Asian Pacific American Specific Links And Materials
National Asian Pacific American Consortium: This organization has several areas of focus including Affirmative Action, Anti-Asian Violence, Immigration, Welfare Reform, and Language Rights. The site contains numerous reports, an excellent links page, and recent news releases.
National Asian Pacific Bar Association: This organization is the national association of Asian Pacific American attorneys, judges, law professors, and law students. The site contains some articles from the organization's newsletter and a good links page.
National Asian Pacific American Law Student Association: The Association was founded in 1981 and is the first and oldest national Asian Pacific American law organization. The site includes contact information for the groups local chapters and information about its moot court competition.
Asian American Legal Defense & Education Fund: This group, formed in 1974, was the first legal rights organization on the East Coast serving Asian-Americans. The site includes brief statements on civil rights issues such as affirmative action, anti-Asian violence, economic justice, and police brutality and advice on ways for individuals to address them. The site also contains press releases.
Asian & Pacific Islander American Health Forum: The Forum is a national advocacy organization dedicated to promoting policy, program, and research efforts for the improvement of the improvement of the health status of all Asian-American and Pacific Islander communities. The site includes policy updates on various pieces of pending legislation, policy reports, newsletters, fact sheets, and bibliographies.
India Abroad Center for Political Awareness: The Center's mission is to increase awareness in the Indian-American community and encourage participation by the Indian-American community in American democracy. The site includes information on relevant current legislation and a great deal of historical and demographic data about Indian-Americans.
Japanese Americans Citizens League: The League is the nation's oldest and largest Asian-American civil rights organization. Founded in 1929 to address discrimination against persons of Japanese ancestry in the United States, today it is commited to protecting the rights of all segments of the Asian Pacific American community. The site contains press releases, legislative alerts and updates, and an excellent links section.
Chinese for Affirmative Action: This San Francisco-based organization's mission is to defend and promote the civil and political rights of Chinese and Asian-Americans within the context of, and in the interest of, advancing multiracial democracy in the United States. The site contains a number of publications, a links page, and a What's New section with press releases and upcoming events.
South Asian Women for Action: SAWA is a Boston-based, progressive collective of women of South Asian descent. The site contains articles from its newsletter and links to South Asian resources.
Asian Immigrant Women Advocates: The Advocates is a community-based organization which through education, leadership, development, and collective action seeks to foster empowerment of low-income, limited English speaking Asian immigrant women who work as seamstresses, hotel room cleaners, workers, and janitors in the greater San Francisco, Oakland, and South Bay Area. The site contains a description of the group's projects and contact information.
Asian-American Feminist Resources: This site contains an extensive list of links to organizations, sites, articles, essays, bibliographies, and personal pages of interest to Asian-American women and other women of color.
Asian Lesbian Bisexual Alliance: This Seattle organization's site contains its newsletter, bulletin board and chat areas, and lists of relevant links.
Asian and Pacific Islander Populations: This Census Bureau site contains demographic data about the Asian Pacific American population in the United States. The Asian Population: 2000 is a Census 2000 Brief in pdf format which discusses the number of Asian-Americans, their geographic distribution, the number in each state, their percentage of the total population they make up, and their countries of origin. It is also available in that format from this link. Another Census 2000 Brief, The Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander Population: 2000, discusses similar data regarding Americans who identified themselves as Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islanders. It is also available from this link.
Beyond Self-Interest: Asian Pacific Americans Towards a Community of Justice: In this policy analysis four Asian Pacific American law professors make the case for affirmative action, with a special focus on Asian Pacific Americans. It is available in pdf format here.
WenHoLee.org: Dr. Wen Ho Lee, a Chinese-American scientist who worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory, was fired in March 1999 for "serious security violations." His firing followed newspaper reports that China's nuclear weapons programs had advanced substantially through the use of stolen American secrets and that a Chinese-American scientist at Los Alamost was suspected as the thief. Nine months later Dr. Lee was indicted on charges that he had moved massive amounts of restricted information to an easily acessible computer. Federal prosecutors convinced a judge to order Dr. Lee held without bail in solitary confinement for national security reasons. In September of 2000 the judge concluded that prosecutors had misled him on the national security threat posed by Dr. Lee and had provided inaccurate testimony. Dr. Lee plead guilty to a single count of mishandling secret information and was released. This site was created to advocate for justice for Dr. Lee. It includes an overview of the case, a detailed analysis, relevant documents, and links to newspaper articles.
The Times and Wen Ho Lee: This site contains a New York Times editorial on its coverage of the Wen Ho Lee case and a list of links to relevant articles.
