synonymous with Chinese thanks to the 1870 publication of a poem by Bret Hart in which he made reference to “the heathen Chinee.” It was certainly not complimentary and told of a Chinese man who had cheated two Western miners at cards.³⁸ Other common descriptions were the terms “moon-eyed” and “slant-eyed” in reference to the epicanthic fold, which causes the eyes to appear slanted. Anti-Chinese clubs popped up like mushrooms across the West Coast during the 1880s and 1890s. They held conventions, circulated petitions, and lobbied lawmakers to purge the region from the scourge of the Chinaman. Some groups encouraged boycotts, reasoning that if every resident refused to buy Chinese goods or employ Chinese, they would be forced to return home. Manufacturers were encouraged to place labels on their products affirming that they were made without Chinese labor. Many businesses tried to capitalize on the hysteria, with anti-Chinese displays. One such advertisement was used by a meat seller: “BE CAUTIOUS! A DUE RESPECT FOR A NATURAL prejudice against using MEATS Handled by Chinese and kept in their Unventilated Dens until sold for market use, has decided us to advertise the fact that we SELL NO MEATS that have been handled by CHINAMEN.”39 Politicians jumped on the anti-Chinese bandwagon. The influx of Chinese was often referred to as the Yellow Invasion, yet it was the height of hypocrisy that these same Americans who had invaded and conquered the Indians, were themselves complaining about being invaded. Given the importance of the labor vote in California, gaining support often meant being more anti-Chinese than a politician's opponent.⁴⁰ To gain a sense of how engrained and pervasive anti-Chinese hostilities were, in 1899, US Supreme Court Justice Stephen Field wrote that to preserve America's independence, the country must be on guard from Chinese immigrants, whom he described as “vast hordes of people crowding in upon us” and who constituted “a different race” who were deemed to be “dangerous to peace and security.”⁴¹

POPULAR FICTION WARNS OF THE ASIATIC SWARM

Fear of a Yellow Invasion by Chinese migrants along the West Coast was fueled by racially charged novels. One such work was Almond-Eyed: The Great Agitator which was published by Atwell Whitney in 1878.⁴² Set in “Yarbtown,” California, where factory owner Simon Spud (a not so subtle hint that he was Irish) decides to hire a large number of Chinese laborers. After littering the town with their refuse and driving many white residents out of business, the new workers from the Orient spread small pox. Eventually, a group of white workers who had lost their jobs to the Chinese begins to riot, resulting in a massive fire. After the factory and Chinatown are rebuilt, the new factory manager vows to only hire white workers. Because the Chinese remain, racial tensions continue unabated, leaving Whitney to write of perpetual conflict.43 “The stream of heathen men and women still comes pouring in, filling the places which should be occupied by the Caucasian race, poisoning the moral atmosphere, tainting society, undermining the free institutions of the country, degrading labor, and resisting quietly, but wisely and successfully, all efforts to remove them.”⁴⁴

In Pierton Dooner's Last Days of the Republic (1880), the Chinese government tries to take over the United States through unlimited migration. Eventually, a race war breaks out, and America becomes a territory of China. The Chinese characters in the novel are cunning and power hungry. Dooner portrays Chinese workers as mindless zombies willing to give their lives for their race and who are ready to carry out the wishes of their leaders at a moment's notice. Historian William Wu observes that the invasion is successful due to their hordish character, allowing for “absolute, unquestioning, immediate obedience to the government of China.” Wu writes that “Dooner's image of the Chinese as a mindless mass is required in order to make plausible the slow process of infiltration and the subsequent arming and training of the Chinese in the United States.”⁴⁵ Treating the Chinese as a swarm or herd reflects the belief that their actions stemmed not from free will but from their racial makeup. Hence, they could not be dealt with rationally any more than a herd of cattle or a swarm of insects could be reasoned with. They were an irrational force that had to be kept out at all costs.⁴⁶

