The Chinese in America
The harshest response against immigration came against the Chinese. In the West, violence against the Chinese was commonplace. White workers feared that Chinese laborers would take jobs away from them and contaminate their cities with vice and drugs. Based on racist assumptions of uncivilized Chinese, the exclusion act of 1882 banned Chinese from entering the country. In 1885, not long after passage of this law, one Chinese resident of New York, Saum Song Bo, used the occasion of the celebration of the Statue of Liberty to express disappointment in his adopted country. Soon after, in its decision in Yick Wo v. Hopkins, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the right of Chinese to equal protection of the law.
Saum Song Bo | “A Chinese View of the Statue of Liberty” 1885
SIR: A paper was presented to me yesterday for inspection, and I found it to be specially drawn up for subscription among my countrymen toward the Pedestal Fund of the . . . Statue of Liberty. Seeing that the heading is an appeal to American citizens, to their love of country and liberty. . . . But the word liberty makes me think of the fact that this country is the land of liberty for men of all nations except the Chinese. I consider it as an insult to us Chinese to call on us to contribute toward building in this land a pedestal for a statue of Liberty. That statue represents Liberty holding a torch which lights the passage of those of all nations who come into this country. But are the Chinese allowed to come? As for the Chinese who are here, are they allowed to enjoy liberty as men of all other nationalities enjoy it? Are they allowed to go about everywhere free from the insults, abuse, assaults, wrongs and injuries from which men of other nationalities are free?
. . . Whether this statute [Exclusion Act] against the Chinese or the statue to Liberty will be the more lasting monument to tell future ages of the liberty and greatness of this country, will be known only to future generations.
Liberty, we Chinese do love and adore thee; but let not those who deny thee to us, make of thee a graven image and invite us to bow down to it.
Source: Saum Song Bo, “A Chinese View of the Statue of Liberty,” American Missionary 39, no. 10 (1885): 290.
Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 1886
Mr. Justice [Stanley] Matthews delivered the opinion of the court
[I]n 1880, San Francisco passed a fire-safety ordinance that all laundries operating in wooden buildings be licensed or the owners would risk criminal penalties. After the city government refused to grant licenses to nearly all Chinese laundries while approving those run by whites, Yick Wo, the owner of one rejected establishment, refused to close his business and was prosecuted.
[P]etitioners have complied with every requisite, deemed by the law or by the public officers charged with its administration, necessary for the protection of neighboring property from fire, or as a precaution against injury to the public health. No reason whatever, except the will of the supervisors, is assigned why they should not be permitted to carry on, in the accustomed manner, their harmless and useful occupation, on which they depend for a livelihood. And while this consent of the supervisors is withheld from them and from two hundred others who have also petitioned, all of whom happen to be Chinese subjects, eighty others, not Chinese subjects, are permitted to carry on the same business under similar conditions. The fact of this discrimination is admitted. No reason for it is shown, and the conclusion cannot be resisted, that no reason for it exists except hostility to the race and nationality to which the petitioners belong, and which in the eye of the law is not justified. The discrimination is, therefore, illegal, and the public administration which enforces it is a denial of the equal protection of the laws and a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution. The imprisonment of the petitioners is, therefore, illegal, and they must be discharged.
Source: Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U.S. 356, 374 (1886).
Interpret the Evidence
Why does Saum Song Bo believe the sentiments of the Statue of Liberty do not apply to the treatment of Chinese?
According to Justice Matthews, why does the treatment of Chinese laundrymen violate the Fourteenth Amendment?
Put It in Context
What were American attitudes toward Chinese immigrants in the nineteenth century? What pressures and changes influenced these views?
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