An Examination of the Times Coverage of the Lee Case: This site contains the transcript of an informative Online NewsHour discussion of the Times coverage of the Wen Ho Lee case.
The Wen Ho Lee Debate: This site contains a list of relevant facts about the case.
The Wen Ho Lee Case: This page contains a list of links to sites and materials about the case.
People v. Hall: a white citizen was convicted of murder based upon the testimony of a Chinese witness. The court held that the words, Indian, Negro, Black and White, are generic terms, designating race. Chinese and all other people not white, are included in the prohibition from being witnesses against Whites. The testimony was, therefore, inadmissible.
People v. Hall: was an appealed murder case in which the California Supreme Court established that Chinese Americans and Chinese immigrants had no rights to testify against white citizens.
People v. Brady: a white man, was convicted of the crime of robbery, committed upon Hing Kee, a Chinaman, who was permitted to testify against the defendant on the trial. There was an Statue prohibited Chinese men from testifying against white men appellate argued this statue deprived the Chinese men of some degree of legal protection which it accords to the white man. The California Supreme Court upheld the validity of the statue and reversed the trial court ordering a new trial.
The Page act: was one of the first restrictive federal immigration laws prohibiting the entry of undesirable immigrants to the United States of America. Undesirable immigrants were designated as any individual from China, Japan, or any Oriental country that was coming to America to be a contract laborer, any Asian woman that would engage in prostitution, and all people considered to be convicts in their own country.
The Scott Act: was an expansion of the Chinese Exclusion Act passed in 1882. This act prohibited Chinese laborers abroad or who planned future travels from returning to the United States. This left an estimated 20,000-30,000 Chinese outside the United States at the time stranded.
The Chinese Exclusion Act: suspended immigration from China. It also banned State court or court of the United States from admitting Chinese to citizenship and all laws in conflict with this act were repealed. This ban was intended to last ten years.
The Geary Act: was an extension of Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 adding numerous requirements including that all Chinese residents of the United States must carry a resident permit. Any Failure to carry the permit at all times was punishable by deportation or a year of hard labor.
Race, Rights, and Reparations: Law and the Japanese American Internment: This site is the companion website to a textbook for law, graduate, and undergraduate students published in 2001. The authors are Professors Eric Yamamoto, Magaret Chon, Carol Izumi, Jerry Kang, and Frank Wu. The site contains the Preface, the Table of Contents, the Table of Cases, the Index, and short summaries of each chapter of the book. It also contains a Resources section with full versions of the four internment case opinions decided by by the Supreme Court, a page of relevant web links, and photographs.
Racism, Law and the Japanese Internment (pdf): This paper, written by Seina Takamatsu, while a law student, discusses the events leading up to the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, court decisions upholding the convictions of those who refused to comply with the military orders, and the influence of racism on this history.
The Incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II: This web site, the Japanese American Exhibit and Access Project, provides access to the University of Washington Libraries' holdings on this subject. It includes an exhibit on the Puyallup Assembly Center known as "Camp Harmony". The Camp was one of the temporary assembly centers the more than 100,00 residents of Japanese ancestry forceably removed from their homes in Washington, Oregon, California, Arizona, and Alaska were sent before being moved by trains to American-style concentration camps at remote inland sites. The Camp Harmony exhibit contains detailed information about life there and includes photographs, correspondence, and other primary documents. The site also has a bibliography and information on the Japanese Canadian Internment.
War Relocation Authority Camps in Arizona, 1942-1946: This exhibit features photographs which vividly depict life in two Arizona camps where Japanese Americans were interned. The site includes Executive Order No. 9066 which authorized the forced removal of Japanese Americans from their homes, a list of suggested readings and archival sources, and a page of links to relevant sites.
The Japanese American Internment: This extensive site includes excerpts from government reports, correspondence, memoranda, a timeline, a glossary, a gallery of photographs, and an excellent list of relevant links.
Freedom for Some: Japanese American Internment Experience: This informative exhibit, produced by the Balch Institute for Ethnic Studies, contains original government documents, correspondence, photos, pamphlets, and school books from the internment camps.
Conscience and the Constitution: In World War II a group of young Americans refused to be drafted from American concentration camps. Though ready to fight for their country, they would not do so until the government restored their rights as U.S. citizens and released their families from the camps. The government prosecuted them as criminals, and some Japanese American leaders treated them as traitors. This web site provides information about their struggle and the film which tells their story. The site has a Resources section with suggestions for further reading, lesson plans for teachers, a downloadable viewers' guide, and links to relevant sites.
