1907: Asian Indian millworkers are attacked by white working men in Bellingham, Washington.

In Bellingham, Washington on September 4, 1907, almost 500 white working men attacked East Indian millworkers. A mob of white men chased two East Indian mill workers they had found on the street and then beat them. Then the mob headed to a boardinghouse where many Asian millworkers lived, and smashed the windows terrifying the residents out of their beds and to the tideflats. The rioters went from house to house and to all mills driving every East Indian worker they can find out chasing them to the train station. The next day almost all of Bellingham’s Indian workers had fled the city by boat or train. The police had responded very leisurely and the city condemned the mill owners for inviting “undesirable and unwanted,” East Indian workers into the city in the first place.

The working men declared that their purpose was to move the Indian workers and chase them out of town so they would stop crowding white labor out of the mills. There were about 250 Indians employed and rumors that the managers at Whatcom Falls Mill Company plant had been replacing white workers with lower paid Asian workers had angered the white men. According to the working whitemen, the darker skinned Indian men had been gathering on the sidewalks after work and forcing female passer-bys to walk in the street as well. The white worker’s excuses and justifications for the hate crime are a mere example of stereotyping that the Asian American’s are inscrutable and untrustworthy.

At the time, The American Federation of Labor (AFL) was affiliated with the National Asiatic Exclusion League, which had approximately 800 members in Bellingham alone that declared they would, “guard the gateway of the West Coast against Oriental invasion.” Members had also previously written to President Theodore Roosevelt, warning him they would massacre Asians if he didn’t stop their immigration.

In addition to being attacked, the East Indians experienced other types of racism such as stereotypes and hateful slurs. The Bellingham Herald, which was the newspaper at the time stated: “The Hindu is not a good citizen. It would require centuries to assimilate him, and this country need not take the trouble. Our racial burdens are already heavy enough to bear.” The paper went further to insult the intelligence and work skills of the Indians as well. Later, other papers contained insults and racial epithets as well.

After this, most of the Indian millworkers along with Chinese, Japanese and Filipino workers who fled from the riots never returned to Bellingham, Washington.

This racism faced by the Indians is an example of Oriental stereotyping. The millworkers were viewed as coolies or low wage laborers. They posed a threat to the white working man which helped create an emergence of the working class identity. The riot was a act of class consciousness with a purpose to degrade the Asian’s national and racial identity.

1884: Tape vs. Hurley

The case Tape vs. Hurley occurred in 1884 where Joseph and Mary Tape sued the San Francisco School Board over segregated schools. Joseph and Mary Tape were both immigrants from China who resided in San Francisco. Both had steady jobs, Joseph was a businessman and an interpreter for the Chinese consulate and Mary was an amateur photographer and artist. Their child, Mamie Tape was eight years old at the time when they tried to enroll her at the all-white Spring Valley Public School. Her admission was denied because of her Chinese descent despite the fact that she was American born and thus a citizen. Joseph and Mary immediately took the issue to California’s Supreme Court and sued the San Francisco Board of Education. They stated that the school’s decision violated the California Political code which says:

"Every school, unless otherwise provided by law, must be open for the admission of all children between six and twenty-one years of age residing in the district; and the board of trustees, or city board of education, have power to admit adults and children not residing in the district, whenever good reasons exist therefor. Trustees shall have the power to exclude children of filthy or vicious habits, or children suffering from contagious or infectious diseases."

The school officials defended their position by arguing that the California constitution declared Chinese people to be, “dangerous to the well-being of the state,” and therefore the city had no obligation to educate Chinese students.

The judge at the time, Justice McGuire handed down the decision in favor of the Tape family. He wrote:

"To deny a child, born of Chinese parents in this state, entrance to the public schools would be a violation of the law of the state and the Constitution of the United States."

Despite the fact that the Justice ruled in favor of the Tapes and Mamie’s acceptance to Spring Valley School, the family still experienced racism. The San Francisco school board officials lobbied for a separate school system for Chinese and other “Mongolian,” children. A bill was passed through the California State legislature which permitted the school board authority to establish the Oriental Public School in San Francisco. In 1859, “The Chinese School,” was created which Chinese children were assigned to. It was a Chinese-only school and Chinese children regardless if they were citizens or not were not permitted into any other public schools in San Francisco. This racism can be attributed to the Anti-Chinese sentiment and negative views held about Chinese people due to the Chinese Exclusion Act.

Link to documentary of Mamie Tape’s Case:

http://www.cetel.org/mamietape.html

Racial discrimination - Korean American

The first group of Koreans to the United States officially came to Hawaii in 1903, Dr. Horace Allen was a medical doctor who developed his close relationship with King Kojong. He is one of the influential Americans who initiated and made possible the Korean labor immigration to Hawaii.
102 Korean migrants arrive in Hawaii, they involved Hawaii sugar plantation labor.

