By Alex Mann
SDC Associate Professor, Phil Gruen, was recently interviewed by Washington State Magazine regarding the Chinese experience in the Pacific Northwest. Long known for their contributions to the built environment of the American West, Chinese Americans also have a long legacy in the Pacific Northwest, including the Palouse.
“When I began teaching at WSU in 2003, I knew little about the legacy of Chinese Americans in the region,” says Gruen. “Their history was instrumental to development in this area but also tragic, in many ways.”
That tragedy was a direct result of immigration policy in the United States. As the program of American westward expansion in the late nineteenth century unfolded, the demand for labor increased. Among those who would answer the call were Chinese laborers. Then, in what became the first significant restriction on free immigration in U.S. history, the Exclusion Act of 1882 excluded Chinese laborers from the country altogether. Existing Chinese communities found themselves alienated, unable to gain citizenship and subject to widespread racist sentiment. Later, the Immigration Act of 1924, would forbid Chinese immigration entirely. These Acts were not lifted until after the Second World War. Despite these policies and the subsequent struggles endured, Chinese American communities persisted.
Chinese American labor history was instrumental to the nation’s development but also tragic.
Reflecting the SDC’s commitment to inclusivity and social justice, Gruen, whose book, Manifest Destinations: Cities and Tourists in the Nineteenth-Century American West (University of Oklahoma Press, 2014), includes a study of the discrimination that gave rise to San Francisco’s Chinatown as a tourist attraction, introduced local Chinese American landscapes into an Honors course called “The Global Palouse” in the spring semester of 2021. The course is part of the Palouse Matters program, led by Jolie Kaytes, program head for Landscape Architecture, and made possible by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Gruen looks forward to continuing his teaching and research of the Chinese American experience in the Northwest at the SDC. “There is still much to learn.”
Read the full article in WSU Magazine: How Chinese pioneers helped build the Pacific Northwest
Learn more about the Palouse Matters program: Introducing students to the Palouse
Preview and purchase Manifest Destinations: Manifest Destinations – OU Press
Image courtesy of University of Washington Libraries.