Creating Digital Histories: The History of Places in North America
This research guide is for the students in the "Creating Digital Histories: The History of Places in North America" (HIST 506:401:03). Professor Tatiana Seijas.
Books
At America's Gates: Chinese immigration during the exclusion era, 1882-1943 by
With the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, Chinese laborers became the first group in American history to be excluded from the United States on the basis of their race and class. This landmark law changed the course of U.S. immigration history, but we know little about its consequences for the Chinese in America or for the United States as a nation of immigrants. At America's Gates is the first book devoted entirely to both Chinese immigrants and the American immigration officials who sought to keep them out. Erika Lee explores how Chinese exclusion laws not only transformed Chinese American lives, immigration patterns, identities, and families but also recast the United States into a "gatekeeping nation." Immigrant identification, border enforcement, surveillance, and deportation policies were extended far beyond any controls that had existed in the United States before. Drawing on a rich trove of historical sources--including recently released immigration records, oral histories, interviews, and letters--Lee brings alive the forgotten journeys, secrets, hardships, and triumphs of Chinese immigrants. Her timely book exposes the legacy of Chinese exclusion in current American immigration control and race relations.
Call Number: RUonline & Robeson E184.C5L523 2003ISBN: 0807827754Publication Date: 2003
Bloody Bay: grassroots policing in nineteenth-century San Francisco by
Bloody Bay recounts the gritty history of law enforcement in San Francisco. Beginning just before the California gold rush and through the six decades leading up to the twentieth century, a culture of popular justice and grassroots community peacekeeping was fostered. This policing environment was forged in the hinterland mining camps of the 1840s, molded in the 1851 and 1856 civilian vigilante policing movements, refined in the 1877 joint police and civilian Committee of Safety, and perfected by the Chinatown Squad experiment of the late nineteenth century. From the American takeover of California in 1846 during the U.S.-Mexico War to Police Commissioner Jesse B. Cook's nationwide law enforcement advisory tour in 1912 and San Francisco's debut as the jewel of a new American Pacific world during the Panama Pacific International Exposition in 1915, San Francisco's culture of popular justice, its multiethnic environment, and the unique relationships built between informal and formal policing created a more progressive policing environment than anywhere else in the nation. Originally an isolated gold rush boomtown on the margins of a young nation, San Francisco--as illustrated in this untold story--rose to become a model for modern community policing and police professionalism.
Call Number: Law Library Newark HV8148.S342R37 2020ISBN: 9781496217530Publication Date: 2020
Cathay by the Bay: glimpses of San Francisco's Chinatown in the year 1950 by
Originally published as newspaper columns, the thirty-odd pieces collected in this volume bring to life San Francisco's Chinatown at mid-century.
Call Number: Alexander F869.S39C55 1988ISBN: 9622014232Publication Date: 1998
Music and Politics in San Francisco: from the 1906 Quake to the Second World War by
This lively history immerses the reader in San Francisco s musical life during the first half of the twentieth century, showing how a fractious community overcame virulent partisanship to establish cultural monuments such as the San Francisco Symphony (1911) and Opera (1923). Leta E. Miller draws on primary source material and first-hand knowledge of the music to argue that a utopian vision counterbalanced partisan interests and inspired cultural endeavors, including the San Francisco Conservatory, two world fairs, and America s first municipally owned opera house. Miller demonstrates that rampant racism, initially directed against Chinese laborers (and their music), reappeared during the 1930s in the guise of labor unrest as WPA music activities exploded in vicious battles between administrators and artists, and African American and white jazz musicians competed for jobs in nightclubs."
Call Number: RUonline & Douglass ; ML3917.U6M55 2012ISBN: 1283311402Publication Date: 2011
San Francisco Chinatown: a guide to its history and its architecture by
Winner of the American Book Award San Francisco Chinatown is the first book of its kind--an "insider's guide" to one of America's most celebrated ethnic enclaves by an author born and raised there. Written by architect and Chinese American studies pioneer Philip P. Choy, the book details the triumphs and tragedies of the Chinese American experience in the U.S. Both a history of America's oldest and most famous Chinese community and a guide to its significant sites and architecture, San Francisco Chinatown traces the development of the neighborhood from the city's earliest days to its post-quake transformation into an "Oriental" tourist attraction as a pragmatic means of survival. Featuring a building-by-building breakdown of the most significant sites in Chinatown, the guide is lavishly illustrated with historical and contemporary photographs and offers walking tours for tourists and locals alike. "A stunning new guidebook. . . . History buffs will be amazed by the wealth of lore, legend and radiant fact."--San Francisco Chronicle A Los Angeles Times summer reading pick "San Francisco Chinatown illuminates the untold history of the enclave . . . to consider the political, historical, and cultural implications of Chinatown's very existence."--San Francisco Bay Guardian "Part history book and part tour guide, San Francisco Chinatown is definitely niche, but wonderfully so. In it, Choy quickly outlines the history of San Francisco as a whole, then jumps into a section by section investigation of the city's famous Chinatown. . . . San Francisco Chinatown whets ones appetite to learn more about Chinese-American history."--Evelyn McDonald, City Book Review Retired architect and renowned historian of Chinese America Philip P. Choy co-taught the first college level course in Chinese American history at San Francisco State University. Since then he has created and consulted on numerous TV documentaries, exhibits and publications. He has served on the California State Historic Resource Commission, on the San Francisco Landmark Advisory Board, five times as President of the Chinese Historical Society of America (CHSA) and currently as an emeritus CHSA boardmember. He is a recipient of the prestigious San Francisco State University President's Medal.
Call Number: RUonlineISBN: 0872866025Publication Date: 2012
Chinese America, history and perspectives, a journal of Chinese Historical Society of America. Go to the journal main page to do a keyword search to locate relevant articles.
Wong, H. K, Lim P Lee, Albert Lim, and Alessandro Baccari. 1969. Report of the San Francisco Chinese Community Citizens’ Survey and Fact Finding Committee. Abridged ed. San Francisco: Bank of Canton. Alexander F869.S39C57 1969
Websites
- History of San Francisco's ChinatownIt traces the Chinese immigration and their struggles for acceptance. It also discusses the Chinese Exclusion Act that greatly impacted the Chinese immigration,.
- Chinese Historical Society of AmericaCHSA is a museum that celebrated the history and the legacy of Chinese immigrants in America.
- Photographs of San Francisco Chinatown - California Historical SocietyA collection of photographs and postcards from San Francisco's Chinatown.
- Arnold Genthe’s Photographs of San Francisco’s Chinatown - California Historical SocietyGerman-born Genthe did his best known work in Chinatown in the years after the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, which banned new immigration and prevented Chinese people from becoming citizens.