In this beginning year of the Lincoln Bicentennial Commemoration we are often reminded of the Gettysburg Address which stated that "all men are created equal". This became the very structure of democracy and a belief which culminated in the United States becoming the Great American Melting pot, a vast blend of ethnic cultures. Yet on this date in 1900, that premise was being put to a test.

During the construction of the Northern Pacific and the Union Pacific Railroads, thousands of Chinese, fleeing conditions in their homeland, were imported to provide the necessary manpower to hue out the rail bed though the plains and the mountains of the West. By 1882 a silvery ribbon of track stretched from the Great Lakes to the Pacific Ocean and the cheap labor was no longer needed. In an attempt to stem immigration from China, The Chinese Exclusion Act was passed and further legislation would restrict not only the immigration but the ability for the Chinese to obtain citizenship.

On February 8, 1900, in the United States District Court at Fargo, Judge Charles Amidon completed the hearing of seventy-nine Chinese whose citizenship or immigration status had been brought into question. The trials of these upper Midwestern residents, including those from Minnesota and Illinois, had taken over three months to prepare and two weeks to complete . Most had been merchants, laundrymen or had worked in the café business, some residing in the United States for fifteen to twenty years. The similarity of the names of the individuals had created a significant amount of confusion in the system but had been a form of amusement for the local citizens. One individual, whose name did not appear properly on the forms, coyly admitted that he had just gotten married and it was Chinese custom for the man to assume the wife’s maiden name.

Of the seventy-nine Chinese, only twenty-eight were given certificates allowing them to remain. Those to be deported remained under guard and were sent by train to Seattle to board a ship to Hong Kong.

It was not until China became an ally of the United States in World War II that the Chinese Exclusion Act was appealed. Local laws continued to harass the Chinese who would benefit from the anti-discrimination laws of the 1960's and ‘70's. For them Lincoln’s ideal of equality would take almost one hundred years.

By Jim Davis

Sources:
The Fargo Forum February 9, 1900
Senate Miscellaneous Docs 25 50th Congress 1 Session #2517
House Reports 614 48th Congress 1st Session #2254

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