Korean American is one of the ethnic minority groups residing in the United States. The United States' first Korean American, Peter Chang, is born in October. His life is the history of Korean immigrants. His mother boarded one of Korea's first immigrant boats, the Gallic, in 1903, well into pregnancy, and gave birth to Chang at the Crusaders Hospital in Oakland near San Francisco, as Chang became the first Korean-American.
Chang considers himself 100 percent Korean and 100 percent American. He is a citizen of the United States, but he cannot escape from being a Korean, which is what makes him a quintessential "Korean-American."
"My father (Chang Hong-bong) was a ginseng trader who escaped to the United States to flee Japan's imperialism, but he also disliked the racism of America that only gave Asians dirty bottom work," Peter Chang explained. "So he took the family to Shanghai, China, and went back and forth between China and Australia selling ginseng before he met with a sea accident."
While Chang was working as a waiter at a restaurant in Shanghai, he met a Mr. Cunningham, the U.S. consul-general in Shanghai, who helped the 18-year old who spoke fluent English get on a boat to the United States. En route, he learned navigation skills and earned an AB certificate as soon as he got off the boat.
Chang enlisted in the U.S. Navy and became a sailor in 1922. He wanted to enter the U.S. Naval Academy, but he was not given the chance to apply because of racial discrimination. Chang chose torpedo school and submarine school and graduated both at the head of his class. Afterward, he became a torpedo specialist in the U.S. Navy.

Likewise, Perter Chang's experience could be one of the examples of the racial discrimination in the American society. Even he has spent his all life in the United States, he cannot escape from being a Korean. Thus, the reason why many ethnic minority groups to be a model minority.

Anti-Chinese riot- Rock Springs, Wyoming

In Rock Springs, Wyoming on September 2, 1885, riots broke out between Chinese immigrant miners and white immigrant miners. The riots were due to the large amount of racial tension that existed between the two groups. This was because the Chinese miners were getting hired more that the white immigrant miners. This was because the Chinese were getting paid less than the other white miners. So the selfish white miners, who were already getting paid more that the Chinese, began to mistreat the Chinese miners. 150 white miners sparked the riot that caused the death of 28 Chinese miners, left 15 wounded, and 75 Chinese homes were burned to the ground. The attacks on the Chinese were extremely violent and portrayed sheer brutality. Not only was there physical human damage, but also the physical property damage was estimated at around $150, 000 worth of damage that the US had to pay.

The riot brought about wide spread media coverage and made the Anti-Chinese riot a diplomatic and political issue. The Rock Springs riot brought change and awareness to Anti-Chinese violence in the west, the mining industry, and it even potentially affected trade between China and the US.

Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882

Large numbers of Chinese immigrants came to the United States in 1848 due to the California Gold Rush and in the 1860s with the construction of the Central Pacific Railroad and the Transcontinental Railroad. The Chinese came over as laborers and at first, were well received. However, when the Gold Rush began to fade, there was still a large population of Chinese laborers, who became know as coolies. The large population of Chinese immigrants moved into cities like San Francisco working low wage jobs. Animosity began to form towards the Chinese because they began to increasingly grown in population and were taking jobs in a post Civil War economy.

All of these events lead to the passing of the Chinese Exclusion of 1882 by the US Congress and President Chester Arthur. The Chinese Exclusion Act stopped the immigration of Chinese laborers for 10 years. Along with the stop on immigration, the US also prohibited US citizenship for Chinese immigrants who were already in the US and deported many people back to China. If a Chinese person living in America at this time wanted to go see their family in China, they would most likely not be let back in to the US. So this means that most who chose to stay in the US during this time weren’t able to see their families for 10 years. After the 10 years of the Chinese Exclusion Act, Congress amended it for another 10 years unter the Geary Act. This act regulated Chinese immigration until the 1920s.

The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 place Chinese representation on the map. They were already a huge factor in the economy of California due to the Gold Rush and the Central Pacific Railroad. The exclusion of the Chinese laborers lead to boycotts and court cases. Republican Senator George Frisbie Hoar stated that Chinese exclusion is "nothing less than the legalization of racial discrimination."

Japanese Americans in Hawaii and the Sugar Boom

The Hawaiian sugar industry in the 1880s was a booming business. In contrast to Japan’s painful transition to a modern economy that had widespread unemployment, bankruptcy, and civil disorder Hawaii appealed to many Japanese that were looking for work because of the many job opportunities with the sugar boom. From 1884 to 1894, over 28,000 Japanese emigrants migrated to Hawaii, the majority being single men. As opposed to the first wave of Japanese to Hawaii who were from Yokohama, this second wave of emigrants were farmers and farm laborers who intended to emigrate as temporary workers instead of the typical work-settlers.

