An Arduous Journey of Early Chinese Americans

Abstract

After the state of California discovered gold in 1848, a gold rush immediately rolled out and spread across North America. But most laborers from the east coast did not want to go to California and only the white Irish workers were drawn to the West because they were smeared as “dirty whites” in the east coast. To attract more laborers to toil in the gold mines, employers began seeking immigrants from China. Unlike white workers, Chinese laborers did not want to stay in the US for very long time and all they wanted was making enough money to buy homes and marry a woman in China. They were willing to work longer time for less, which draw ire from their fellow white workers. Because white workers had voting rights, congressmen in California sided with white workers against Chinese laborers by passing a number of discriminative laws that culminated in the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act. The law virtually banned all Chinese laborers to enter the US until 1943 when China became a wartime ally of the US. Some Chinese including Wong Kim Ark successfully challenged the law by capitalizing on the US legal system. The long and difficult journey of Chinese immigrants finally ran its course in the 1960s thanks to the Civil Right Movement.