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Lesson PlanTeaching About Chicago’s Filipino AmericansBarbara M. Posadas |
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Statement of Purpose Focusing on the Filipino American experience in Chicago during the first half of the twentieth century, this two- to three-day teaching unit is designed for inclusion in a basic United States history survey course. It can be used in its entirety in a longer unit discussing immigration and ethnic community formation, or it can be divided for incorporation in separate segments of the course emphasizing imperialism, schooling and work, race and interracial interaction, and/or the Second World War. Teachers may also ask students to compare and contrast the experiences of Filipino Americans in Chicago with those of ethnic and racial groups in different geographical settings during the same time period. Introduction This teaching unit examines the collective life experiences of the several thousand Filipinos who arrived in the Chicago area before 1935. Early twentieth-century immigration by Filipinos to the United States is typically viewed as the movement of unskilled laborers from the Philippines to Hawai’i and the Pacific Coast states where they became an important ethnic segment in agriculture and cannery work. By contrast, Filipinos more typically came to the Chicago area as students, first as government scholarship (pensionado) or family-supported students, and later as self-supporting students who expected to combine attending classes with employment. While some succeeded in attaining their educational goals and returned to the Philippines, other Filipinos remained to live and work in Chicago into the post-World War II years, long after their schooling had ceased. Emphasizing the significance of both national patterns and local context in historical development, this unit examines: (1) the reasons which encouraged Filipinos to leave the Philippines and come to Chicago; (2) the strategies which they employed in pursuing and modifying their original goals; (3) the opportunities and constraints which they encountered and the choices which they made as Second City residents; (4) the means by which they sought cohesion and self-definition as an ethnic community; and (5) the nature of their ethnic community experiences. Objectives To connect the United States imperial venture in the Philippines (and, by implication, in other overseas areas of American territorial acquisition) with the movement of colonials to the United States. To examine the impact of regional context on both the legal status and the social and economic experiences of the newcomers. To assess the relative force of individual agency, ethnic group solidarity, and majority group attitudes and actions in immigrant community building. To scrutinize the heterogeneity within an ethnic group perceived as homogeneous by those not part of the group. To examine the extent to which United States citizenship by naturalization was available to immigrants from different parts of the world during the twentieth century. To develop student abilities in critical thinking and argument. Historical Background Although a few Filipinos came to what is now the United States during three centuries of Spanish rule (1571-1898), substantial Filipino immigration began only after the United States acquired the Philippines following the Spanish-American War and its bloody aftermath, the Philippine-American War of 1900-1902, during which American military forces defeated Filipinos seeking independence. American colonial officials inaugurated an extensive program of road-building, disease-fighting, and school-construction in the Philippines. Young Filipinos who successfully made their way through the English-language educational system during the opening years of the century hoped for employment in the professions, in teaching, and in the Philippine civil service. At its best, American imperialism offered these Filipinos inclusion in an emerging world of great promise in the Philippines. Many early students saw themselves as successors to Filipinos who had studied abroad in Europe during the last years of Spanish rule. Their great role model was Dr. Jose P. Rizal, a European-trained ophthalmologist, poet, novelist, and critic of colonialism executed by the Spanish in Manila in 1896. Rizal’s achievements, almost unknown in the United States, had little in common with the American image of “uncivilized” and non-Christian Filipinos popularized at the St. Louis World’s Fair of 1904 and in other “native village” exhibitions. Filipino students in the United States aimed at combating this negative image and promoting respect for their homeland and its people as a nation worthy of independence. The first students included several hundred Philippine government-sponsored pensionado students placed in carefully selected American high schools, colleges, and universities during the 1900s and 1910s. Their