Interracial Marriages:III. White wives of Chinese lose U. S. Citizenship

   In 1907 the Expatriation Act provided that any female U.S. citizen who married a foreigner was stripped of her U.S. citizenship. This proved to be a significant problem for women who became stateless when their husband's country of citizenship did not automatically grant the woman citizenship as a result of her marriage, or when they married men who had lost their citizenship. This law was especially problemsome for U. S. born Chinese and other Asian women.  U.S.-born Asian women who married noncitizens they lost their citizenship and could not regain American citizenship through naturalization even after their marriage ended because they in marrying noncitizens, they themselves became aliens ineligible to citizenship under the Naturalization Act. 

    The 1922 Cable Act partially repealed the Expatriation Act. The Cable Act made some women's citizenship independent of their husbands' status. No female citizen could lose her U.S. citizenship as a result of her marriage to an alien as long as her foreign husband was racially eligible to become a citizen. The Cable Act did not help women married to aliens ineligible to citizenship such as Chinese men. Any such woman would cease to be an American citizen upon marriage to an alien, and she could not regain her citizenship without renouncing her marriage. This provision ensured that white women marrying foreign-born Asian men also lost their U.S. citizenship.  In addition, U.S.-born Asian women who married foreign-born Asian men , a much larger number of women, also lost their citizenship.

       An amendment in 1931 removed some of these barriers, providing that any woman who was born a U.S. citizen, but had lost citizenship because of her marriage, would not be disallowed to naturalize because of her race, even if she otherwise would be racially barred from naturalization.

        Maggie Lyle Jeu was one such Caucasian American who married a Chinese citizen in 1918. Her husband, Jeu Ding, a Chinese-born merchant of Osceola, Arkansas, was exempt from the Chinese Exclusion Act because of his merchant status.  When Maggie Lyle married Jue Ding in Memphis, Tennessee she lost her U. S. citizenship which presented problems in obtaining a passport to travel to China with her husband and children.

Chinese Exclusion Act case files, RG 85, National Archives-Seattle,
Mrs. Jeu Ding (Maggie Jeu) Seattle, Box 1395, Case 41560/4-6 & 41560/9-3.

     Did such legislation reclassify white women who married Chinese men as "Chinese" or were they still legally "white"?  Thus, when the wife of one Chinese man wanted to travel to China applied for a Return Certificate 430 required of Chinese who left the country who wanted later reentry to the U. S. her application confused Immigration officers who were uncertain if she needed to file a Form 430 because she was clearly not "Chinese," at least from a biosocial perspective.

Chink Smuggling From Cuba

       Some early Chinese immigrants who did not hold papers that would enable them to enter the United States turned to smugglers who, for a price, would attempt to sneak them across either the Canadian or Mexican borders. 

      In the late 19th century, both borders were somewhat porous and with some luck, smuggling "Chinks" as the Chinese were often derisively called was a thriving enterprise.  Those who failed to evade border agents would be jailed and then deported.

     A less obvious source of smuggled Chinese was Cuba, where since the mid 19th century over 100,000 Chinese worked as coolie or indentured laborers under very adverse conditions.  The testimonies of almost 3,000 coolies in 1876 at the Cuba Commission hearings exposed the slave-like status and gross mistreatment of Chinese sugar plantation laborers. (See The Coolie Speaks: Chinese Indentured Laborers and African Slaves of Cuba. By Lisa Yun. (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2008) 

      Contract laborers could not easily escape their situation, but those few who succeeded often turned to smugglers who could bring them from Cuba to the U. S.  An Alabama newspaper article published in The Anniston Star on January 31, 1925, reported that when smugglers realized how lucrative "rum-running" from Cuba to the United States was, they soon added the smuggling of "Chinks" into Florida and other Southern border towns. (The resolution of the entire article is poor, but below is a paragraph that highlights the origins of this practice).

Are You Looking in the Right Place for Your Chinese Immigrant Ancestors?

