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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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.”
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Snow Plow at Cisco
Winter construction of the Transcontinental Railroad in the Sierra Nevada mountains, c. 1867-1868. Avalanches and other accidents were some of the threats to workers enduring deadly blizzards and long winters.
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Chinese Workers
It took more than two years of constant, grueling, and often deadly work to excavate and lay tracks. This photo was taken approximately 80 miles from Sacramento, CA, c. 1866-1869.
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Central Pacific Railroad Worker
The Central Pacific Railroad (CPRR) relied heavily on Chinese immigrant labor to build the western portion of the Transcontinental Railroad. The CPRR employed 12,000 Chinese workers by 1867.
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Anti-Chinese Cartoon
An 1869 political cartoon in Harper’s Weekly by Thomas Nash, titled “Pacific Chivalry,” illustrates anti-Chinese sentiment among white miners in California.
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Tuolumne Mines
Sketch of Chinese miners during the California Gold Rush, Tuolumne County, Southern Mines, California, 1858.
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Chinese Emigration
Chinese emigration to America: sketch on board the steamship Alaska, bound for San Francisco.
