The Chinese Exclusion Act

Civics 101

NHPR

Education, History, Supreme Court, American History, Elections, Democracy, Society & Culture, Government, Civics, Politics, Social Studies

4.6 • 2.4K Ratings

🗓️ 20 April 2021

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Between 1882 and 1965, a huge percentage of would-be Chinese immigrants were excluded from the United States. This is the story of how the U.S. came to exclude Chinese workers from immigration and Chinese immigrants from citizenship, the multi-generational reverberations of this practice and its extension to nearly all Asians and Pacific Islanders. Jack Tchen of Rutgers University and Jane Hong of Occidental College are our guides to the Chinese Exclusion Act.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Civics 101 is supported in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
0:10.0	The first transcontinental railroad was constructed by two companies,
0:15.0	one racing from the east and the other from the west.
0:22.0	When they met in Promontory, Utah and 1869,
0:25.0	they drove a golden spike to connect the two lines.
0:32.0	And just like that, travel and trade were transformed in the United States.
0:38.0	And there's a pretty famous picture of this moment.
0:40.0	It's got two locomotives face to face,
0:42.0	the head engineers of each company shaking hands.
0:45.0	You've got bottles of champagne,
0:47.0	proud workers lining up to face the camera.
0:50.0	It's a photo that shows a defining moment in American history.
0:55.0	And this photo, Nick, is a lie.
1:03.0	A lie.
1:05.0	Let me have it, Hannah.
1:09.0	This is Civics 101. I'm Hannah McCarthy.
1:11.0	I'm Nick Kepady-Chi.
1:12.0	And today we are talking about a piece of legislation and a history that surrounds it.
1:16.0	A federal law, the first of its kind, that banned an entire group of people
1:21.0	from entering the United States.
1:24.0	Today, we're talking about the Chinese exclusion act.
1:27.0	Which somehow has something to do with a photo of the transcontinental railroad?
	...

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