The Internment of San Francisco's Japanese Americans: This Museum of the City of San Francisco web site contains local newspaper articles from early 1942 regarding FBI and police sweeps and the proclamations, plans, and restrictions issued by the Lieutenant-General John L. DeWitt, and a timeline of the city's war events that year. The evacuation of the city's Japanese American residents concluded on May 20,1942, and a San Francisco Chronicle story, headlined "S.F. Clear of All But 6 Sick J**s" (The ethnic slur is not written out in full here but was in the headline.) and published the next day, provides a brief history of their immigration to the area and their forced removal. The site also includes excerpts from General DeWitt's Final Report on the Evacuation of the Japanese and the War Relocation Authority's 1943 publication "Relocation of Japanese Americans" indicating what the American public was told about the internment camps.
Executive Order 9066 and the Residents of Santa Cruz County: This website was developed by Rechs Ann Pedersen, Internet Librarian, as part of the Santa Cruz Libraries' Local History. By using quotations and full-text articles from contemporary local newspapers, the site shows some of what happened to Santa Cruz County Japanese-Americans and Italians as a result of Executive Order 9066. It also includes other articles which discuss the experiences of county esidents.
The Geary Act (1892): The Geary Act extended the ban on the immigration of Chinese laborers for another ten years and required those already in the country to obtain certificates to establish their right to reside here. If they were caught without one, they were subject to deportation unless they could present one credible white witness to establish that they were residents of the United States at the time the statute was enacted. In Fong Yue Ting v. United States, 149 U.S. 698 (1893), the Supreme Court upheld the validity of the Geary Act. According to the Court the requirement that a white witness be presented may have been based on congressional experience that the testimony of Chinese witnesses was "suspicious" because of their loose notions of the obligations of an oath. 149 U.S. at 729-730.
The Scott Act (1888): The Scott Act declared the re-entry certificates authorized by the Chinese Exclusion Act to be void. Thus, Chinese residents of the United States who left the country with certificates authorizing their re-entry were not allowed to return. In Chae Chan Ping v. United States, 130 U.S. 581 (1889), the Supreme Court upheld the statute in the face of a challenge by a man who had lived in San Francisco, California for approximately 12 years, but had the misfortune to be out of the country when the Act became effective. The Court asserted that the restrictions on Chinese immigration were caused by "a well-founded apprehension--from the experience of years--that a limitation to the immigration of certain classes from China was essential to the peace of the community on the Pacific coast, and possibly to the preservation of our civilization there." 130 U.S. at 594.
The Chinese Exclusion Act (1882): This federal statute suspended the immigration of Chinese laborers to the United States for ten years and required those in the country before it became effective to obtain certificates upon leaving the country to prove their right to return. An excellent brief description of the events leading up to the Act and its consequences can be found at Separate Lives, Broken Dreams. The site is the companion to a documentary by the same name which was originally produced in 1993 and contains a quicktime movie with a short preview of it. The site also contains excerpts from some individual immigration case files of Chinese who tried to enter the country after passage of the Act, anti-Chinese cartoons and literature, and a Resources section with links to related sites. Additionally, some of the records created in implementing the Act are available at this National Archives and Records Administration site on Chinese Immigration.
Report of the Joint Special Committee :to Investigate Chinese Immigration (44th Congress, 2d Session, Senate Report No. 689, 1877): This site contains the Report, issued by a Joint Committee of the United States Senate and House of Representatives, and some of the testimony made to the Committee. It purports to discuss the arguments both in favor of and against Chinese immigration. The site is sponsored by the Central Pacific Railroad and contains links and materials discussing the Chinese American Contribution to the Transcontinental Railroad.
Chy Lung v. Freeman et al 92 U.S. 27: the plaintiff was a Chinese woman, a passenger on a ship traveling from China to San Francisco. When the ship docked, the woman was held because the owner or master of the vessel refused to pay the bond for “lewd and debauched women,” as required by statute. The Supreme Court invalidated the California statute and allowed Lung to remain in the United States. The Court held that the statute extended beyond necessity of state police power and invaded the right of Congress to regulate commerce. Additionally, a pdf file containing the entire opinion is available from this link.
The Page Act (or Page Law)(1875): Ostensibly, one of the reasons this federal statute was passed was to prevent the entry of prostitutes into the United States from "China, Japan, or any Oriental country." However, it also substantially reduced the number of Chinese women who were not prostitutes coming to the United States, not only single women but the wives of immigrants already in the country. Pursuant to its provisions, all Chinese women who sought to immigrate to the United States were forced to submit to rigorous interrogations regarding their character and morality by United States officials in China. See, e.g., Ronald Takaki, Strangers From a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans p.40 (Little, Brown and Company, Updated and Revised ed. 1998).