financial support assured, these students generally completed their degrees on schedule and returned home to achieve high rank as teachers, doctors, lawyers, and engineers, or in government service. Their success encouraged many others who, lacking family money or government scholarships, confidently expected to earn living expenses and tuition by working while going to school. Much more than their countrymen who came to work on the West Coast and in Hawai’i, the Chicago Filipinos were a fairly diverse group who had already succeeded in equipping themselves with ten to twelve years of English-language instruction. Some had already left home in the Philippines years earlier for work or schooling in a provincial center or in Manila. The many, diverse institutions of higher education located in and near Chicago drew Filipinos to the nation’s industrial heartland. By 1920, the United States census recorded 154 Filipinos in Chicago. These Filipinos possessed several years more schooling than the average Chicago immigrant of eastern and southern European origin, English language skills, and the educational dreams which they would pursue at Chicago’s elite universities, Northwestern and the University of Chicago; at Midwest public universities—Wisconsin, Indiana, and Illinois; at nearby normal schools for teacher education; at liberal arts colleges run by religious denominations; and at Chicago’s tuition-free Crane Junior College and other night engineering and accounting programs. During the 1920s, more than two thousand Filipino students moved back and forth from college to full-time work and from college to college. Patterns of chain migration brought brothers, cousins, and townmates, assuring a steady flow of newcomers. Unlike other Asians barred from entry into the United States during the first half of the century, Filipinos faced no restrictions in coming to the United States before 1935. Because the Philippines was a colony, Filipinos, although not eligible for citizenship, were classified as “nationals.” In the mid-1930s, this changed, essentially cutting off Filipino immigration for a generation. The Tydings-McDuffie Act of 1934 promised the Philippines independence after ten years but limited Filipino immigration to a fifty-per-year quota during that period. After independence, Filipinos would join other Asians in being totally prohibited from entering the United States. Over time, complex, varied reasons transformed sojourning Filipino foreign students into working-class immigrants. As chances for economic success decreased in the Philippines in the 1920s, the pull to return diminished. The struggle for day-to-day survival forced many to devote more effort to work than to school. After work, city night life called to some more loudly than books and assignments. Marriage to an American woman could hasten a shift out of school that had already begun. Many of Chicago’s Filipinos entered a long transition, which led to abandoning one’s studies, seeking a steady job, and becoming working-class settlers in Depression-era Chicago. After the Tydings-McDuffie Act, Filipinos in the United States could not go home, even for a visit, without losing their right to return—to their jobs and to the families which many had begun. By 1940, although only sixty Filipinas over the age of twenty lived in Chicago, 532 of 1,298 Filipino men over the age of twenty had married, ninety percent of these to non-Filipino women, generally the American-born daughters of European immigrant parents. Unlike Filipinos in California, Oregon, and Washington who were barred from marriage to white women by anti-miscegenation laws, Chicago’s Filipinos faced no such legal barrier, yet nonetheless encountered social disapproval of racially “mixed” marriages and discrimination in housing and recreation. Filipino men of this generation rarely achieved professional status in Chicago. A few worked in offices, as accountants, or made use of their almost-completed engineering training, but most remained busboys, waiters, cooks, and chauffeurs—low-ranking service workers with a high level of formal education, 12.2 years on average in 1940. Their most secure jobs were with the U. S. Post Office and with the Pullman Company as attendants on railway club and dining cars. Starting in 1925, Pullman hired Filipinos in an unsuccessful attempt to prevent African American porters from unionizing. A job with Pullman, whose Chicago Commissary Division at one time employed as many as 300 Filipinos, usually meant forsaking educational goals because of being on the road as long as seven days at a time. By the time of American entry into World War II, most Filipinos who had remained in Chicago had settled into available occupations and had traded in their dreams of social mobility in the Philippines for the modest comforts of family life and American consumer society—automobile ownership, picnics organized by Filipino clubs, and the annual celebration of Rizal Day which