The Supreme Court in American Political History

Teaching Strategies and Lesson Plans

Objectives

1. Students will have an understanding of the difficulties faced by Chinese immigrants.
2. Students will be familiar with the discriminatory laws facing the Chinese immigrants.
3. Students will examine key court cases and consider justice of the decisions of the Supreme Court when compared to the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution.
4. Students will interpret relevant political cartoons and recognize the political issues being addressed as well as their elements of satire and irony.
5. Students will be interested in reading the novels Bone and or The Joy Luck Club as a result of this unit.
6. Students will connect their understanding of the Chinese American experience to the characters in the novels we will read.

Classroom Activities

Lesson Plan One

Present the following scenario: If you lived in an overcrowded, war-torn country, where there was no way to earn enough to feed your family and food was scarce even if you could, where neighbors were selling children into slavery just to be able to feed those who were left, what would you do? What if, at the same time, you heard that across the sea there was a place where gold lay right in the ground, and all you had to do was to dig it out? If once you arrived you faced a constant threat of violence, discrimination, prejudice, lack of police protection, unfair taxes, laws intended to make you want to go back home, would you leave? What would happen to your family if you did?

Lesson Plan Two

Present one of the poems that had been carved on the walls of Angel Island on chart paper or on an overhead (see the background section of this unit), followed by questions such as:

1. How did the author feel about immigrating to the United States?

2. What do you imagine his life must have been like?

3. What about his homeland might he have been missing?

4. If your family was starving and your father went off to another country to send you money for food, what might he be feeling?

Lesson Plan Three

Present a copy of the MINING LAWS, RULES AND REGULATIONS OF VALLECITO CAMP, CALABERAS COUNTY, CALIFORNIA (1858), Serial # 9250 from the American Passages Archives found at http://www.learner.org/amerpass/slideshow/archive_search.php. Ask students to examine it carefully, looking for anything unusual or striking. Ask for possible motivations and concerns by the authors of this document.

Lesson Plan Four

Conduct a role play. Assign the following roles:

1. Chinese immigrant applying for entry into the United States.

2. American Interrogator

3. Witnesses for the Applicant

Ask students to form small groups and to devise a set of questions to pose to the applicant and his witnesses. Remind students that the purpose of the list of questions, like those that they might have had to answer by an interrogator on Angel Island) were intended to discourage immigration. One example of such a question could be, "How many steps are there leading up to your house?"

Then ask the "witness" to answer the same questions. Did the answers match? Would the applicant have been deported given the way their interrogation went?

Lesson Plan Five

List a series of 19th century San Francisco ordinances on chart paper or on an overhead projector:

1. The Sidewalk Ordinance of 1870: Those who used poles to carry merchandise could not walk on sidewalks.

2. The Cubic Air Ordinance of 1871: Each adult required 500 cubic feet of living space.

3. The Queue Ordinance of 1873: Those who chose jail instead of fine for violating the cubic air ordinance must have their queue cut off.

4. The Laundry Ordinance of 1873: Anyone found carrying laundry with horse-drawn wagons would have pay for a license.

5. The Wooden Laundry Ordinance of 1886: Anyone operating a laundry in a wooden building must have a license.

Ask students how they might feel if these laws had been aimed at them and at no other group. Next, have students look at the text of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution and to consider which if any were in fact constitutional. If not, what part of the Constitution was being violated.

Lesson Plan Six

Hold mock trials. Ask students to research each of the following Supreme Court cases: Lin Sing v Washburn, Ah Wing and Ho Ah Kow v Nunan, Yick Wo v Hopkins, Wong Wing v. United States, and United States v. Wong Kim Ark. Once they have gathered their information on each case, have students form teams of prosecuting attorneys, defense attorneys and judges for each of the cases.

Next have students pretend to be the attorneys arguing in front of the Supreme Court. Then those playing the role as justices could render opinions as if they were court justices. Finally, compare our decisions with those of the actual Court.

Lesson Plan Seven

In groups of two or three, students will conduct an on-line search in which they visit websites, such as HarpWeek, and will select political cartoons related to Chinese immigration. Then they will analyze and present to the class the political issue being illustrated as well as the point of view being expressed.

Assessment

Following the reading of Bone by Fae Myenne Ng and/or The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan, students will write an essay of a minimum of five paragraphs in which they discuss the experiences of the characters and how they were each affected by the history of Chinese immigration in the United States.