Julie Su

They were engaged in provisioning. They were merchants.

They were largely servicing a Chinese clientele.

All the time he was in the United States, he lived within about a quarter mile of the place where he was born.

I'm Julie Diane Su, and I'm a fourth generation San Franciscan.

And I became interested or knew about the Wong Kim Ark case because my friend who was working in Washington, D.C. at the time for Janet Reno asked me to put on the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court landmark case, United States versus Wong Kim Ark.

That's the recognized birthplace, the exact birthplace. It's different now.

This is as close as we get to 751 Sacramento Street. It is now the site of the Nam Kyu Chinese School.

They had lawyers on retainer. Some of these lawyers were extremely well positioned. Some of them had had positions in the federal government. Some of them had argued before the Supreme Court. Some of them were working for the railroads. And the businessmen wanted the Chinese that they had brought over to get into the country.

If the sons and daughters of Chinese are not citizens, then what of the sons and daughters of the English, the Irish, the Germans, the French, other people who have come to the United States? If you are not a citizen upon being born on this soil, then none of those others are citizens either.

And Justice Gray authors the opinion that,

The federal judge says that is blatantly unconstitutional. Trump says that ruling will be challenged.

But they were looking for a test case, and he was a perfect test case. He didn't set out to be anybody's test case.

They came from the Pearl River Delta area. These trade ports of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Canton were opening up to the world.

I am a Richter Professor Emerita in the Political Science Department at Swarthmore College.

The name of the book is American by Birth, Wong Kim Ark and the Battle for Citizenship.