California's Enduring Diversity

After years of researching California history, I am still struck by the state’s long-standing population diversity and cultural vibrancy. To come across an image such as this one reminds me that the state’s cultural richness is sometimes on parade, but is more often simply - and meaningfully - woven into all we see around us and in images from the past.

Mexican American caballero with the horse 'Puente,' La Fiesta, Los Angeles; General Subjects Photography collection; PC-GS; California Historical Society. 

In the fourth grade, students begin the year by studying California’s native peoples from the Pre-Columbian to the Mexican Rancho period, and learn that their lives varied considerably from one geographic region to the next, and that there were approximately 100 distinct dialects in use. The curriculum continues with an examination of the different European explorers arriving in California from the sixteenth century onward. Fourth graders also study the gold rush, when a truly global population descended upon the U.S. territory. Following these investigations of California’s rich diversity, the new History-Social Science Framework adopted by the CA State Board of Education poses a question to accompany the next content standard: “What was life like for California’s diverse population at the turn of the century?”

For the Teaching California curriculum project, the California Historical Society (CHS) and the California History-Social Science Project (CHSSP) are working together to identify and contextualize primary sources that illuminate California, U.S., and world history, and to align these with the new Framework. For this particular Framework question on California’s diverse population at the turn of the twentieth century, we are drawing from the CHS’s rich collection of images and documents that provide insight into the opportunities many newcomers enjoyed, as well as the hardships that some experienced on account of their racial or ethnic backgrounds.

I was particularly struck by the record of a speech given by Rep. Cowdery in 1874 about the importance of integrating African-American - “Negro” - students in public schools. I learned that African-Americans in California organized as early as the 1870s to point out the difference between the rights recently afforded them in the 14th Amendment, and their children’s treatment in California’s segregated school system.

“Last fall there assembled at Sacramento a body of colored citizens, demanding all the rights their citizenship entitled them to.”

“Under…our political code the children of negroes must attend separate schools. This would not be objectionable, provided the State has furnished separate schools equal to those for white children…It is clear the State has not performed her duty in this respect.”

Students reading these words (with the historical context and literacy support provided) will learn that segregation in schools was common in these years, and that it was a group of parents who demanded better for their children. Teachers may choose to link this to the long struggle for civil rights in public schools, both in California and throughout the nation.

While students learn that these civil rights were not always realized quickly or fully (and in the case of the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, for instance, new barriers were erected), they also learn that people in California from many different backgrounds created numerous opportunities for themselves. This image of a Chinese float during the 1902 “La Fiesta” parade in Los Angeles, helps students see the long history of people honoring their cultures and sharing them with others through festivals like these that brought together California’s diverse peoples. 

Chinese Dragon. La Fiesta Parade, Los Angeles, Cal., 1902 May 2; General Subjects Photography collection; PC-GS; California Historical Society 

We find evidence of California’s turn-of-the-century population diversity in much more than these brief celebrations. In an era when newspapers were one of the only ways to communicate with a broad number of people, ethnic communities used this print media to stay connected and establish themselves within broader society. 

Various newspapers, 1879; Henry D. Cogswell Time Capsule Collection, MS 559; California Historical Society. 

Today’s students will no doubt identify with this language diversity. The California Department of Education identifies 65 different language groups spoken among the state’s public school students. Through the Teaching California project, we are striving to provide classroom materials that represent California’s historic population diversity. We believe that students will be more engaged in learning about the past when they can see themselves represented in California’s story. 

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This post comes from Shelley Alden Brooks, a scholar of California and environmental history. She holds a doctorate from the University of California, Davis, and together with the California History Social Science Project is developing history-social science curriculum for Teaching California. Comprised of curated primary source material from California's premier archives, libraries, and museums, Teaching California presents a research-based approach to improving student reading, writing, and critical thinking.

The Chinese Exclusion Act Revisited

“The Magic Washer . . . The Chinese Must Go,” c. 1886

Courtesy Library of Congress

“The Chinese Must Go,” asserted this late-19th-century ad for laundry detergent shortly after passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act. “We have no use for them since we got this WONDERFUL WASHER,” the advertisers explained, relying on widespread anti-Chinese sentiment to target a traditionally Chinese laundry business—one of many reasons why Uncle Sam should kick the Chinese out of the United States.

On May 1 this year, Assemblyman Phil Ting (Democrat, District 19, San Francisco) proposed Assembly Joint Resolution 14 marking May 6, 2017, as the 135th anniversary of the enactment of the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act. As the AJR 14 summary explains, the resolution would “recognize the harm caused by racially discriminatory immigration measures, and to honor the contributions of all immigrants and refugees who have enriched our communities.” 

Passed in 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act was the first significant law restricting immigration into the Unites States. Renewed in 1892, amended in 1902, and made permanent in 1904, it prevented Chinese laborers from entering the United States and denied a pathway to citizenship to Chinese immigrants for more than sixty years, until 1943, when Congress repealed the nation's exclusion acts.

