The Chinese Historical Society of America and the Chinese American Citizens Alliance present "To Enjoy and Defend Our American Citizenship" In the 1880s, the federal government passes legislation that removes the equal protection under the law provided by the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. Racial discrimination and violent attacks intensify throughout the next decades, and community m...

List of the articles and authors of the first twenty years of "Chinese America: History & Perspectives -- The Journal of the Chinese Historical Society of America". Listed by year (one volume per year). The 2008 volume is a special issue, "Labor and San Francisco's Garment Industry", covering labor guilds, labor unions, and other oragnizing, from 1870 (and earlier) to now. Issues...

call for submissions to the 2009 special issue of "Chinese America: History & Perspectives -- The Journal of the Chinese Historical Society of America" It was in 1969, after preparing with CHSA co-founder Thomas Chinn "A History of the Chinese in California", a compilation of primary source materials which, with its identification and analysis of relevant archival items, remains a core work,...

“Reflections on Exclusion: We Punish Boat People” by Bill Ong Hing

The first major immigration legislation in the United States, a law to exclude people of Chinese descent. In 1882 Congress passed the nation’s first immigration legislation—a law to prevent people of Chinese descent from entering the United States. The law would tear apart families, cut the nation’s Chinese American population in half, and remove their right to become U.S. citizens. Rem...

Proclaimed by The Chronicle of Higher Education as "the Scholar who legitimized the study of Chinese America," Him Mark Lai has been at the core of many community institutions as well as a pivotal figure for the Chinese Historical Society of America (CHSA). CHSA is proud to unveil a project about Him Mark Lai's scholarship and determination to record and celebrate the lives of the descendants o...

“It is impossible to preserve the integrity of a government like ours if we deny to any class in our community the equal protection of the laws.” — Patrick J. Healy and Ng Poon Chew, 1905, “A Statement for Non-Exclusion” On the 125th Anniversary of the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act, the Chinese Historical Society of America’s Remembering 1882 project combines a traveling exhibit,...