The Chinese Exclusion Act was a United States federal law signed by President Chester A. Arthur on May 6, 1882, prohibiting all immigration of Chinese laborers. Building on the earlier Page Act of 1875 which banned Chinese women from immigrating to the United States, the Chinese Exclusion Act was the first, and remains the only, law to have been implemented to prevent all members of a specific ethnic or national group from immigrating to the United States.
The Gentlemen's Agreement of 1907 was an informal agreement between the United States of America and the Empire of Japan whereby the United States would not impose restrictions on Japanese immigration and Japan would not allow further emigration to the United States. The goal was to reduce tensions between the two Pacific nations. The agreement was never ratified by the United States Congress and was superseded by the Immigration Act of 1924.
The Chinatown centered on Grant Avenue and Stockton Street in San Francisco, California, is the oldest Chinatown in North America and the largest Chinese enclave outside Asia. It is also the oldest and largest of the four notable Chinese enclaves within San Francisco. Since its establishment in 1848, it has been highly important and influential in the history and culture of ethnic Chinese immigrants in North America. Chinatown is an enclave that continues to retain its own customs, languages, places of worship, social clubs, and identity. There are two hospitals, several parks and squares, numerous churches, a post office, and other infrastructure. Recent immigrants, many of whom are elderly, opt to live in Chinatown because of the availability of affordable housing and their familiarity with the culture. San Francisco's Chinatown is also renowned as a major tourist attraction, drawing more visitors annually than the Golden Gate Bridge.
The Asiatic Exclusion League was an organization formed in the early twentieth century in the United States and Canada that aimed to prevent immigration of people of Asian origin.
The Japanese American Citizens League is an Asian American civil rights charity, headquartered in San Francisco, with regional offices across the United States.
The Chinatown neighborhood in Oakland, California（Chinese: 屋崙華埠), is traditionally Chinese which reflects Oakland's diverse Chinese American, and more broadly Asian American community. It is frequently referred to as "Oakland Chinatown" in order to distinguish it from nearby San Francisco's Chinatown. It lies at an elevation of 39 feet.
The history of Chinese Americans or the history of ethnic Chinese in the United States includes three major waves of Chinese immigration to the United States, beginning in the 19th century. Chinese immigrants in the 19th century worked as laborers, particularly on transcontinental railroads such as the Central Pacific Railroad. They came not only for the gold rush in California, but were also hired to help build the First Transcontinental Railroad. They also worked as laborers in mining and suffered racial discrimination at every level of society. Industrial employers were eager for this new and cheap labor. This resulted in many white people losing their jobs and were stirred to anger by the "yellow peril." Despite provisions for equal treatment of Chinese immigrants in the 1868 Burlingame Treaty, political and labor organizations rallied against immigrants of what they regarded as a degraded race and "cheap Chinese labor."
Dr. Charles Goodall Lee was an American dentist, and the first licensed Chinese American dentist in California. Lee financed the building of the Chinese American Citizens Alliance lodge in Oakland, California. He graduated from the School of Dentistry at University of the Pacific.
This is an alphabetical index of topics related to Asian Americans.
The Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association (CCBA) is a historical Chinese association established in various parts of the United States and Canada with large Chinese communities. It is also known by other names, such as Chong Wa Benevolent Association in Seattle, Washington and United Chinese Society in Honolulu, Hawaii. The association's clientele were the Chinese immigrants of the late 19th century and their descendents. The new wave of Chinese immigration after 1965 did not join the CCBA, which greatly lessened its influence.
Him Mark Lai was a historian of Chinese America, a leader of the Chinese-American community, and writer. He helped restore the state of Chinese American historiography. Lai "rescued, collected, catalogued, preserved and shared" historical sources in Chinese and English. He was known as the "Dean of Chinese American history" by his academic peers, despite the fact that he was professionally trained as a mechanical engineer with no advanced training in the academic field of history. The Chronicle of Higher Education named Lai "the scholar who legitimized the study of Chinese America".
Walter Uriah Lum was a Chinese American leader, newspaper editor, educator and an advocate for Chinese American civil rights.
