The Chinese Must Go: Violence, Exclusion, and the Making of the Alien in America

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By Beth Lew-Williams

Published May 23, 2018

In 1885, the American West experienced anti-Chinese violence, where communities throughout California and the Pacific Northwest assaulted, killed, and expelled Chinese immigrants. In The Chinese Must Go (Harvard University Press), Beth Lew-Williams argues that this expulsion produced the concept of the “alien” in the modern United States.

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Terri Sewell ’86 at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, stands next to a portrait of civil rights leader John Lewis.
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