Lecture Event – Angel Island: Immigrant Gateway to America
Immigrants land at Angel Island about 1920. Some Chinese were detained on the island for weeks, months or sometimes years.
S. Dillon Ripley Center
1100 Jefferson Drive, SW
Washington, DC 20560
Google Map
Metro: Smithsonian
If there is anything we have learned, it is that history has a tendency to repeat itself. Take the story of Angel Island in San Francisco Bay. The intense political and cultural debates it triggered a century ago still resonate today.
The Angel Island Immigration Station—known as the “Ellis Island of the West”—was the detention center for nearly half a million people who sailed through the Golden Gate to America. They came from China, Japan, India, Korea, the Philippines, Mexico, and Russia, among other countries. Like today, immigrants who sought greater access to the United States wrangled with those who wanted more restrictions to keep them out.
In an illustrated lecture, Erika Lee explores how the story of Angel Island transformed America’s relationship to immigration. She is director of the Asian American Studies Program at the University of Minnesota. Her book, Angel Island (Oxford University Press), is available for signing after the program.
Related Links:
- More Lets Talk About Race Programs
- RACE: Are We So Different? Exhibition
- APA Program’s Angel Island Event Recap from September 2010
Discussion