Other novels would further highlight the invasion threat. Robert Woltor's A Short and Truthful History of the Taking of Oregon and California by the Chinese in the Year A.D. 1899, resembles a history book. Published in 1882 and written by “a survivor,” it tells of the conquest of California and Oregon following a series of uprisings aided by a visiting Chinese flotilla. Woltor claims that the Chinese were deliberately massing in urban ghettoes for strategic purposes, and that they were able to act in unison as a large organism with a single-minded purpose: conquest. He depicts the Chinese as mindless puppets.47 Woltor's novel exploits racial stereotypes of the period: “Our enemy, moreover, possess two great elements…which may well be the envy of warmer-blooded races, namely a stoic indifference to pain, which makes them fearless to deeds of blood, and a certain coolness in moments of excitement and danger.” In contrast, Woltor portrays the Europeans as less primal and more cerebral leaders.⁴⁸ Despite these qualities, the “Asiatic swarm” is victorious in conquering the West Coast. Perhaps the most dire scenario was portrayed in Oto Mundo's The Recovered Continent: A Tale of the Chinese Invasion from 1898. In it the Chinese invade Southeast Asia, pour across Europe, and eventually take over the United States and conquer the world.⁴⁹ The portrayal of Chinese settlers in the literature of the early twentieth century was unflattering and racist. Even religious publications routinely referred to them as inferior and heathens.⁵⁰ During this time, Chinese women continued to be portrayed as prostitutes.⁵¹

THE WHITE BACKLASH TO THE YELLOW PERIL

While discontent with Chinese miners first broke out in the California goldfields in the late 1840s, it was not until the following decade that the situation reached crisis proportions. The fear of Chinese taking white jobs prompted a fierce backlash. Mobs and vigilante groups systematically drove the strange newcomers off their claims, often at gunpoint, seizing and destroying their tools, tents, and supplies. In many cities and towns across the west, especially along the coast, law and order broke down. One trouble spot was Shasta County, California, where during the winter of 1858–59, a race war erupted as anti-Chinese riots spread throughout the county. In Shasta City, a mob forced a group of Chinese men to parade through the streets as jeering townsfolk pelted them with stones. Riots sprung up in several small mountain towns, including Middletown, Oregon Gulch, and Horsetown. Sheriff Clay Stockton eventually managed to restore order and quell what became known as “the Shasta wars.” Many vigilantes were rounded up and brought to trial. Each was found not guilty.52 In 1853, upward of 3,000 Chinese were working the mines of Shasta County. By 1860, that number had dwindled to 160,⁵³ many of whom were working under the protection of European employers.⁵⁴ During the 1880s, two riots broke out which claimed the lives of dozens of Chinese Americans and prompted the call for federal troops to quell tensions. In September, a race riot in Rock Springs, Wyoming Territory, left 28 Chinese dead and $150,000 in damages as the local Chinatown was leveled. That same month, an attack on a remote campsite by a group of angry residents at Squak Valley in Washington State killed three Chinese hops pickers. Several days later, there was a midnight raid by a band of masked men who burst into the sleeping quarters occupied by 37 Chinese workers of the Oregon Improvement Company mine in Coal Creek, Washington. They ordered the workers outside and burned down the building. In early November, a white mob in Tacoma, backed by the police and mayor, entered the Chinese district and ordered the inhabitants to leave. They were forced onto a train bound for Portland. During February 1886, a riot broke out in Seattle during attempts to remove the city's Chinese inhabitants. Marshall Law was declared and federal troops were summoned to restore order.⁵⁵ Between 1850 and 1890, Chinese migrants in the western United States endured verbal abuse and threats, fistfights, biased news reports, segregation from whites, shootings, stabbings, the destruction of Chinese property, and premeditated murder.⁵⁶