         As people get older, their drive to find out more about their origins in China increases. But finding records and information about earlier Chinese immigrants to the United States can be daunting and unsuccessful for many reasons, not the least of which is looking in the wrong place.

       While it seems natural to search for immigrants who entered on the west coast, especially San Francisco or even Seattle, there were a fair number of Chinese who crossed either the northern border from Canada or the southern border from Mexico in the days when these borders were more porous.

      Using familysearch.org, a search was made for three fairly common Chinese surnames, Wong, Chin, and Yee, to see how many of them entered the U. S. from Canada between 1895 and 1956 and from Mexico between 1903 and 1957.

        The figures below are inexact as a few Wongs, Chins, and Yees might not be Chinese, but probably most were.  In contrast, many of the Lee immigrants crossing both borders were not Chinese as Lee is a name for some nonChinese so it isn't possible to give a count without examining each case individually.


                       from Canada         from Mexico
Wong                 3,610                       1,794

Chin                   2,903                          968

Yee                    1,017                           542

Two sample displays for CHINs from Canada and from Mexico below illustrate some of the information available on an immigrant in the database.

In conclusion, the point is not to compare how many Chinese with these surnames came from Canada and Mexico, but to suggest that if you can not find an ancestor on U.S. databases, try looking both north and south of the border because a good number of Chinese came across these borders, especially if they were illegal immigrants.

Chinese in Virginia City, Nevada During Comstock Silver Lode Mining 1870s-1880s

    The Comstock silver lode discovered in 1859 created an overnight booming mining town, Virginia City, Nevada with a jump from 4,000 to 25,000 residents within a few years.  

    Chinese, who came to represent ten percent of Virginia City residents, referred to Nevada as Yin Shan, or "Silver Mountain," in contrast to Gum San, or "Gold Mountain," their term for California where gold was discovered in 1849 at Sutter's Mill.

Whereas Chinese immigrants in many small towns across the country during the 1880s worked almost entirely as laundrymen, and then cooks,  Chinese in Virginia City were involved in numerous occupations as early as 1870.  Two sample pages from the 1870 Census shows Chinese were merchants, miners, laborers, laundrymen, cooks, gamblers, and harlots.

    A decade later Virginia City was still thriving and there was a large increase in the Virginia City population, including Chinese, and other immigrants. A sample page from the 1880 Census lists Chinese doctors, restaurant owners, along with gamblers and prostitutes who, it might be noted had been labeled "harlots" in the 1870 census.

    Eventually, the silver mines closed, and during the 1880s Virginia City became a virtual ghost town as it suffered a rapid decline in its population and prosperity as the miners left.  The Chinese population also underwent a big drop.

Mother sponsors brother and his family from China

         Family unification is one of the main goals of U. S. immigration policy.  Accordingly after my father died in 1973, my mother soon decided that she would apply to sponsor her brother to come over from China.  She had never met him as she immigrated to the U. S. from China in 1928 but he was not born until around 1937.  I am sure she would not have been able to make this major decision when my father was still alive because in Chinese families, men traditionally have control over these types of matters.

Nonetheless she felt that she should help her brother and his family consisting of his wife, two sons and one daughter come to the United States. Her brother, and his wife, in their 60s, understandably, were reluctant to come to the U. S. at their age especially since they did not speak and understand English but realized that it would be an opportunity for their three adult children.  

The process was arduous.  She had to go through a lot of red tape in making the application which was delayed for many years before it finally was approved.  The petition she filed for one of her nephews, Kwan Wai Ping, illustrates just part of the required documentation.

Despite all her efforts and success in helping her brother and his family immigrate to the U. S., eventually her brother and his wife decided to return to China, as did their daughter.

Below is a picture my mother and her brother after he arrived.

A visit to North Adams, MA., site of the Sampson shoe factory that hired young Chinese as strikebreakers in 1870

            During my visit in 2016 to Williamstown, MA. in conjunction with a Williams College performance of South of Gold Mountain by the H.T. Chen Dance Center of New York, H. T. Chen took me to nearby North Adams, where in 1870 Calvin Sampson recruited 75 Chinese boys and men to work in his shoe factory rather than meet the demands of Crispin Irish workers who were on strike.

