htr_cn

On June 30, 1885, as the fundraising campaign for the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty finally began to pick up speed, a letter appeared in the pages of the New York Sun, written by a young Chinese immigrant and recent college graduate named Sam Song Bo, who had come to America years earlier as a small boy, and who dreamed of becoming a lawyer. It makes me think of the fact that this country is the land of liberty for all men of all nations, except the Chinese. That statue represents liberty holding a torch, which lights the passage of those of all nations who come into this country.

But are the Chinese allowed to come? Are the Chinese here allowed to enjoy liberty as men of all other nationalities enjoy it? Free from the insults, abuse, assaults, wrongs, and injuries from which men of other nationalities are free? By the law of this nation, a Chinaman cannot become a citizen. Whether this statue against the Chinese, or the Statue of Liberty, will be the more lasting monument to tell future ages of the liberty and greatness of this country, will be known only to future generations. Sam Song Bo.

The solitary arm of the unfinished Statue of Liberty had languished on Madison Square in New York for more than five years, when on May 6, 1882, on the eve of the greatest wave of immigration in American history, President Chester A. Arthur signed into law an extraordinary piece of federal legislation. It was called the Chinese Exclusion Act, and it was unlike any law enacted since the founding of the Republic. Singling out as never before a specific race and nationality for exclusion, it made it illegal for Chinese workers to come to America, and for Chinese nationals already here ever to become citizens of the United States.

Fueled by deep-seated tensions over race and class and national identity that had been festering since the founding of the Republic, it was the first in a long line of acts targeting the Chinese for exclusion, and it would remain enforced for more than 60 years. It continues to shape the debate about what it means to be an American to this day.