One of the worst acts of violence took place on March 14, 1877, when four Chinese agricultural workers were murdered in Chico, California, at the hands of white supremacists. The killings occurred amid a series of arson attacks on Chinese homes in the area, and businesses employing Chinese. While on a mission to burn down Chico's Chinatown, several arsonists shot the four migrants, doused them in kerosene, and set them alight. The perpetrators were members of the Order of Caucasians. The incident coincided with a period of global economic decline between 1873 and 1896, which some writers refer to as the Second Great Depression. The men were soon captured and put on trial for murder and arson. Four of the men received life sentences, while the others were given ten to twenty years for arson. A social commentator would later remark: “Had their victims been white men, they would have been hanged. In fact, they would have been…accorded that special type of hanging termed lynching.”57

On February 14, 1879, Senator James Blaine, the nation's foremost advocate for Chinese exclusion, proclaimed that “either the Anglo-Saxon race will possess the Pacific slope or the Mongolians will possess it.”⁵⁸ A week later he referred to Chinese migrants as criminals and compared their spread to that of a disease: “If as a nation we have the right to keep out infectious diseases, if we have the right to exclude the criminal classes from coming to us, we surely have the right to exclude that immigration which reeks with impurity and which cannot come to us without…sowing the seeds of moral and physical disease, destitution, and death.” Blaine's influence cannot be overstated. At the time of his speech, he was the leading candidate for the Republican nomination for president, and although unsuccessful, he would serve as secretary of state under James Garfield. Many of Blaine's Republican colleagues enthusiastically supported his views on immigration. Representative Addison McClure of Ohio echoed Blaine's racist sentiments, quipping: “Alien in manners, servile in labor, pagan in religion, they are fundamentally un-American.”⁵⁹ Wisconsin Senator George Hazelton likened them to “packs of dogs,” while other politicians equated the Chinese to swarming insects and rats: creatures considered pests and devoid of moral character.

Waves of violence and intimidation would continue across the country into the new century, with friction especially prevalent in the western states, and along the West Coast where the Chinese were most concentrated. Even those who had been fortunate enough to be exempt from the exclusion legislation, such as Chinese government officials, were not immune from the intimidation and harassment. One notorious episode involved Tom Kim Yung, a military attaché based in San Francisco. On September 13, 1903, he was handcuffed by two city police officers, tied by his hair to a fence, and then severely beaten. A former bodyguard of the emperor of China, he was so distraught at having been falsely accused of starting the altercation that shortly after the incident he committed suicide. Prior to the attack, Yung was walking back to the Chinese embassy with several merchants and was just a few feet from the door when a police officer grabbed him. A San Francisco Call journalist describes what happened next, based on eyewitness accounts: “He was met by Policeman Kreamer…who took hold of him rudely and made an improper remark in pigeon English. The colonel shook off the policeman's grasp with an angry gesture, whereupon Kreamer struck him a severe blow in the face,” after which a second officer arrived and the beatings intensified. Several witnesses to the incident later testified that the police had started the altercation.60