People v. Brady, 40 Cal. 198 (1870): The ban on Chinese witness testimony against whites established in People v. Hall, discussed below, was made explicit by subsequent California statutes. In Brady the California Supreme Court upheld these statutes despite the post Civil War adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution which prohibits any state from denying "any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." The Brady court concluded that the statutes did not violate equal protection because neither whites nor Chinese could rely on the testimony of Chinese witnesses and thus both had the same means of presenting evidence to the courts. Consequently, the court reversed the conviction of a white man for the robbery of a Chinese man, who had been permitted to testify at trial. A pdf version of the case is available from this link.
Pun Chi Appeals to Congress to Protect the Rights of Chinese Immigrants, ca. 1860: In this appeal a young Chinese merchant details the mistreatment of Chinese immigrants. The complaints include the unpunished murders of Chinese as a result of the exclusion of Chinese witnesses testimony pursuant to People v. Hall, discussed below, and the persecution of Chinese miners. The document is one of many primary documents available on History Matters, a website developed by the American Social History Project/Center for Media Learning, City University of New York and the Center for History and New Media, George Mason University. The History Matters site also contains an annotated list of hundreds of sites related to United States history.
The Chinese American Experience 1857-1892: This website contains articles, editorials, cartoons, illustrations, etc., published in Harper's Weekly in the latter half of the nineteenth century regarding Chinese Americans. Additionally, the site contains short explanations of some of the key issues facing them during this period.
People v. Hall, 4 Cal. 399 (1854): Hall had been convicted of murdering a Chinese miner and sentenced to death. In this decision the California Supreme Court overturned the conviction holding that Chinese witnesses could not testify against a white man. The court concluded that the words "black person" in a statute were intended to exclude persons of any race other than Caucasian. Stephen Lee's site contains some interesting and informative background on the case, the entire opinion with annotations, and two printer-friendly versions of it, one without annotations. Additionally, a pdf file containing the entire opinion is available from this link.
The Chinese in California 1850-1925: This Library of Congress website illustrates Chinese immigration to California through 8,000 images and pages of primary source materials. It includes photographs, original art, cartoons, letters, legal documents, and speeches. Among other things, they document specific contributions of Chinese immigrants to commerce, architecture, and art and the Chinese exclusion movement.
The Asians in America Project: The purpose of this website is to provide a central source of information for all things regarding people of Asian Pacific descent living in the United States. The News section features daily news updates from newspapers and weekly links to stories in other publications. The Museum section strives to document the history of the Asian Pacific American community through words and images and contains numerous links to other sites. The Directory section is a national database of organizations, agencies, media resources, and notable persons in the community. The Listings section is a national bulletin board for everything from community events, political rallies, job openings, volunteer opportunities, arts and entertainment, and general announcements.
Internet Resources on Asian Americans: This site contains a huge list of links to sites and materials on Asian-Americans.
Chinese American History Timeline: An Asian-American Studies class at the University of California at Berkeley published the Timeline. It includes links to materials which offer additional information on some of the events noted.
Chinatown: This site was designed to accompany a 1997 PBS documentary on the San Francisco neighborhhood from the point of view of the people who lived there. The site includes a Chinatown Resource Guide with articles, teaching tools to assist educators, a list of suggested books, and links to relevant web sites. The site also contains photographs, an interview with the producer/director, and information on ordering the videotape.
Teaching Asian American Studies: This site contains a bibliography of articles and books intended to provide users with starting points in their search for lecture and teaching materials on Asians in America.
The Chinese Historical Society of America: The Society is one of the oldest and largest organizations dedicated to the study, documentation, and dissemination of Chinese American history. The site includes lists and descriptions of publications on Chinese American history.
Asian Pacific American Network: The Network is a Los Angeles-based coalition of Asian Pacific American community-based non-profit organizations with the goal of encouraging the use of computer and information technologies to better serve their communities. The site includes an Online Training Center with tutorials available in Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese, as well as English on subjects such as building a web page. It also contains APAdirec, a digital information repository and electronic clearinghouse with links to a huge number of organizations and sites on topics ranging from community economic development to immigrant rights to sexuality. The site has discussion forums and links to the founding and participating member organizations.
The Journal of Asian American Studies: The Journal is the official publication of the Association for Asian American Studies and explores all aspects of the Asian American experiences. It publishes original works of scholarly interest to the field. The site contains the table of contents of all the issues published in the past several years.
Asian Week: is the only national English language news weekly for Asian-Americans. The site includes news, features, and editorials.