Useful Links
In August 1852, the Alta California exposed a brewing court battle. San Francisco's most renowned Chinese madam planned to sue a notorious Chinese leader for extortion. The beautiful Miss Ah Toy claimed that Yee Ah Tye had demanded her Dupont Street prostitutes pay him a tax. She promptly outsmarted him by doing something she never could have done in China -- threatening to take him to court.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/goldrush-chinese-immigrants/
first arrivals, first reactions
https://history.house.gov/Exhibitions-and-Publications/APA/Historical-Essays/Exclusion-and-Empire/First-Arrivals/
Searching for the gold mountain: Chinese workers migrate to California
https://www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/immigration/chinese/searching-for-the-gold-mountain/
The Forgotten History of the Campaign to Purge Chinese from America | The New Yorker
https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-forgotten-history-of-the-purging-of-chinese-from-america
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/goldrush-chinese-immigrants/
first arrivals, first reactions
https://history.house.gov/Exhibitions-and-Publications/APA/Historical-Essays/Exclusion-and-Empire/First-Arrivals/
Searching for the gold mountain: Chinese workers migrate to California
https://www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/immigration/chinese/searching-for-the-gold-mountain/
The Forgotten History of the Campaign to Purge Chinese from America | The New Yorker
https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-forgotten-history-of-the-purging-of-chinese-from-america
Primary Sources
Gold Rush and the Peopling of California
The discovery of gold in 1848 at Sutter’s Mill spurred a great wave of migration to California. Hundreds of thousands of people descended on the territory from across the continent and across the oceans. https://americanhistory.si.edu/many-voices-exhibition/peopling-expanding-nation-1776%E2%80%931900/incorporating-western-lands/gold-rush Foreign Miner's License With the discovery of gold in California in 1848, men seeking to make their fortunes streamed into the area from all over the world. In 1850, the California legislature passed a Foreign Miners' Tax that required miners who were not U.S. citizens to pay $20 every month for the right to mine in the state. In reality, the tax was only collected from Chinese and Latino miners, while European miners were not forced to pay it. The high tax drove many Latin American miners back to their home countries, and immigrant miners who stayed organized protests. The legislature eventually reduced the tax to $4 per month. https://shec.ashp.cuny.edu/items/show/1714 Documents on the Foreign Miners Tax, 1851-1855 https://history.hanover.edu/courses/excerpts/260miners.html |
Lessons
How did Race and Gender affect Chinese Laborers?
https://www.lgbtqhistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Chinese-Laborers-and-The-California-Gold-Rush-Presentation.pdf