ROADBLOCKS

Even before the 1882 Exclusion Act, California lawmakers were busy thinking up new and ever more creative ways to make life difficult for Chinese migrants in the hope that they might become discouraged and leave the country. In 1852, foreign miners who were not eligible to become citizens had to pay a monthly fee of $3—a hefty sum for the time. It was no coincidence that most foreign miners who were ineligible for citizenship were Chinese. Within three years, the fee would double. Two years later, the California Supreme Court gave Chinese the same legal status in court as “Red Indians” and determined that they could not testify against whites—a ruling that endured for the next eighteen years. In 1862, all Chinese living in California were forced to pay a police tax of $2.50 cents for the cost of looking after their health, safety, and moral conduct. The tax was a reflection of stereotypes of the Chinese as dirty and unhealthy people who were inherently inclined toward smoking opium, gambling, and prostitution. Those refusing to pay the tax had their property seized and sold at public auction.61 By the end of the year, the State Supreme Court ruled the law to be unconstitutional. In 1863, Chinese were barred from giving testimony in civil and criminal court cases. The most outlandish law was the Cubic Air Ordinance of 1870, which targeted Chinatown, known for its congested living arrangements. The law made it illegal “to rent rooms with less than 500 cubic feet of air per person.” Ironically, county jails could not even meet the requirement, so the law was voided.⁶² Since the Chinese were the only people who carried clothes and vegetables on the end of poles, that same year the Sidewalk or Pole Ordinance was passed, prohibiting anyone from walking on the sidewalk using poles to carry goods.⁶³ Another unusual law involved hair. In 1873, the city of San Francisco passed an ordinance banning male Chinese prisoners from wearing braids—a long-standing cultural tradition. Also known as the Pigtail Ordinance, it was intended to stop Chinese from committing crimes, as losing one's braid was a sign of disgrace. Although the mayor vetoed the bill, a similar version passed in April 1876. The law was thrown out in 1879 after Ho Ah Kow sued the local sheriff and was awarded $10,000 in damages.⁶⁴ In 1880, California amended its thirty-year-old law prohibiting marriage between blacks or “half-castes” with whites, to include Mongolians. It was specifically meant to prevent marriages between Europeans and Chinese. A dozen other states soon followed as Chinese were banned from marrying whites in such places as Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, Virginia, and Wyoming.⁶⁵

There were also attempts to prevent the Chinese from attending school with whites. In 1859, the San Francisco School Board closed a public school for Chinese students but were then forced to reopen it. However, between 1871 and 1885, state officials were able to shut down Chinese American schools. Legal historian Joyce Kuo writes that during this time, “the Chinese were explicitly excluded from the all-white and even the separate schools in the public school system.”66 During this period, the Chinese were denied a public education despite their tax dollars going to fund the education of the other races. Some Chinese children were homeschooled or sent to expensive private schools; others were tutored by missionaries; but not all could afford the expense. In 1884, the Chinese exclusion policy was challenged in court and deemed to have been illegal, prompting the establishment of separate Oriental Public Schools.⁶⁷ By 1896, the US Supreme Court had rendered its historic Plessy v. Ferguson case, allowing for public segregation of whites from nonwhites in public places ranging from schools to movie theaters, parks, swimming pools, school buses, and even libraries and hospitals. The court ruled that nonwhites could be excluded from white public schools so long as the state provided “separate but equal” facilities. This became the law of the land until 1954, when the Supreme Court deemed it illegal, resulting in mass desegregation of schools across the country. From the 1850s until well into the next century, there were numerous attempts in California to segregate Chinese students from their white counterparts in school. In 1855, the state enacted discriminatory legislation stipulating that school instruction had to be in English.⁶⁸

The power of the times to influence one's views can be found in the US Supreme Court. In his legendary dissent in the Plessy v. Ferguson case, Justice John Marshall Harlan wrote that the government has a responsibility to ensure “equality before the law of all citizens of the United States, without regard to race.”⁶⁹ Harlan has been hailed as a visionary for his position on equal rights for blacks. However, in his very next paragraph, he mentions the Chinese: “There is a race so different from our own that we do not permit those belonging to it to become citizens of the United States. Persons belonging to it are, with few exceptions, absolutely excluded from our country. I allude to the Chinese race. But by the statute in question, a Chinaman can ride in the same passenger coach with white citizens of the United States, while citizens of the black race [are not allowed].” While this curious passage is often ignored by his supporters, legal scholar Gabriel Chin has examined Harlan's past decisions and writings and concluded that he was a “faithful opponent of the constitutional rights of Chinese for much of his career on the court.” Justice Harlan was a product of his times. Chin observes that reprints of Harlan's dissent often omit the Chinese passage.

