In this activity, students use a range of primary and secondary sources about San Francisco's Chinatown (1880s-1920) to explore what the community meant to residents and to outsiders.

In this political cartoon from Harper's Weekly magazine, illustrator Thomas Nast portrays the figure of Columbia, a symbol of American democracy, comforting and protecting a Chinese man from a working-class immigrant mob. Nast likely created the text…

In this "Workingmen's Address," published in 1878, Dennis Kearney of the Workingman's Party of California appealed to racist arguments against Chinese immigrants. After excoriating the fraud, corruption, and monopolization of land by the "moneyed…

In the 19th century, Asian Americans faced widespread hostility. In this 1898 flyer, the labor movement claimed that Asian-American workers "[lowered] standards of living and of morals." Particularly in the West, union organizers agitated for the…

The "divide-and-conquer" tactics used by bosses pitted different ethnic groups against one another and native-born workers against all immigrants. It often worked out better for white workers than for Asians. Charles Crocker, one of the "Big Four"…

In the midst of debating the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, which concerned the rights of all Americans, regardless of race, to become citizens and vote, Senator Charles Sumner often urged more liberal and democratic application of the law. In…

In this interview, Thomas Chinn (1909-1997), an American-born son of Chinese immigrants, recalls the choices his parents made in the face of anti-Chinese discrimination and violence. Chinn was founder, publisher, and editor of the Chinese Digest, the…

In this interview, Thomas Chinn (1909-1997) recalls his parents' experiences as Chinese immigrants in white-dominated American society. Chinn was founder, publisher, and editor of the Chinese Digest, the first English-language weekly newspaper for…

In this activity, students watch short clips of the PBS/A Bill Moyers Special production of Becoming American: The Chinese Experience (2003). The documentary clips and accompanying materials cover the arrival of Chinese in California, their work on…

Wong Kim Ark, a Chinese-American born in San Francisco, was required under the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 to acquire this Certificate of Registration before leaving the country on an 1894 trip to China so that he would be allowed back into the…