INDIAN AMERICANS : THE VICTIMS OF SHAMEFUL SUPPRESSED HISTORY OF CIVIL RIGHTS IN THE U.S.

While we're watching AP US History get attacked throughout the country, here are some interesting historical tidbits I came across while working on an article:

The first person of Indian ethnicity to come to the U.S. arrived in Massachusetts in 1790.

In 1913, California passed the Alien Land Law Act, which stripped all farmers of Indian ethnicity of their leased as well as owned farm land.

The same year, 1913, a young Bhagat Singh Thind immigrated to the U.S. from India and worked in a lumber mill in order to self-finance his college and graduate education at UC Berkeley. (From lib.Berkely.edu)

In 1920, an Indian immigrant with a PhD from UC Berkeley and who served in the U.S. military in WWI and rose to the rank of Acting Sergeant, became an American citizen.

In 1923, he, along with all other naturalized Indian-American US citizens were stripped of their US citizenship by a unanimous Supreme Court decision which said that people of Indian ethnicity were not allowed to be US citizens because they are not white. (White immigrants could still get US citizenship.) This case was United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind.

In 1924, the U.S. Congress passed the Asian Exclusion Act, which severely limited the immigration of South Asians to the U.S. Indian women were not allowed to immigrate to the U.S. out of fear that Indian men working in the US may marry, start families (anchor babies) and stay.

White Americans who married men of Indian ethnicity also lost their citizenship for doing so. This bar on citizenship for people of Indian ethnicity was not reversed until 1946.

In 1956, only ten years after Indian-Americans again became eligible for U.S. citizenship, the first and only U.S. congressman to date of Indian origin was elected to represent the 29th district of California. (lib.berkeley.edu) 

Today, there are two state governors, the US surgeon general, and a state attorney general who are Indian-Americans. In a Pew Report from 2012, it was found that Indian-Americans comprise the most educated and most financially successful ethnic group in the U.S.A.

Bhagat Singh Thind

Bhagat Singh Thind (1892-1967), an Indian American spiritual teacher and writer, was denied US citizenship in United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind (1923). The Supreme Court ruled, 9 to 0, that while...

ABAGOND.WORDPRESS.COM

Unlike ·  · Share

•  * ,  * and ****like this.
• Share *
• 
  

  * I have never heard this before. I guess it's just another of those things that were omitted from history books when I was in school. It's absolutely shameful!

  February 20 at 2:45pm · Like
• 
  

  * Yes, although, it is not at all surprising that it is omitted from U.S. history that children are taught in school. The crimes of Christopher Columbus were also omitted and to this day, his bloody cruelty we celebrate as a national holiday and school children learn only about the three ships but not about chopping off young boys' hands and letting them bleed to death. The mark of a truly free society is not carrying firearms into fast food restaurants and intimidating mothers with toddlers with them. The true mark of a free society is freedom from indoctrination by studying and knowing the true history of the country and teaching it to our child.

  
  

  Foot Note: * stands for erased proper name.