Birth of the Corporate Person
The defining of corporations as legal “persons” entitled to Fourteenth Amendment rights got a leg up from the fight over a California anti-Chinese immigrant law.
Birth of A National Immigration Policy
Until the Civil War, regulating immigration to the US was left to individual states. That changed with Emancipation and the legal end of slavery.
Traveling Through Time and Space in the Richmond Night Market
A night market in suburban Vancouver originated with Chinese immigrants, but its structure and management have raised questions over its supposed authenticity.
The End of Asian Exclusion, the Beginning of Caribbean Exclusion
The 1952 McCarran-Walter Act allowed first-generation Japanese American immigrants to become US citizens while keeping African Caribbean immigrants out.
From Bond Maid to Pioneering Chinese Businesswoman
Raised as a servant girl, Lai Ngan grew up to become a cigar maker, own a boarding house, and run grocery stores in the American Southwest.
How Arab-Americans Stopped Being White
With the emergence of the US as a global superpower in the twentieth-century, anti-Palestinian stereotypes in the media bled over to stigmatize Arab Americans.
American Immigrant Literature Gets an Update
Despite the historical gulf between canonical and recent immigrant writing, one constant is the mark that new immigrant artists leave on US literature.
The First Vietnamese in America
Before 1945, many Vietnamese migrants to the United States were laborers. One was Ho Chi Minh.
Putting Garbage Out of Sight
Recycling has always been something most people would prefer to keep at arm's length.
Immigrants and Politics in the 1890s and Today
A comparison between immigration policies in the 1890s and today.