Search the Media Repository
Discover the curated images, videos, and primary sources featured throughout Foundations and Futures
History is more than just text on a page; it is the photographs, voices, and artifacts of the people who lived it. The images and recordings featured across Foundations and Futures are part of a meticulously curated media repository. Whether you are building a lesson plan or investigating an artifact, you can use this database to trace the provenance of our media: discover who created an asset, the historical context behind it, and how it can be used to bring Asian American and Pacific Islander experiences into your classroom.
Multimedia
Chapters
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Anna May Wong’s Certificate of Identity
Anna May Wong’s 1924 US Certificate of Identity, at age nineteen, indicating her as “native.” Red certificates were issued to Chinese nationals and Chinese Americans entering the United States under the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.
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Anna May Wong
Born in Los Angeles in 1905, Anna May Wong (born Wong Liu Tsong) had a storied career that spanned over sixty films. In the face of racial discrimination in Hollywood, she rose to international fame as a film and TV icon.
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Chinese American Boys In Chinatown
Chinese American boys in a San Francisco Chinatown parade along Sixth Street, c. 1936.
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Arrest in Chinatown
This 1897 film shows the arrest of a Chinese man in San Francisco Chinatown, watched by a crowd of onlookers.
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Interior of Angel Island Immigration Station
Chinese detainees on Angel Island painted and carved poems of despair on barracks walls. More than 200 of them are still visible today
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A Chinese Exclusion Act Coaching Book
A study aid or coaching guide to successfully pass through US immigration interrogation from the 1920s found among the papers of Fook Wing Chung.
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Interrogation on Angel Island
Chinese applicant at interrogation, Angel Island, 1923. Officials often suspected fraudulent applications and questioned immigrants about specific details related to families or villages to detect false stories.
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Processing Paperwork on Angel Island
Officials processing paperwork, Angel Island. Chinese exclusion laws allowed some non-laborer immigrants to enter the United States, but required substantial proof and documents.
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Dormitory on Angel Island
A Chinese men’s dormitory on Angel Island, 1910. Detained immigrants stayed in overcrowded, poorly ventilated rooms with rows of metal bunk beds set two feet apart.
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Angel Island Immigration Station
Angel Island Immigration Station. From 1882-1910, Chinese immigrating to San Francisco were detained at Angel Island while hoping to gain entry to the United States.
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Medical Examination at Angel Island
A medical examination of Chinese immigrants at Angel Island Immigration Station. These exams were extremely physically invasive, and personal belongings such as letters were often confiscated.
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Workingman’s Party of Guerneville
A political cartoon for the Workingmen’s Party of Guerneville, California, 1879 featured the phrase “The Chinese Must Go!”
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Anti-Chinese Riots in Seattle
Artist’s conception of the 1886 anti-Chinese riot in Seattle. The three panels are titled (top to bottom) “Packing Up”, “On the Wharf”, and “The Collision.”
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Official Map of San Francisco Chinatown
An “Official Map of San Francisco Chinatown” from 1885 shows names of owners, businesses, “Chinese occupancy,” “Chinese gambling houses,” and “White occupants.”
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Chinese Grocery
This undated photograph depicts a vendor standing before a Chinese grocery store in San Francisco Chinatown around the turn of the twentieth century.
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Young Woman in Chinatown
A young woman in holiday attire in Chinatown, San Francisco c. 1895-1906. Few Chinese women lived in the US in the nineteenth century, many of whom were trafficked into the sex work industry.
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San Francisco Laundry
By 1870, Chinese made up 72 percent of all laundry workers in California. While owning a laundry allowed Chinese immigrants to run their own business, Chinese men were stereotyped with anti-Chinese rhetoric as doing “women’s work.”
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Chinese Field Hands
Four Chinese field hands, ca. 1898. By the 1880s, Chinese field workers were involved in nearly every aspect of California’s agricultural production.
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Golden Spike
When the Central Pacific and Union Pacific rails were officially joined at Promontory Point, Utah, photographer Andrew J. Russell commemorated the moment in this famous photo. Chinese workers were excluded from the photo despite their contribution to this feat.
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End of Track
Chinese railroad workers on the Humboldt Plains. The railroad connected the Union Pacific railroad at Promontory Point, Utah, creating the first transcontinental railroad. Contributions of Chinese laborers were often obscured or omitted, leading to historians referring to them as “Silent Spikes.”
