The Chinese Exclusion Act (1882)

This Day

Jody Avirgan & Radiotopia

History

4.6 • 982 Ratings

🗓️ 7 May 2024

⏱️ 18 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

It's May7th. This day in 1882, Congress passes the Chinese Exclusion Act, aimed at curbing Chinese immigration as fears about Asian immigrants threatening White American jobs is on the rise.

Jody, NIki, and Kellie discuss how the American economy relied on Chinese labor at the same time that policy sought to exclude Chinese immigrants -- and how the decades after the Civil War applied new pressures on race-based legislation around the country.

This Day In Esoteric Political History is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX.

Your support helps foster independent, artist-owned podcasts and award-winning stories.

If you want to support the show directly, you can do so on our website: ThisDayPod.com

Get in touch if you have any ideas for future topics, or just want to say hello. Follow us on social @thisdaypod

Our team: Jacob Feldman, Researcher/Producer; Brittani Brown, Producer; Khawla Nakua, Transcripts; music by Teen Daze and Blue Dot Sessions; Audrey Mardavich is our Executive Producer at Radiotopia

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from radiotopia.
0:07.0	My name is Jody Avergan.
0:11.0	This day in May of 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed by Congress and signed by President
0:17.0	Chester A Arthur. This Act provided an absolute 10-year ban on Chinese laborers immigrating to the United States for the first
0:24.8	time federal law prescribed entry of an ethnic working group on the premise that
0:29.1	it endangered the good order of certain localities.
0:32.8	So let's talk about why this is happening in this moment.
0:36.3	Here as always, Nicole Hammer of Vanderbilt and Kelly Carter Jackson of Wellesley.
0:40.3	Hello there.
0:41.3	Hello Jody.
0:42.3	Hey there. Seems likeody. Hey there.
0:43.0	Seems like there's two key strands that we have to keep in mind here, which is one, you know, this
0:49.4	well-told story that like a lot of Chinese immigrants helped build this country in the
0:54.7	years prior to this and now all of a sudden we have this big shift in policy
0:59.6	it's an interesting dynamic but I also think I mean note the year 1882 I don't think you
1:04.8	can disentangle this from the aftermath of the Civil War so let's start there I
1:09.4	mean what is the economic picture in the decades after the Civil War and then how does
1:14.3	immigration policy fit into that? We've touched on a bit of this over the years but
1:19.5	there is this period in the 30 years after the Civil War where the US economy is in a true
1:27.3	boom and bus cycle. And when we say boom and bus, we mean it you would have great times for a couple of years,
1:34.8	and then the entire economy would collapse.
1:36.6	People would be thrown out of work for years at a time.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Jody Avirgan & Radiotopia, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Jody Avirgan & Radiotopia and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.