Asian Americans vs the Supreme Court
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It is 1885, and the San Francisco municipal government has figured out a new way to get rid of all those pesky Chinese laundries...
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- Part 1 of Asian Americans vs the Supreme Court
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In 1898, the court case of Wong Kim Ark v. United States won birthright citizenship for all children born in America. What happened to Wong Kim Ark afterward? How did victory in this landmark court case affect his life? In the period of Chinese Exclusion, a combination of laws made it nearly impossible for him to build a family in America. Instead, he married in China and visited his family 4 times over 35 years. As the original native-born citizen, Wong Kim Ark’s own sons could not be born in America.
In 1925, eleven year old Wong Yook Jim, youngest son of Wong Kim Ark, steps onto a steamship bound for America to see his father for the first time.
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- Part 2 of Asian Americans vs the Supreme Court
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It was 1884 and Mary Tape wanted her daughter, Mamie, to attend the public elementary school 3 blocks down the road. The State of California had no provision to provide public schooling for Chinese children, despite Chinese residents living, working, and paying taxes to the state. When Mamie was rejected at the door for being barbarous and diseased, Mary Tape decided to sue.
She won. The California Supreme Court declared that the school district could not exclude anyone on the grounds of race, and that Mamie Tape “has the same right to enter a public school that any child has.”
This is about what happened after.
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- Part 3 of Asian Americans vs the Supreme Court
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In 1920, a court case appears before the Supreme Court: should Japanese immigrants be allowed to naturalize and become American citizens, even though the existing law only explicitly allows “free white persons of good character” and “persons of African descent” to naturalize?
Given Japan’s allyship with the US in World War I, the Supreme Court decides to delay judgement until 1922, so as not to trigger an international scandal with their decision of “No.”
Around the same time, the Board of Naturalization is looking for a test case to narrow the definition of “free white persons”, and finds the perfect test case in the form of Bhagad Singh Thind, a recently naturalized citizen from the Punjab. Would the Supreme Court draw a distinction between “Aryan” and “white person”?
This comic in four parts is about the people who challenged the laws of naturalization all the way up to the Supreme Court.
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- Part 4 of Asian Americans vs the Supreme Court