continues as a major event for Filipinos throughout the United States. World War II altered life for Chicago’s Filipinos. Simultaneous with the 7 December 1941 raid on Pearl Harbor, the Philippines had also come under attack and by mid-1942 was under Japanese rule. The war linked Filipinos and Americans in the patriotic cause—to defeat the enemy, to secure democracy, and to liberate the Philippines. Those Filipinos still young enough to enlist in the armed forces enthusiastically joined up, while others remained with Pullman, in essential wartime work. At the same time—as Japanese Americans along the West Coast endured incarceration—this joint pursuit of common goals diminished, but failed to eliminate, legal discrimination against Filipinos as well as other non-Japanese Asians. At war’s end, the Philippines became independent on 4 July 1946, and the new nation’s immigrant quota was raised symbolically from 50- to 100-per-year. China and India also received quotas of at least 100-per-year. And Filipinos in the United States, most of whom had come to the United States as young men and were now middle-aged, became eligible for naturalized citizenship, as did Asians from China and India. Implementing the Lesson Review United States acquisition of the Philippines in 1898. Discuss the establishment of an educational system in the Philippines modeled on that in existence in the United States during the opening years of the twentieth century. Distribute the handouts and the questions to the students to read and answer. Small groups might each be given two or three handouts and corresponding questions to work on separately with a recorder later reporting the group’s findings to the whole class. Students might also be asked to discuss the meaning of ethnicity in immigrants’ lives, the role played by race in the lives of non-white immigrants, and the process of becoming American. To extend the unit, students might be assigned written or oral reports comparing and contrasting Filipino American experiences in Chicago with those of ethnic and racial groups in other geographical locations in the United States during the first half of the century. Bibliography Alcantara, Ruben R. Sakada: Filipino Adaptation in Hawaii. Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1981. Almirol, Edwin B. Ethnic Identity and Social Negotiation: A Study of a Filipino Community in California. New York: AMS Press, 1985. Buaken, Manuel. I Have Lived with the American People. Caldwell, Idaho: Caxton Printers, 1948. Bulosan, Carlos. America Is in the Heart. 1943; Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1973. Chan, Sucheng. Asian Americans: An Interpretive History. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1991. Cordova, Fred. Filipinos: Forgotten Asian Americans—A Pictorial Essay/1763- Circa-1963. Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company, 1983. Crouchett, Lorraine Jacobs. Filipinos in California: From the Days of the Galleons to the Present. El Cerrito, Calif.: Downey Place Publishing House, 1982. Daniels, Roger. Coming to America: A History of Immigration and Ethnicity in American Life. New York: Harper Collins, 1990. Doeppers, Daniel F. Manila, 1900-1941: Social Change in a Late Colonial Metropolis. New Haven: Yale University, 1984. Espina, Marina E. Filipinos in Louisiana. New Orleans: A. F. Laborde & Sons, 1988. Espiritu, Yen Le. Filipino American Lives. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995. Friday, Chris. Organizing Asian American Labor: The Pacific Coast Canned-Salmon Industry, 1870-1942. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994. Guyotte, Roland L. and Barbara M. Posadas. “Celebrating Rizal Day: The Emergence of a Filipino Tradition in Twentieth-Century Chicago.” In Feasts and Celebrations in North American Ethnic Communities, 111-127. Edited by Ramon A. Gutiérrez and Geneviève Fabre. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995. Karnow, Stanley, In Our Image: America’s Empire in the Philippines. New York: Ballantine Books, 1989. Kitano, Harry H. L. and Roger Daniels. Asian Americans: Emerging Minorities. 2d ed. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1995. Mason, Sarah R. “The Filipinos.” In They Chose Minnesota: A Survey of the State’s Ethnic Groups, 546-59. Edited by June D. Holmquist. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1981. May, Glenn Anthony. Social Engineering in the Philippines: The Aims, Execution, and Impact of American Colonial Policy, 1900-1913. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1980. Melendy, H. Brett. Asians in America: Filipinos, Koreans, and East Asians. