The Children of Chinatown: Growing Up Chinese American in San Francisco, 1850-1920

CHAPTER 4: Challenging Segregation: Chinese Children at School

4 challenging segregation chinese children at school San Francisco, Feb. 22, 1886 My Dear Friend— This is a very cloudy and dark day. There are not many children in school, some boys do not know their lessons, some boys are standing on the floor, teacher will punish them because they were lazy. It is pretty near twelve o’clock, now, Ah Took and Ah Tong are playing with their basket. This is February 22nd, General Washington’s birthday. I see many flags on the houses. I see thirty-eight white stars. American boys not go to school to-day. China boys go all time. We have learned from Holy Bible that Jesus love China boys all the same as American boys—when the heart good. Your Chinese boy, nine years old. —ah beng, in Thirteenth Annual Report of the Occidental Branch of the Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society Ah Beng was a student at the Presbyterian mission school in 1886 and his reference to the Bible and Jesus in this letter reflected the Christian emphasis of his education. At first glance, Ah Beng’s letter, written at the request of his schoolteacher, appears as a child’s simple recitation of the day’s events. However , upon closer examination, this letter reveals the variety of competing interests at work in San Francisco’s early Chinatown and hints at the impact of a segregated society on Chinese children. Mission schools arose to meet the Chinese American community’s desire for education. Public education for Chinese children in San Francisco was available only sporadically during the 1850s and 1860s. Exclusionists, insisting that Chinese children represented Chinese Children at School : 111 a moral threat and a source of contagion to white children, succeeded in preventing Chinese children from acquiring any public education in San Francisco from 1871 to 1885. Chinese parents took advantage of the mission schools even as they fought for the reopening of a public school in Chinatown . Although they eventually succeeded in securing their right to establish public schools, a policy of segregation prevented Chinese children from receiving an equitable educational experience. By the late 1880s, children growing up in Chinatown and desiring an American education chose between attendance at one of the private schools or at the segregated Chinese Public School. Ah Beng’s reference to the observance of George Washington’s birthday reveals the curricular emphasis of both the public and the mission schools in attempting to inculcate foreignborn schoolchildren with patriotic American values. These early e√orts foreshadowed twentieth-century Progressive campaigns that promoted Americanization . Chinese parents, although not opposed to American education, attempted to counter some of the negative influences of Christianization and Americanization by sending their children to Chinese-language and Chineseculture schools in Chinatown. Most Chinese children attended both American and Chinese schools, and Ah Beng probably attended Chinese school in the afternoons or on the weekends. Attendance at both Chinese and American schools contributed to a feeling of dual identity common to many second-generation immigrant children. Ah Beng’s letter hints at his struggle to cope with the feeling of living on the margins of two worlds. He points out the unfairness that ‘‘American boys not go to school to-day,’’ but ‘‘China boys go all time.’’ He concludes his letter with a reminder to himself that ‘‘we have learned from Holy Bible that Jesus love China boys all the same as American boys—when the heart good.’’ He appears to be struggling with the contradiction between the Christian teachings of egalitarianism and the segregated realities of his daily existence. Although just a child, Ah Beng at some level felt the impact of segregation and recognized the inequalities of the educational system in San Francisco. Even as Ah Beng’s teachers emphasized the equality of all children in the eyes of God, forced educational segregation denied these children full status as American citizens. This chapter will explore how Chinese families fought for the right to a public education and, soon afterward, sought the end of segregation in the school system. We will also examine the variety of strategies that Chinese children adopted to challenge the injustices of segregation and cope with the realities of racism in their daily lives. 112 : Chinese Children at School education for chinese children in the nineteenth century Chinese culture traditionally valued education, and many merchant-class parents sacrificed time and money in order...