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 for 10 years. The law made exceptions for merchants, teachers, students, travelers, and diplomats. The Chinese Exclusion Act was the first major U.S. law ever implemented to prevent all members of a specific national group from immigrating to the United States, and therefore helped shape twentieth-century race-based immigration policy.
The Gentlemen's Agreement of 1907 was an informal agreement between the United States of America and the Empire of Japan whereby Japan would not allow laborers further emigration to the United States and the United States would not impose restrictions on Japanese immigrants already present in the country. The goal was to reduce tensions between the two Pacific nations such as those that followed the Pacific Coast race riots of 1907 and the segregation of Japanese students in public schools. The agreement was not a treaty and so was not voted on by the United States Congress. It was superseded by the Immigration Act of 1924.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 one of the largest Chinese enclaves outside Asia. It is also the oldest and largest of the four notable Chinese enclaves within San Francisco. Since its establishment in the early 1850s, it has been important and influential in the history and culture of ethnic Chinese immigrants in North America. Chinatown is an enclave that has retained its own customs, languages, places of worship, social clubs, and identity.
The Asiatic Exclusion League was an organization formed in the early 20th century in the United States and Canada that aimed to prevent immigration of people of Asian origin.
The Chinatown neighborhood in Oakland, California, 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 in the California Gold Rush of the 1850s and the Central Pacific Railroad in the 1860s. They also worked as laborers in Western mines. They suffered racial discrimination at every level of White society. Many Americans were stirred to anger by the "Yellow Peril" rhetoric. Despite provisions for equal treatment of Chinese immigrants in the 1868 Burlingame Treaty between the U.S. and China, political and labor organizations rallied against "cheap Chinese labor".
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. The association's clientele were Chinese immigrants of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, mainly from eight districts on the west side of the Pearl River Delta in Guangdong, southern China, and their descendants. The later wave of Chinese immigrants, after 1965, who came from a much wider area in China, did not experience the level of hostility faced by the pioneers and did not join the CCBA, which greatly lessened its influence.
The Miss Chinatown USA pageant, based on Chinese communities within the U.S., greets delegates around the country. The pageant has been an annual Lunar New Year event since 1958. The winners of this pageant represent the Chinese community and act as ambassadors promoting Chinese culture and heritage.
Him Mark Lai was a historian of Chinese American, 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.
Chinatowns are enclaves of Chinese people outside of China. The first Chinatown in the United States was San Francisco's Chinatown in 1848, and many other Chinatowns were established in the 19th century by the Chinese diaspora on the West Coast. By 1875, Chinatowns had emerged in eastern cities such as New York City, Boston, Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 barred Chinese immigration to the United States, but the Magnuson Act of 1943 repealed it, and the population of Chinatowns began to rise again.
As of 2012, 21.4% of the population in San Francisco was of Chinese descent, and there were 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. Please note: this is a very incomplete timeline, notably lacking LGBTQ-specific items from the 1800s to 1970s, and should not be used as a research resource until additional material is added.
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.
Asian American activism broadly refers to the political movements and social justice activities involving Asian Americans. Since the first wave of Asian immigration to the United States, Asians have been actively engaged in social and political organizing. The early Asian American activism was mainly organized in response to the anti-Asian racism and Asian exclusion laws in the late-nineteenth century, but during this period, there was no sense of collective Asian American identity. Different ethnic groups organized in their own ways to address the discrimination and exclusion laws separately. It was not until the 1960s when the collective identity was developed from the civil rights movements and different Asian ethnic groups started to come together to fight against anti-Asian racism as a whole.
Anti-Chinese violence in California includes a number of massacres, riots, expulsions and other violent actions that were directed at Chinese American communities in the 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.
