Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month 2026 - Day 26

On the 26th of April, 1862 California passed the Anti-Coolie Act?- AN ACT TO PROTECT FREE WHITE LABOR AGAINST COMPETITION WITH CHINESE COOLIE LABOR, AND TO DISCOURAGE THE IMMIGRATION OF THE CHINESE INTO THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA

During the Civil War, the Republican Congress sought to prevent southern plantation owners from replacing their enslaved African American workers with unfree contracts or “coolie” laborers from China.?Southern landowners, anticipating the demise of slavery, began recruiting “coolie” workers–indentured and exploited workers generally from China or India–common on plantations in the Caribbean.?

Chinese workers seemed an ideal replacement workforce for slaves because the planters believed them to be a racially distinct, cheap, and controllable labor force. In reality, many Chinese workers simply signed contracts to pay for fixed costs of passage that they paid off by working for set terms after arrival and were not slave-like “coolies” without free will and independence.?

This conflation of Chinese contract workers with African slaves and unfree “coolies” later fueled anti-Chinese immigration campaigns.?This law was not actively enforced because it was impossible to systematically identify “coolies.”

In 1852, more than 20,000 Chinese arrived in San Francisco.?The California legislature's formal attack on Chinese immigrants began in 1852 with the passage of a foreign miners' tax that imposed a $3 monthly tax on foreign miners in the state and another authorizing immigration officials to require ship owners to post indemnity bonds for foreign passengers arriving in the state.?However, after more pressure came from white miners, who teamed up with sympathizers in the Democratic Party to encourage the passage of the Anti-Coolie Act, it was indeed passed. The act was ratified by California's state legislature on April 26, 1862 and was an attempt to increase the scope of their authority by levying a $2.50 tax on anyone of Chinese origin who applied for licenses "to work in the mines, or to prosecute some kind of business...." Since Chinese workers subsisted on wages of $3 to $4 a month, the tax was a significant burden to shoulder.?

What would follow from the 1862 Anti-Coolie Act would be more anti-Chinese acts that served to discriminate against the Chinese:

1870 Cubic Air Ordinance?- each adult had to have 500 cu ft of living space or face fine, jail or both (a health regulation aimed at clearing out Chinese ghettos who were known to live in very congested housing

1870 The Sidewalk Ordinance?- banned the Chinese method of carrying vegetables and carrying laundry on a pole while in San Francisco

1873 Pigtail Ordinance?- outlawed the wearing of long braids by men, a Chinese custom

1873 - San Francisco taxed laundries?$15 per quarter of a year for using poles to carry laundry, while the tax on horse-drawn vehicles is $2 a quarter

Other laws which profiled the Chinese:

1854 - law forbidding Chinese American from testifying in court against whites because "the Chinese are a race of people whose nature has marked by inferiority and who are incapable of progress or intellectual development beyond a certain point"

1858 - California law passed to bar entry of Chinese and Mongolians

1859 - Exclusion of Chinese from public schools in San Francisco

1862 - California imposes a "police tax" of [email protected] a month on every Chinese

1870 - Naturalization Act: People from Africa became eligible for citizenship but excluded the Chinese