"The month of May was chosen to commemorate the immigration of the first Japanese to the United States on May 7, 1843, and to mark the anniversary of the completion of the transcontinental railroad on May 10, 1869. The majority of the workers who laid the tracks were Chinese immigrants." - AsianPacificHeritage.gov
In 1978, Congress passed Public Law 95-419, which directed President Carter to designate a week in May 1979 as Asian/Pacific American Heritage Week. In 1990, Congress passed a law amending the 1978 law, requesting a month-long observance.
The term "Asian/Pacific" includes the continent of Asia and the Pacific islands of Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia.
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Asian America : a primary source reader by
(EBSCO eBook) An essential volume for the growing academic discipline of Asian American studies, this collection of core primary texts draws from a wide range of fields, from law to visual culture to politics, covering key historical and cultural developments that enable students to engage directly with the Asian American experience over the past century.
A Different Shade of Justice: Asian American civil rights in the South by
(EBSCO eBook) In the Jim Crow South, Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, and, later, Vietnamese and Indian Americans faced obstacles similar to those of African Americans in their fight for civil and human rights. Drawing from legislative and legal records as well as oral histories, memoirs, and newspapers, Hinnershitz describes a movement that ran alongside and intersected with the African American fight for justice..
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