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1977. Pido, Antonio J. A. The Pilipinos in America: Macro/Micro Dimensions of Immigration. New York: Center for Migration Studies, 1986. Posadas, Barbara M. “At a Crossroad: Filipino American History and the Old-Timers’ Generation.” Amerasia Journal 13 (1986-7): 85-97. ———. “Crossed Boundaries in Interracial Chicago: Pilipino American Families since 1925.” Amerasia Journal 8 (Fall/Winter 1981): 31-52. Reprinted in Unequal Sisters: A Multi-Cultural Reader in U.S. Women’s History, 316-29. Edited by Ellen Carol DuBois and Vicki L. Ruiz. 2d ed. New York: Routledge, 1994. ———. “The Hierarchy of Color and Psychological Adjustment in an Industrial Environment: Filipinos, the Pullman Company, and the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters.” Labor History 23 (Summer 1982): 349-73. ———. “Ethnic Life and Labor in Chicago’s Pre-World War II Filipino Community.” In Labor Divided: Race and Ethnicity in United States Labor Struggles, 1840-1970, 63-80. Edited by Robert Asher and Charles Stephenson. Albany: SUNY Press, 1988. ———. “Mestiza Girlhood: Interracial Families in Chicago’s Filipino American Community Since 1930.” In Making Waves: Writings By and About Asian American Women, 273-82. Edited by Asian Women United of California. Boston: Beacon Press, 1989. ———. and Roland L. Guyotte. “Aspiration and Reality: Occupational and Educational Choice among Filipino Migrants to Chicago, 1900-1935.” Illinois Historical Journal 85 (Summer 1992): 89-104. ———. “Unintentional Immigrants: Chicago’s Filipino Foreign Students Become Settlers, 1900-1941.” Journal of American Ethnic History 9 (Spring 1990): 26-48. Reimers, David M. Still the Golden Door: The Third World Comes to America. New York: Columbia University Press, 1985. Sharma, Miriam. “Labor Migration and Class Formation Among the Filipinos in Hawaii, 1906-1946.” In Labor Immigration under Capitalism: Asian Workers in the United States Before World War II, 579-615. Edited by Lucie Cheng and Edna Bonacich. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984. ———. “The Philippines A Case of Migration to Hawaii, 1906-1946.” In Labor Immigration under Capitalism: Asian Workers in the United States Before World War II, 337-358. Edited by Lucie Cheng and Edna Bonacich. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984. Stanley, Peter W. A Nation in the Making: The Philippines and the United States, 1899-1921. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974. Sutherland, William Alexander. Not By Might: The Epic of the Philippines. Las Cruces, N.M.: Southwest Publishing, 1953. Takaki, Ronald. Pau Hana: Plantation Life and Labor in Hawaii, 1835-1920. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1983. ———. Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1989. Vallangca, Roberto B. Pinoy: The First Wave (1898-1941). San Francisco: Strawberry Hill Press, 1977. Barbara M. Posadas is an associate professor of history and Director of the M.A. Opion in Historical Administration at Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, Illinois, and a member of the OAH Committee on the Status of Minority History and Minority Historians. Handout 1 Filipinos in Chicago Associate to Meet Their Needs, 1913-1921 [Antonio A. Gonzalez, a Filipino student, discusses the founding and the activities of the Filipino Association of Chicago.] In 1913 many events, significant in character because of their bearing on the Philippine independence question were taking place in Chicago. Of these, the most important was the intentional and malicious misrepresentation of our country and people in a local theatre by the enemies of our national aspirations. Exhibitions of the “head hunters” and other mountain people of the Philippines with lectures by a certain self-styled authority on Philippine conditions naturally gave the American audience the impression that those were the Filipinos for whom Ex-President Wilson has recommended complete independence. Their pride and their patriotism aroused twenty-three Filipino students in the city to band themselves together into an association which now bears the name given above, chiefly to effectively combat the injustice that was being done the Filipinos, and secondly to promote particularly their common interests and that of their country and people. In that same year the F.A.C. commemorated the death of our most revered patriot [Dr. Jose P. Rizal] at the Reynolds Theatre of the University of Chicago by a literary and musical program. Shortly afterward, the F.A.C. published 400 pamphlets entitled “The Truth About the Philippines,” which were distributed to the audience where the aforementioned Filipino misrepresentation was taking place. . . . The F.A.C. grows with time, in membership, activities and importance. At present there are more than 150 members. It was incorporated under the laws of the State of Illinois in 1917, thus giving it a legal existence. . . . It has an effective social committee which sends out good speakers to speak in theatres, colleges, Y.M.C.A.’s and churches; it occasionally holds banquets, dances and receptions in honor of prominent Filipinos and many Americans are always present. [On] the last Rizal Day [December 30, 1920]. . . about 1,000 people listened to Ex-Governor Dunne of Illinois . . . upholding