Nala An

Hist 152 Sec. 9

Professor Geoff Burrows
Friday 2/28/14 (Question 1)
Restrictions to Full Citizenships
Citizenship means opportunity, freedom, success, and wealth. However,
gaining "full" citizenship demonstrates equality despite one's race,
gender, or class. From the Civil War to 1900, many groups of people
were prevented from obtaining full citizenship. Specifically, Chinese
workers and former African American slaves were politically,
economically, and socially stripped from their rights of citizenship both
in different ways. The Chinese workers who came to the United States in
order to financially provide for their families were prevented from
becoming citizens and former African American slaves in the South,
despite gaining citizenship after the abolition of slavery were restricted
from actively pursing their rights by white southerners.Considering this,
the Chinese workers and African American slaves in the United States
were did not receive the chance to obtain citizenship or even as citizens
were extensively denied of citizenship.
Chinese workers played a significant role during the 1860s as the
United States started to develop its Western territories. The Pacific
Railroad Act of 1862 granted land and government bonds to railroad
companies that were able to construct railroad and telegraph lines
expeditiously. As a result, the Union Pacific Railroad and Central Pacific
Railroad companies needed more workers to construct the
transcontinental railroad. With a million acres of land and $24 million
dollars at stake, the six companies brought 12,000 Chinese workers into
the United States, specifically to California, offering free passage, food,
and money.[Footnote] Chinese workers anchored themselves to long term
contracts and debt because they needed a source of financial foundation
in order to provide for their families. The railroad companies took
advantage of this fact and prevented the Chinese workers from actively
accessing their rights.
Despite their hard work, Chinese laborers were paid less while
white immigrant workers were paid thirty-five dollars a month but

Chinese workers were paid only twenty-seven dollars a month. Still,

white workers began to fear the economic competition from the Chinese
because of the scarcity of jobs. By 1880, the United States had over
200,000 Chinese workers.[Footnote] White laborers in the Eastern United
States feared the Chinese workers because they believed that the textile
factories would hire the Chinese workers instead, since the Chinese
workers were skilled and willing to work for cheaper wages. However,
in 1882, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act. This act prohibited
Chinese workers from entering the United States. Specifically, the
Chinese Exclusion Act states, "...the coming of Chinese laborers to this
country endangers the good order of certain localities with the
territory...,"[Footnote] and by forbidding the entry of Chinese workers,
discriminated them even further.
Specifically, in the Chinese Exclusion Act, the United States set to
prevent Chinese workers from becoming citizens by ordering that
"hereafter no State court or court of the United States shall admit
Chinese to citizenship."[Footnote] Also, Chinese women were bound by
four-year contracts by the Six Companies and Central Pacific Railroad
whom brought them as sex slaves or prostitutes. The Page Act of 1875
states, "women for the purposes of prostitution is hereby
forbidden,"[Footnote] banning Chinese women workers into the United
States as well. By 1893, all Chinese workers who were non-citizens
were forcibly removed and deported without trial. In 1892, the Chinese
Exclusion Act was renewed and in 1902, made permanent. [Footnote]
At the same time Chinese workers were suffering from legal
discrimination, African Americans were trying to attain their rights as
citizens. The American Civil War highlighted racism and foreshadowing
corruption of African Americans in the south. Even after the victory of
the northern states in the Civil War, the southern landowners refused to
abolish slavery and give equal opportunity to African Americans in the
south. Thus, during the period of Reconstruction, the Republicans freed
the African American slaves in the south and tried to protect them with
various laws. In order to do this, Republicans enacted three
amendments; the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth amendments,
abolishing slavery, granting citizenship to all people born in the United

States, and giving the right to vote to all men despite one's color or race,
respectively.[Footnote] Although these laws were passed, the protection of
the African American slaves in the south to receive full citizenship was
limited and short. Also the sharecropping system gave former African
American slaves the opportunity to own their own land but hindered
them from achieving success economically. Sharecropping did not have
a wage system but instead paid with the crops the freedmen harvested.
Sharecroppers had to give two-third of their crops to their landowners.
Thus, in order to escape poverty, many sharecroppers left their
landowners to find unskilled jobs in the north.[Footnote] Then came the
end of the Reconstruction.
In the late 1870s the end of the Reconstruction withered away the
power of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth amendments. The
Southern whites passed new laws that prevented African Americans
from receiving full citizenship. For example, the supremacy of the
southern whites prevented African Americans from voting. Although the
Fourteenth amendment granted them the right to vote as citizens, white
southerners required African Americans to pass literacy tests in order to
vote. However, because the African Americans were largely uneducated,
they could not pass the tests, preventing them from voting. The
"grandfather clause" was another barrier. Thus, Southern whites found
ways to avoid the laws enacted to protect the African Americans in the
south from gaining full citizenship. In addition, the emergence of a
group called Ku Klux Klan after the Civil War, abused and lynched
African Americans. Elias Hill, a former African American slave, "whose
freedom was purchased" was "struck," "beat," "pointing pistols," "horseshipped,[Footnote] by the Ku Klux Klan. Many former African American
slaves encountered the KKK in devious ways leading them to move to
the north or stay in the south hoping that one day they would be reunited
with the southern whites that have rejoiced over their injuries and
sufferings.[Footnote]
The southern whites refused to unify with the African Americans. Thus,
nine southern states passed Jim Crow laws that segregated African
Americans in the south from sharing the same facilities such as
bathrooms, water fountains, and public transportations.[Footnote] In 1896,

the Plessey v. Ferguson case revealed the unjust discrimination towards

African Americans. The Plessey decision states, " slavery, as an
institution tolerate by law, would, it is true, have disappeared from our
country; but there would remain a power in the states, by sinister
legislation, to interfere with the full enjoyment of the blessings of
freedom, to regulate civil rights, common to all citizens...,"[Footnote]
portraying the unequal treatment the African Americans in the south
underwent even though they were granted citizenship and abolishment
of slavery.
This separate but equal ruling restricted African Americans from fully
being able to use their rights as citizens. Seeing the unequal treatment in
the south of African Americans, Steven Thaddeus, an advocator of racial
equality for African Americans stated in his speech, "every man, no
matter what his race or color; every earthly being who has an immortal
soul, has an equal right to justice, honesty, and fair play with every other
man; and the law should secure him these rights."[Footnote] He believed
that because African Americans were citizens of the United States, the
discrimination the southern whites did against them did not give them
the full citizenship that they deserved.
The inequality of rights among United States citizens or immigrants is
demonstrated through former African American slaves and Chinese
workers during the Civil War to 1900. Race, gender, and class prevented
them from obtaining full citizenship. Chinese workers who came to the
United States for jobs were stripped from becoming citizens due to the
Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the southern white workers. For the
former African Americans who received citizenship, could not actively
participate in applying their rights due their race, social groups, and
various laws established by the southern whites. Each and every person
possess their own rights that should not be restricted or ignored by
political, economic, or social problems despite their color, gender, or
class.