 H. T. Chen viewing the historical display in North Adams.

The original factory  building no longer exists and a new building is on the site.  Fortunately, a local historical museum had an informative display about the lives and experiences of these Chinese who travelled across the continent to a place where it is unlikely that any previous Chinese had ever been.

The young Chinese were quick to adapt to many American ways such as how to dress American style as illustrated in the photo below of three very dapper looking young Chinese.

                                         

           Lue Gim Gong, an Unusual 12 year old Chinese boy  

       When he was 12 years old, Lue Gim Gong sailed from China to San Francisco with his uncle and some other boys where they lived briefly before moving to North Adams, Massachusetts to work in the Sampson Shoe Factory with other young Chinese boys and men as strikebreakers.  

         Lue Gim Gong was frail and became ill. The daughter of a local farmer, Fanny Burlingame, took him in and nursed him back to health. Lue became a Christian and a US citizen while under her care. In1886, he and Miss Fanny moved to DeLand, FL because Massachusetts winters were too harsh for him. He and Miss Fanny's brother-in-law Mr. William Dumville planted oranges and other fruit trees. Lue was a promising horticulturist and in1888, he produced a new orange which ripened in the early fall and which was bright and sweet called the Lue Gim Gong orange, which helped develop Florida's citrus economy.  There is a monument in DeLand, FL., in tribute to his genius.

Chinese Transcontinental Railroad Workers: Faceless but not Nameless

This photograph made on May 10, 1869, at Promontory Point, Utah, that memorialized the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad with the driving of the "Golden Spike" failed to include even a handful of the thousands of Chinese laborers without whose incredible work the line would have taken longer to be completed.

Although historical documents rendered them "faceless" and left out of the photograph of the commemorative celebration of the "Golden Spike" being driven into the ground, at least their names are a part of the permanent record of the 1870 U. S. Census.  Below is a sample of the Chinese who were residing in Box Elder County, Utah, where the Central Pacific Railroad from the west joined the Union Pacific Railroad coming from the midwest.

Note that most of their names were of the "Ah Wong" variety.  Even though none of them were actually named "Ah," early Census takers mistakenly heard Chinese say, Ah, before they gave their names.

It is instructive to examine the Chinese presence in the region a decade later in the 1880 Census.  It might tell us if many Chinese were in Box Elder County after the railroad was completed in 1869.  There were some Chinese there in 1880 working for the railroad. Whether they were from the original workers or represent new laborers is not clear.  However,  other Chinese came to the region who did not work on the railroad as the sample page from the 1880 Census shows. By 1880, Box Elder County had Chinese in many other lines of work: laundry, restaurant, grocer, tailor, prostitute, doctor, engineer.  

And, none of these Chinese had their names recorded as "Ah."

Chinese Immigrants Supported Family Back in Their Home Villages

Even as a young child, I knew that my father sent periodic remittances to help his family back in Hoiping back in the 1940s.  I later learned that this was a common practice for Chinese immigrants in North America to help family members back in the villages financially.

I didn't know how often or how much father sent, or how much he could afford to provide. After all, growing up I always had the feeling that we were fairly poor ourselves.  But I definitely knew my mother often complained bitterly that my father did not permit her to send money back to her family. This situation reflected the dominant role of the husband in the traditional Chinese family, and was a source of periodic marital conflict for my parents.

Not too long ago, I discovered a heart-wrenching letter that my mother's younger sister back in the home village sent her in 1951. A friend translated it into English.  She was desperately begging my father and mother to send money to help her and her children get shelter and food as they were literally living on the street.

I don't know how my mother responded, but surely she must have agonized over it, and my guess is that my father was not supportive. This situation was certainly not unique for my parents but probably faced by many other Chinese immigrants in North America.