As years passed, three quarters of the Japanese emigrants moved back to Japan. Hawaiian plantation owners, anticipating the American laws against contract laborers in 1900, imported 26,000 contract laborers from Japan in 1899 in order to beat the ban (the largest ever admitted in a single year). However, the contracts were voided under U.S. law and left thousands of Japanese free to migrate to the mainland. Even with this opportunity, many Japanese chose to stay in Hawaii. Even up until 1910, there were four times as many Japanese residents in Hawaii as in the American mainland. One of the primary reasons many Japanese chose to stay was that race relations in Hawaii were much better than that in the mainland.

At a time when Japanese immigrants were virtually non-existent on the mainland, a small group of native-born Japanese ancestry grew in Hawaii. By 1910, the native-born Japanese were about one-third as big as the foreign-born Japanese in Hawaii; this was considered a huge increase when compared to the less than seven percent total on the mainland. Japanese American race relations with larger society were to some extent shaped by the wake of the Chinese immigration wave to America. Both on the mainland and on the islands, the Chinese too had started as unskilled laborers and had worked their way up the social ladder to become small businessmen and were resented by their advancement and competitors. Hawaiian-native Japanese were seen, during this time, as welcomed labor substitutes for Chinese workers.

However, the rising success of Hawaiian-native Japanese was short-lived due to the widespread stereotype of Chinese as “Yellow Peril,” soon all Japanese and Japanese Americans would also be clumped into this stereotype. This racial lumping of Asians and Asian Americans threatened the living standards of White American society, especially businessmen. Due to the feared outcomes of the “Yellow Peril” scare, laws were passed in Hawaii to block the movement of Japanese into positions of skilled occupations and their purchasing of land in California.

Upon their arrival to Hawaii, many Japanese gained their economic foothold in agriculture and working as contract-laborers. After their eventual acquisition of land and farming, many whites saw them as formidable competitors. On the farms where laborers were paid by the amount that they collected, Japanese earned significantly more through their hard work and longer work hours. Through the generations of Japanese emigrants that continued to stay in Hawaii and the American mainland, many Japanese Americans today still attribute their ancestry to those who left Japan in search of a better life and endured tremendous hardships so that future generations would have a better life. Since this Japanese emigration wave from 1884-1894, Hawaii was and still has the largest single population of Japanese outside of Japan, which accounts for nearly 15% of the entire state.

Wong Kim Ark v U.S.

Wong Kim Ark (黃金德; Toisanese: wong gim 'ak; Cantonese: wong gam dak; Mandarin: huáng jīn dé) was born in San Francisco, California, sometime between 1868 and 1873. His father, Wong Si Ping and his mother, Wee Lee were immigrants from Taishan, China and were not United States citizens.

Wong’s case is influential to Asian American Popular Culture due to his court case’s effect on all Asian Americans born in the United States today. In 1890, Wong’s parents returned to live back in China. To his surprise, Wong found himself back in the states that year and was allowed back into the United States on the grounds, “upon the sole reason that he was a native-born citizen of the United States.”

Four years later, unfortunately the immigration circumstances had changed and Wong, who was a San Francisco cook at the time, sailed to China for a temporary visit in 1894. After his visit, Wong traveled back to San Francisco only to find that he was to be detained at the Port of San Francisco by the Collector of Customs and denied permission to enter the country because Wong was now considered “not a citizen” due to the fact that his parents were not U.S. citizens. This came as a shock to Wong since he was born and raised in the city and county of San Francisco. According to the logic of U.S. customs at the time, Wong’s parents and all other descendents of first generation Chinese immigrants were subjects of the Emperor of China and not to be considered loyal to America. Since the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act that was placed by congress prohibited all persons of Chinese descent from coming to the United States or becoming naturalized citizens, Wong was previously able to enter the country though the fact that he was a natural born citizen.

Seeing this problem as one that affected all Chinese American citizens, Wong challenged this situation with the Supreme Court case “Wong Kim Ark v. US,” which called upon to decide whether an American-born person of Chinese decent could constitutionally be denied U.S. citizenship and be excluded from the country. Chief Justice Melville Fuller, who presided at the hearings expanded on the idea that the history of U.S. citizenship law had broken with the idea of English law tradition; thus embracing the U.S. right of expatriation and the rejecting the British doctrine of perpetual alliance.

After analyzing the evidence regarding Wong Kim Ark case, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Wong and also acknowledged the notion that children of foreigners that acquired U.S. citizenship through birth on U.S. soil should be granted full rights. Despite this ruling for all foreigners and their American born children, many saw Chinese individuals in a different light due to their strong cultural traditions which were discouraging to mainstream American society, the inevitable fact that pledging allegiance to U.S. citizenship was a capital crime in China, and that the current provisions of the Chinese Exclusion act made Chinese immigrants already in the country still ineligible for citizenship.