The Rise of a New Identity: The Chinese American

During the Reconstruction era, the idea of a composite nation emerged. America was a country with a myriad of different cultures and ethnicities but its immigration policies didn’t reflect that. The US saw an increase in Anti-Chinese sentiment during the Reconstruction era, and many Chinese immigrants were hurt by this sentiment in New York City. Foo created The Chinese American newspaper in hopes of mitigating the harms of Anti-Chinese sentiment by introducing the idea that Chinese immigrants were Americans too and should be treated equally. Our blog post focuses on the lasting impact that The Chinese American (1883) newspaper had on the formation and development of the Chinese American identity by highlighting how completely revolutionary it was to have a newspaper written by a Chinese man for the Chinese people written in Chinese characters. Our group picked out our primary source (The Chinese American Newspaper) from the Composite Nation exhibit at the New York Historical Society museum and created a blog post that is now posted on the NYHS website. Our blog post draws connections from immigration issues during the Reconstruction to modern-day immigration issues through an analysis of the newspaper.