First page of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882

Courtesy National Archives and Records Administration

Today, we remember the passage and impact of the Chinese Exclusion Act with this summary by noted historian Charles Wollenberg, an account with chilling relevance to the anti-immigrant sentiment our nation faces today.

—Shelly Kale

J. D. Borthwick (artist), Chinese Camp in the Mines, c. 1850s

California Historical Society

The Gold Rush began the heritage of Asian-Pacific Islander migration to the United States. By 1849, gold seekers were arriving from Hawaii and Australia, and Chinese began coming in large numbers in 1851–52. Before the end of the 1850s, they were the largest nonwhite group in the mining districts and already a major target of resentment and discrimination. As a result, Chinese often sought out occupations that served rather than competed against the white majority. In a largely male society, those occupations sometimes included what the nineteenth century defined as “women’s work,” including laundry, cooking and domestic service. Chinese also became low-wage manual laborers, and in that role served as the major workforce for construction of the western portion of the transcontinental railroad.

“A Chinese Laundry in San Francisco, California—The Coming Man Washing, Drying, Sprinkling, and Ironing Clothes”

Published in Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, May 14, 1870

Alfred A. Hart (Photographer), Heading of East Portal, Tunnel No. 8, from Donner Lake Railroad, Western Summit, c. 1867

Courtesy of Alfred A. Hart Photograph Collection, Stanford University

In the 1870s, Chinese labor also became central to the expansion of California agriculture and important in several urban industries.  But the seventies was a depression decade, and the hard times strengthened white fear of Chinese economic competition. The anti-Chinese movement became increasingly violent and politically powerful.  In 1882 Congress responded with passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act, banning almost all further Chinese immigration to the U.S.

Chinese Picking Grapes, Fair Oaks Ranch

Courtesy, The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, Photo Archives

The law was the first significant immigration restriction in American history, the first reversal of the principle of the Open Door. Ironically, the Statue of Liberty, the greatest symbol of America’s Open Door to immigrants, was under construction in 1882, just as the nation was turning away from that very principle. Chinese Exclusion began a forty-year process of increasing immigration restriction, which eventually applied to European migration as well. But it is important that the first target of restriction was the only significant nonwhite immigrant group coming to the United States at that time. And the major political and social pressure for Chinese exclusion came from California.

Thomas Nast, Pacific Chivalry, 1869

Published in Harper's Weekly, vol. 13, August 7, 1869

Chinese exclusion lasted for more than sixty years and produced a shortage of immigrant labor in California. In the 1890s, many California employers formerly dependent on Chinese labor turned to Japan as a new source of workers. Not surprisingly, by the early twentieth century, California’s well-established anti-Asian movement increasingly made Japanese immigration its primary target. Unlike 19th-century China, early-20th-century Japan was an emerging world power, and Japan’s new status produced political and diplomatic conflicts with the United States. Interethnic relations in California both reflected and reinforced these international tensions. Some influential Californians warned of a “Yellow Peril,” in which Japanese immigrants supposedly served as shock troops in a conspiracy threatening “white civilization” throughout the Pacific Basin.

—Charles Wollenberg

Immigration Officer D. D. Beatty used his 1894 journal to track Chinese immigrants
in Sierra County 

California Historical Society 

Activating historical memory recounted above, the ARJ 14 summary further notes that the measure would “declare the opposition of the Legislature to recent executive orders signed by President Trump relating to immigration, call upon the President to rescind those orders, condemn the expansion of deportations planned under the current administration, and reaffirm that the Legislature is open and welcoming to immigrants and refugees who are integral to life in our state.” 

As Erika Lee, Director of Immigration History Research Center, University of Minnesota, has written, “At a time when new government policies are deporting and banning new immigrants, remembering the consequences of this dark chapter in our history is more important than ever.”

Charles Wollenberg teaches history at Berkeley City College and is an Affiliated Scholar at the UCB Center for California Studies. He is a Fellow of the California Historical Society.

Shelly Kale is Publications and Strategic Projects Manager at the California Historical Society.

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Learn more about the Chinese Exclusion Act on the CHS blog:

• This Day in California History—The Chinese Exclusion Act: A Haunting Legacy, by Shelly Kale 
• Tracking Immigrants, Then and Now, by Erika Lee
• Certificates of Residence, by Marie Silva

This Day in California HistoryThe Chinese Exclusion Act: A Haunting Legacy

Group of Chinese Children, 1909 
California Historical Society

Over 130 years ago today, the United States passed legislation discriminating against Chinese immigrants. The Chinese Exclusion Act, approved May 6, 1882, drew from nearly four decades of anti-Chinese sentiment, especially in California. With its passage, people of Chinese descent seeking work in the United States could not enter the country for 10 years. The act also increased restrictions against Chinese immigrants already living in the United States. 

The Chinese Exclusion Act—our nation’s first law banning immigration on the basis of race and nationality—marked the beginning of a 60-year era of Chinese exclusion litigation. As some historians have pointed out, it “helped to shape twentieth-century United States race-based immigration policy.”