The illustration from Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper depicts a Chinese man sitting outside the Golden Gate of Liberty, barred out due to his ethnicity.
This cartoon is a commentary that was published on the eve of the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act, signed into law on May 6, 1882, by President Chester A. Arthur.
In the 1902 pamphlet, American Federation of Labor president Samuel Gompers, writer Herman Guttstadt, and Maine Senator James Blaine argue that Chinese labor posed a threat to the white American working class and, in doing so, invoke racist…