The Chinese Exclusion Act: A Special Presentation of American Experience
Examine the origin, history, and impact of the Chinese Exclusion Act in a special presentation of American Experience, coming to PBS on Tuesday, May 29 at 8/7c.
Marina Fang on the Huffington Post offers some background on the Chinese Exclusion Act and its history. In 1882, Congress voted to ban an entire ethnic group from immigrating to the United States. The Chinese Exclusion Act, iterations of which remained on the books for over 60 years, had a lasting effect on the history of U.S. immigration, as depicted in a new PBS documentary airing Tuesday. Filmmakers Ric Burns (brother of Ken) and Li-Shin Yu trace not only the law’s development and implementation but also its connection to other integral parts of American history unfolding contemporaneously, like segregation in the Jim Crow South, urbanization on the East and West Coasts, and trade abroad. At a screening of the film last week, Burns called the Chinese Exclusion Act a “quintessentially American story” and described it as “the biggest part of American history that people don’t know about,” because you would be hard-pressed to find it mentioned in many history courses.
KJ