| Physical description |
1 online resource (385 p.) |
| Contents |
Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- PART I THE BEGINNINGS OF DISCRIMINATION AND THE FIRST CHINESE RESPONSES -- 1. California's First Anti-Chinese Laws -- 2. Test Cases in the 1870s -- PART II THE DECADE OF THE 1880S: SEEKING THE EQUAL PROTECTION OF THE LAWS -- 3. The California Constitutional Convention and Its Aftermath -- 4. The Laundry Litigation of the 1880s -- 5. The Struggle for Access to the Schools -- PART III THE DECADE OF THE 1880S: COURT CONTESTS WITH THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT -- 6. Federal Exclusion Act Litigation: The First Phase -- 7. Seeking Federal Protection against Mob Violence: The Unusual Case of Baldwin v. Franks -- 8. Federal Exclusion Act Litigation: The Second Phase -- PART IV CENTURY'S END: LAST EPISODES OF SINOPHOBIA -- 9. Challenging Residential Segregation: The Case of In re Lee Sing -- 10. Medicine, Race, and the Law: The Bubonic Plague Outbreak of 1900 -- Conclusion -- List of Abbreviations -- Notes -- Subject Index -- Index of Cases |
| Summary |
Charles McClain's illuminating new study probes Chinese efforts to battle manifold discrimination-in housing, employment, and education-in nineteenth-century America. Challenging the stereotypical image of a passive, insular group, McClain reveals a politically savvy population capable of mobilizing to fight mistreatment. He draws on English- and Chinese-language documents and rarely studied sources to chronicle the ways the Chinese sought redress and change in American courts.McClain focuses on the San Francisco Bay Area, the home of almost one-fifth of the fifty thousand Chinese working in California in 1870. He cites cases in which Chinese laundrymen challenged the city of San Francisco's discriminatory building restrictions, and lawsuits brought by parents to protest the exclusion of Chinese children from public schools. While vindication in the courtroom did not always bring immediate change (Chinese schoolchildren in San Francisco continued to be segregated well into the twentieth century), the Chinese community's efforts were instrumental in establishing several legal landmarks.In their battles for justice, the Chinese community helped to clarify many judicial issues, including the parameters of the Fourteenth Amendment and the legal meanings of nondiscrimination and equality. Discussing a wide range of court cases and gleaning their larger constitutional significance, In Search of Equality brings to light an important chapter of American cultural and ethnic history. It should attract attention from American and legal historians, ethnic studies scholars, and students of California culture. |
| Language notes |
In English. |
| Other author |
McClain, Charles J., editor.
|
| Subject |
Chinese Americans -- Legal status, laws, etc -- History.
|
|
Chinese Americans -- Legal status, laws, etc. -- History.
|
|
History. |
| ISBN |
9780520917811 |
|
0520917812 |
| Standard Number |
10.1525/9780520917811 |
|