the Filipino plea for independence. . . . The F.A.C. has a relief fund that gives out loans to members who are in need of financial aid; an employment bureau to aid members seeking employment; and permanent committees that take charge of athletics, discussions and social activities. . . . Source: Antonio A. Gonzalez, “The Filipino Association of Chicago, Inc.,” The Philippine Herald: Official Organ of the Filipino Students’ Federation of America 1 (May 1921): 3-4. Handout 2 “The Nation’s Builders of the Past and the Future,” 1929 Filipino Student Bulletin 4 (January 1929) Handout 3 Crane College, Filipino Club, Annual Spring Dance, Hotel Sherman, May 1930 Filipino American Historical Society of Chicago [In October 1925, two months after African American Pullman Porters organize the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, Pullman begins to employ Filipinos in Chicago.] An innovation in Pullman Service was the using of Filipinos as Club Car Attendants on the “Cuban Special,” deluxe train, that carried Chicago crowds to Urbana, Ill., to attend the football games between Illinois-Nebraska and Illinois-Michigan during October. These men—all of whom have specialized in club work—were uniformed in white and not only made a natty appearance but scored a decided hit. They are now being used as Club Car Attendants on the “Broadway Limited,” and this service will be extended to other regular lines, as the Pullman Company desires to give the real club atmosphere to these cars, already provided with luxurious conveniences. Special uniforms in forestry green will be seen on Attendants assigned to Club or other service. Source: “Filipinos Make Their Debut in Pullman Cars,” Pullman News, November 1925, 221. Handout 5 A. Philip Randolph, President of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, Addresses African American Pullman Company Porters in The Messenger: The World’s Greatest Negro Monthly, 1925-26 [A. Philip Randolph criticizes the hiring of Filipinos by the Pullman Company.] October-November 1925. But suppose the Pullman Company should threaten to put Filipinos or white men in the Pullman cars as porters, because the Negroes organized to demand a living wage and manhood rights. The only manly and effective answer to that threat would be to tell them that if they want to put Filipinos or white men on the cars because Negro Pullman porters, like white men, are organizing to demand more pay, better hours and better working conditions, to put them on. It is better to maintain your manhood and get off the Pullman cars than to kow tow and lick the boots of the Pullman Company for a few crumbs which any other group of self-respecting men would reject. Negroes in the Pullman service had jobs before they went into the service and they can get jobs if they leave it. March 1926. The Company has attempted to break your spirit by putting some Filipinos on a few club cars in utter and flagrant violation of the seniority principle, by herding men from the South around the yards as a threat to the porters, by holding up your check, by framing you up as tho you were bootlegging, through spies who hound and pester you on your runs. Source: The Messenger: The World’s Greatest Negro Monthly (October-November 1925): 352, and (March 1926): 68. Handout 6 “In the Mire of Chicago,” 1932 Luis S. Quianio, “In the Mire in Chicago,” Graphic, 22 June 1932 Handout 7 “Badge of Loyalty,” 1942 [The Pullman Company Issues a Badge of Loyalty to Its Filipino Employees in January 1942.] TO ALL PULLMAN PASSENGERS: The neat, efficient attendant who waits upon you in club and lounge cars is not a Japanese, since there is none of that nationality in Pullman service. He is a Filipino, of undoubted, intense loyalty to Uncle Sam, . . . Although to most American eyes there is a distinct difference between the physiognomy of the Filipino and the Japanese, there are many who cannot see it. For their eyes the Pullman Filipino employees wear a button [as shown in the cut] as a matter of racial and national pride. Let no American patriot be in doubt when traveling Pullman, as in no case will there be a Japanese—even in simulated Filipino manners. The button—“U.S.A.-Philippines,” and respective flags—will be seen under the badges of Pullman employees, whether on blue uniform coat or on white service jacket. Handout 8
Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1950 Census of Population: Characteristics of the Non-white Population by Race, 111-2; ibid., vol. 2, “Characteristics of the Population,” 642; ibid., vol. 3, “The Labor Force,” 874-5, 898. Questions From Handout 1—The Filipino Association of Chicago
From Handout 2—“The Nation’s Builder”
Handout 3—The Crane College Spring Dance
Handout 4—Filipinos Make Their Pullman Debut
Handout 5—A. Philip Randolph Criticizes Pullman’s Hiring of Filipinos
Handout 6—In the Mire
Handout 7—Badge of Loyalty
Handout 8—Male Occupation and Education in 1940
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