By Raymond Douglas Chong, AsAmNews Staff Writer
Early Chinese Immigration
During the mid-19th century, desperate Chinese men of the rural Sye Yup region of Kwangtung province sought their fortune, at a promise land across the Pacific Ocean. America was known as Gum Saan – Gold Mountain. They arrived in two major waves, the California Gold Rush (1848 to 1855) and the First Transcontinental Railroad (1865 to 1869), at bustling port of the First City – San Francisco.
The sojourners, pioneers and adventurers doggedly pursued their American dreams in the wild American West. They mined for gold and silver in the rivers and hills. They built the railroad lines across the wilderness. They put up the river levees of the Sacramento Delta. They farmed at fields, gardens and orchards of the virgin lands. They cooked dishes and washed laundry at Chinatowns.
The Chinese unfortunately faced the ugly scourge of racism. The Whites bitterly harassed and attacked them across the American West. They cruelly called them as celestials and heathens, from an exotic land. They fervently called for their immigration and naturalization ban. The Anti-Chinese Sentiment of the Yellow peril was pervasive in American society. Very few American defended the civil rights of the Chinese.
Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass, a prominent African American abolitionist against American slavery in the South, was a defender of the Chinese. He was nationally known as an elegant orator and an insightful writer. He escaped slavery in 1838. He was self-educated to read and write. After end of the American Civil War in 1865, Douglass was a leading advocate for American civil rights.
Douglass was widely heard and read for his impassioned speeches, as well as poignant quotes:
If there is no struggle, there is no progress.
It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.
I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong.
It is not light that we need, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake.
The “Composite Nation” Speech
At Boston, in his Composite Nation Speech (1869), Douglass eloquently argued for Chinese and Japanese immigration to America. He strongly declared America as a “composite nation” with immigration as a fundamental human right.
The Chinese in themselves have first rate recommendations. They are industrious, docile, cleanly, frugal; they are dexterious of hand, patient of toil, marvelously gifted in the power of imitation, and have but few wants. Those who have carefully observed their habits in California, say they can subsist upon what would be almost starvation to others.
I have said that the Chinese will come, and have given some reasons why we may expect them in very large numbers in no very distant future. Do you ask, if I favor such immigration, I answer I would. Would you have them naturalized, and have them invested with all the rights of American citizenship? I would. Would you allow them to vote? I would. Would you allow them to hold office? I would.
The fact that the Chinese and other nations desire to come and do come, is a proof of their capacity for improvement and of their fitness to come. There are such things in the world as human rights. They rest upon no conventional foundation, but are external, universal, and indestructible. Among these, is the right of locomotion; the right of migration; the right which belongs to no particular race, but belongs alike to all and to all alike. It is the right you assert by staying here, and your fathers asserted by coming here. It is this great right that I assert for the Chinese and Japanese, and for all other varieties of men equally with yourselves, now and forever.
Let the Chinaman come; he will help to augment the national wealth. He will help to develop our boundless resources; he will help to pay off our national debt. He will help to lighten the burden of national taxation. He will give us the benefit of his skill as a manufacturer and tiller of the soil, in which he is unsurpassed.
We shall spread the network of our science and civilization over all who seek their shelter whether from Asia, Africa, or the Isles of the sea. We shall mold them all, each after his kind, into Americans; Indian and Celt; negro and Saxon; Latin and Teuton; Mongolian and Caucasian; Jew and Gentile; all shall here bow to the same law, speak the same language, support the same Government, enjoy the same liberty, vibrate with the same national enthusiasm, and seek the same national ends.
Chinese Exclusion Act
On May 6,1882, Congress passed the first Chinese Exclusion Act and President Chester Arthur signed it- the first federal law in America that restricted immigration based on nationality or race.
Afterwards, racist Whites governments restricted the civil rights of the Chinese. White mobs massacred Chinese, including Hells Canyon and Rock Springs.
Congress finally repealed the Chinese Exclusion Act and subsequent amendments in 1943 with the passage of the Magnuson Act, otherwise known as the Chinese Exclusion Repeal Act of 1943.
On October 3, 1965, at Liberty Island in front of the colossal Statue of Liberty in New York City, President Lyndon Baines Johnson signed the landmark Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, also known as Hart-Celler Act. The public law abolished the national origins quota system that was biased for Northwest Europeans and directly excluded immigration of Eastern and Southern Asians to America.
In 1965, the Chinese and Japanese officially became Americans of Frederick Douglass’ “composite nation.”
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