In May, we celebrate the historic contributions of Asian Americans, who make up approximately 15 million voters in the United States as of 2020. Congress passed a resolution to designate the first ten days of May as Asian-Pacific Heritage Week in 1977. In 1990, President George H. W. Bush signed a bill extending this recognition to the entire month; it became Public Law 102-450 by 1992. The history of fighting against discrimination and for voting and other rights included the following events.
1790: The Naturalization Act limits immigrants eligible for naturalized citizenship to free white people of “good character” who had lived in the U.S. for at least two years.
Early–mid 1800s: Chinese immigrants arrive in the territory of Hawai’i and the western United States as laborers.
1843: The first Japanese immigrants arrive in the United States on May 7.
1869: The transcontinental railroad—largely the work of Chinese laborers—is completed, connecting the nation “sea to shining sea” and accelerating trade and industrialization.
1870: The Naturalization Act of 1870 revokes the citizenship of naturalized Chinese citizens.
1882: The Chinese Exclusion Act suspends Chinese immigration for ten years and bars U.S. Chinese residents from citizenship.
1920: While the Nineteenth Amendment gives women the right to vote, it also fails to remove barriers to women of color.
1922: The Supreme Court, in Takao Ozawa v. United States, rules that people of Japanese descent cannot become naturalized citizens.
1923: In United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind, the Supreme Court rules that those descended from the people of India cannot become naturalized citizens, even though Thind argued that, as the “original home of the Aryan conquerors,” Punjabi Americans were white.
1924: The Immigration Act of 1924 restricts immigration to 2 percent of those nationalities recorded by the 1890 census, severely limiting Asian immigration.
1925: Filipino men cannot become citizens unless they served for three years in the U.S. Navy in World War I.
1942–1945: Japanese American citizens are interned at the Manzanar camp in California during World War II.
1952: The McCarran-Walter Act grants Asians the right to become naturalized citizens and gives birthright citizenship to people born in Guam.
1962: The Twenty-fourth Amendment bans poll taxes, which had been enacted in the 1890s to keep Black people and other POC from voting.
1965: The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 abolishes the racist quota system of 1924. Asian immigration increases.
1965–1970: Filipinos join Mexican American farmworkers in the Delano Grape strike.
1975: The Voting Rights Act of 1975 mandates accommodations for voters with limited English skills.
1975: The Vietnam War ends, leading to an influx of Vietnamese immigrants to the United States.
1982: In Detroit, two white men misidentify Chinese American Vincent Chin as Japanese American and beat him to death. They are fined $3,780, sentenced to three years’ probation, and receive no jail time. The sentence ignites Asian American activism against hate crimes.
2000: A federal court rules that residents of U.S. colonies and territories, including American Samoa, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, and Puerto Rico, cannot vote in general elections.
2013: The Supreme Court’s 5–4 ruling in Shelby County v. Holder decides that Section 4(b) of the 1965 Voting Rights Act is unconstitutional. Section 4(b) required state and local governments to submit proposed voting law changes to the U.S. Attorney General for review to prevent discriminatory practices. The decision effectively eviscerates the Voting Rights Act.
2021: The Supreme Court’s ruling in Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee weakens Section 2 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which barred discrimination against minorities in state and local election laws. Texas and other states begin to pass voting laws that effectively limit or cancel votes by POC, the elderly, and other marginalized groups.
For more on the history of the Chinese Americans, Japanese Americans, Korean Americans, Philippine Americans, Vietnamese Americans, Laotian and Hmong Americans, Pacific Islanders, and other Asian immigrants and citizens who have helped build our nation, visit the Library of Congress Asian American Heritage Month portal as well as the Library’s many resources on Asian American history.
—Chris Moose, Editor, the Voter
