By eighteen eighty-two, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act. The Exclusion Act suspended the immigration of Chinese workers into the United States. This was the first law in American history to put restrictions on immigration targeting one nationality. Chinese people trying to enter the United States would say they were related to families already in America by using false documents. These immigrants who tried to prove their family history to American officials this way were called “paper sons.”
Immigration was not completely reopened until the Immigration Act of nineteen sixty-five.
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FAITH LAPIDUS: The museum tells about this history with personal photographs, documents, objects and videos. For example, a toy from the nineteenth century has two forms, a man in western clothing and a Chinese man. When you press the toy gun’s trigger, the western man kicks the Chinese man in the back. The racism represented by this object is hard to believe today. But it tells a great deal about social and political tensions during the late eighteen hundreds.
Another area has a collection of irons and other devices used for cleaning and pressing clothes in Chinese laundries. Working in such a laundry was known as the “eight-pound livelihood” because a person had to lift an iron weighing almost four kilograms all day.
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BOB DOUGHTY: The museum explores the complex situation of Chinese-Americans and how it has changed over time. For example, China became an ally of the United States during World War Two. But this alliance ended when China became a communist country in the nineteen fifties. And, the countries’ relationship changed again as China became a major trading partner.
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2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25