Tape v. Hurley

Aama Nahuja

In Tape v. Hurley (1885), a Chinese immigrant couple went to court after unsuccessfully seeking admission to San Francisco public schools for their daughter. The state courts ruled that the girl could not be excluded simply because she was Chinese, although the school board quickly responded by establishing separate schools for Chinese, as if this action would provide equal opportunity for them in a harbinger of Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). As a major civil rights case, Tape offered a successful strategy against the state for its policy violating state law and the U.S. Constitution when entrance to public schools were denied on the basis of race. The Chinese immigration to the West Coast and specifically California is primarily identified with the transcontinental railroad. However, there were Chinese people in the United States in the early 1900s as part of the dynamic political, economic, and geographical changes taking place in China. ...

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