Post 2016, I increased the historical content in my courses. I want students to understand our current period as a continuation of struggles & forces that have defined American politics since the Founding. Things have been terrible & can be again. We've mostly been far less then fully democratic.
Grappling with Reconstruction and Jim Crow should really immunize people against all the “glorious tradition as the oldest consolidated democracy” nonsense, and against all “It can’t happen here” talk: It literally happened here before, in reaction to the first attempt at biracial democracy.
The US banned further immigration from China in 1882, as you show. But they couldn't deny citizenship to Chinese-Americans born here, which should be majority of Chinese-Americans after 1900, see US vs Wong Kim Ark (1898).
Did they deny them voting rights, like they did to blacks in the South?
Great questions! Yes, Asian (& other) immigrants were subject to many of the barriers to voting (e.g., literacy tests) as Southern Black voters. You are correct that the legal history is more complicated. Thanks to your Q, I will update: www.advancingjustice-aajc.org/report/50-ye...
I need to look into it more, but while it appears that Asians were denied naturalization from 1790 on, many states permitted immigrants to vote in the 19th c. In the late 19th/early 20th c (the time the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed), most states moved to limit voting rights to citizens.
