Charles McClain's illuminating new study probes Chinese efforts to battle manifold discrimination--in housing, employment, and education--in nineteenth-century America. Challenging the stereotypical image of a passive, insular group, McClain reveals a politically savvy population capable of mobilizing to fight mistreatment. He draws on English- and Chinese-language documents and rarely studied sources to chronicle the ways the Chinese sought redress and change in American courts.

McClain focuses on the San Francisco Bay Area, the home of almost one-fifth of the fifty thousand Chinese...

First Published in 1995. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.