FROM PUBLIC MENACE TO MODEL MINORITY

An extraordinary turn of events would see the axing of the Chinese Exclusion Act, and renewed friendship between America and China. This remarkable attitude shift took place over a span of a few years starting in the late 1930s and would become crystalized by a single event: the Japanese attack on the American naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. On December 8, 1941, the day after the attack, the United States and China both declared war on Japan and became instant allies. Public opinion had already begun to change with the Japanese invasion near Peiping in northern China during July 1937. The very next month, an American poll found 43 percent of the populace was sympathetic to the Chinese. By 1939, favorable ratings had risen to 74 percent.70 By the early 1940s, a series of influential newspaper and magazine editorials appeared, underscoring the importance of China as a friend to the United States and an influential partner in the war effort.⁷¹ This new alliance created an awkward situation given the US treatment of Chinese laborers over the previous sixty years, and the inflammatory rhetoric that was often spouted by anti-Chinese politicians and activists during this period. China was now seen as a key ally because Washington's main aim was to retake Europe. It was hoped that the Chinese could keep the Japanese at bay while the United States focused on its “Europe First Policy.” Toward this end, in January 1942, the United States lent China half a billion dollars to help fight the Japanese.72

The imperial government tried in vain to break the new bond by reminding the Chinese of America's shameful policy on Chinese migration. After Pearl Harbor, Japan began to refer to its war as the Greater East Asian War and claimed that its purpose was the liberation of East Asia from the “Anglo-Saxon imperialists.” By February 1942, the Japanese insisted that their war effort was aimed at emancipating Asian peoples, with the goal of “racial equality and harmony.” In a clear reference to the Chinese Exclusion Act, the imperial leaders observed that America was exploiting Asian peoples.⁷³ By June, the Asahi Shumbun newspaper published a series of “Open Letters to Asian Peoples,” proclaiming that “Asia must be one—in her aim, in her action and in her future,” noting that “when Asia becomes one in truth a new order will be established throughout the world.”⁷⁴ The pressure was now squarely on the shoulders of the American government to counter the campaign by the Japanese propaganda machine—a campaign that had a stinging reality. Attempts to drive a wedge between America and China were destined to fail, since each side needed the other more than ever. For their part, the Chinese went on a charm offensive, with the wife of leader Chiang Kai-shek visiting the country between November 1942 and May 1943. She worked vigorously to build support for a new US–China relationship. An eloquent speaker, she was given the rare privilege of addressing both Houses of Congress in mid-February, hailing democratic values and talking about the need to build a world “based on justice, coexistence, cooperation, and mutual respect.”⁷⁵ Throughout the spring, she traveled the country, calling for more military aid and better relations. As a result, politicians and media commentators emphasized the similarities between China and America and began pressing for a repeal of the Exclusion Act.

By May 1943, a group of prominent intellectuals formed the Citizens Committee to Repeal Chinese Exclusion and Place Immigration on a Quota Basis. Among them was the influential founder of Life, Time, and Fortune magazines, Henry Luce, and writer Pearl S. Buck. An acclaimed novelist known for her stance on human rights, Buck grew up in China as the daughter of missionaries. She played a role in swaying public opinion, pointing out that the Japanese were winning the propaganda war against the United States by exploiting America's treatment of the Chinese. She called for cooperation between people of all races, colors, and nationalities if the war was to be won.76 Adding further momentum to the movement, thousands of Chinese Americans were serving their country in the armed forces, underscoring their sacrifice in the war effort and earning them the nickname of the “model minority.” As American political scientist Harold Isaacs would observe, the perception of Chinese Americans had shifted from the “Age of Contempt” to the “Age of Admiration.”⁷⁷ The deluge of sentiments for ending racial discrimination against the Chinese finally bore fruit on December 17, 1943, when Franklin Roosevelt signed into law the Chinese Exclusion Repeal Act. Events had come full circle. Our longtime enemy, the Yellow Menace, was now our best friend. But while there was a thaw in US–Chinese relations, a new villain had just as quickly filled the void, as Americans found another scapegoat for their problems: Japanese Americans.