You Chung Hong was an American attorney and community leader who was the second Chinese American lawyer admitted to practice law in the state of California, having passed the bar examination in 1923 before he became the first Chinese American graduate of the University of Southern California Law School. Chan Chung Wing was the first Chinese American to become a member of the California Bar in 1918. Hong played a major role in the development of Chinatown in Los Angeles, helping rebuild the community after it was relocated to accommodate the construction of Union Station in the 1930s.
Founded in 1972, the Asian Law Caucus (ALC) is the U.S.'s first legal aid and civil rights organization serving the low-income Asian Pacific American communities. The ALC focuses housing rights, immigration and immigrant rights, labor and employment issues, student advocacy (ASPIRE), civil rights and hate violence, national security, and criminal reform.
This article contains a list of the Chinatowns, which are either officially designated neighborhoods or historically important, in the United States. Historically speaking, many of these Chinatowns were formed in the 1800s Chinese diaspora and have served as ethnic Chinese enclaves.
As of 2012, 21.4% of the population in San Francisco was of Chinese descent, and at least 150,000 Chinese American residents. The Chinese are the largest Asian American subgroup in San Francisco. San Francisco has the highest percentage of residents of Chinese descent of any major U.S. city, and the second largest Chinese American population, after New York City. The San Francisco Area is 7.9% Chinese American, with many residents in Oakland and Santa Clara County. San Francisco's Chinese community has ancestry mainly from Guangdong province, China and Hong Kong, although there is a sizable population of ethnic Chinese with ancestry from other parts of mainland China and Taiwan as well.
This is a timeline of notable events in the history of non-heterosexual conforming people of Asian and Pacific Islander ancestry, who may identify as LGBTIQGNC, men who have sex with men, or related culturally-specific identities. This timeline includes events both in Asia and the Pacific Islands and in the global Asian and Pacific Islander diaspora, as the histories are very deeply linked.
The National Queer Asian Pacific Islander Alliance (NQAPIA) is an American federation of Asian American, South Asian, Southeast Asian. and Pacific Islander LGBTQ organizations. NQAPIA was formed in 2007, as an outgrowth of the LGBT APA Roundtable working groups at the 2005 National Gay Lesbian Task Force Creating Change Conference in Oakland, California. NQAPIA seeks to build the capacity of local LGBT AAPI organizations, invigorate grassroots organizing, develop leadership, and challenge homophobia, racism, and anti-immigrant bias. The organization "focuses on grass-roots organizing and leadership development."
Sexuality, including same-sex sexuality, and other non-normative forms of sexuality have been central to the history of Chinatown, San Francisco. San Francisco's Chinatown, founded in 1848, is the first and largest in the United States. San Francisco was shaped by early Chinese immigrants, who came from the Guangdong province of southern China. These immigrants gathered in the Bay Area in order to join in the California Gold Rush and to build railroads in the American west. San Francisco's Chinatown made room for these early Chinese immigrants to live, and the area turned into a "bachelor society", where female prostitution was pervasive because of the Chinese Exclusion Act. As a racialized immigration region, Chinatown was viewed as an immoral place with the characteristics of "vice", "sluttery" and "sexual deviance" for a long time. These traits were incompatible with the mainstream culture and dominant norms of American society. From the mid-19th century, the state problematized Chinese female prostitution with the subject of sexual transmission, and the government began to go against industrial prostitution in Chinatown, as well as Chinese immigration. As the sex industry grew throughout the Bay Area, the government had to stop the anti-prostitution and anti-immigration law in the beginning of the 20th century. Just like the Castro district and other areas, Chinatown developed its own sexual industries and provided a variety of sexual entertainment to both immigrants and white visitors.
Anti-Chinese violence in California includes a number of massacres, riots, expulsions and other violent actions that were directed at Chinese-American communities during the mid and late 19th century. The attacks on Chinese were often sparked by labor disputes. In the 1880s alone, Chinese communities were attacked in 34 towns in California, often resulting in the local Chinatown being looted and burned by a white thugs.
