The Chinese Exclusion Act: Denying Chinese Rights

Process Paper Julie Zhu Individual Website Junior Division

Thesis: The Chinese Exclusion Act started at 1882 because of the Gold Crush is a big reason caused the Chinese Exclusion Act because racial tensions increased as more and more Chinese emigrated, occupied jobs, and created competition on the job market, the law was denying both American Chinese and Chinese labors' rights in the USA. For this years theme of Rights and Responsibility, I talked to my teacher and we all agree that the Chinese Exclusion Act will be a really interesting topic to do because no one ever did this topic in my school before and since I came from China, so I have more background knowledge than others. I find a number of images primary source in Online Archive of California, which can shows us the idea of what happened back to 1882 and how Chinese be treated in the USA. I used a lot figures instead of the real pictures people took. The banner of each category is different, and I chose different pictures to present different topics in each category so people can understand better. And I found an article of library of Harvard, and from that website, I found other useful websites under the article, which give me more information to present. When I chose my categories, I decided to use Background includes Chinese immigration history and Chinese in California; Gold Rush; The Chinese Exclusion Act includes document, impact, against and support; conclusion and more as my categories. Because I think the Gold Rush is a big reason caused the population of Chinese in the USA increased thereby the Chinese Exclusion Act took place after this. And I think its necessary to include Chinese immigration history in my website to show the things changed during different time periods.

The topic of my website is the Chinese Exclusion Act and my thesis statement for it is the rights for American Chinese got in the USA and the unfair treatments that they got through the immigration. How my topic related to the rights is the American Chinese should get the same rights as Americans, but the Chinese Exclusion Act caused they could not go back to see their family, and got different treats with other Americans. After the Gold Rush, more and more Chinese came to the USA, and the labor union in the USA concerned about Chinese workers would lower wages for labor jobs, and affect their work opportunities at same time.