“One of the Most Unique Papers”: Documenting Chinese American Citizenship in Virginia

On a Monday morning in May of 1903, six men waited in the Richmond federal courthouse to learn whether they would remain in Virginia or be “placed aboard a steamer bound” for a country some of them had not set foot in since childhood.¹

They had already been waiting for two weeks, since May 2nd, when U.S. Revenue Officials and U.S. Marshals had “swooped down like a wolf on the fold” in a raid that lasted “from early morn until the day was far spent and night had closed in,” arresting them on suspicion of opium smuggling.² Despite seventeen search warrants and “almost every Chinese laundry, store and residence in [Richmond] and Manchester” being searched, only one man was charged with smuggling.³ The other five men in the courthouse were charged, instead, with violation of the Chinese Exclusion Act.

The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 prevented emigration of Chinese laborers to the United States but exempted “non-labor Chinese students, teachers, [and] merchants.”⁴ The legislation had been renewed as the “The Geary Act” in 1892 and then made permanent in 1902. Still, authorities felt the number of immigrants was too large and passed an amendment that tried to tighten the exceptions by listing out occupations such as “mining, fishing, huckstering, peddling, [and] laundrymen…” as laborers despite the fact that some of those professions fit the merchant definition in the original act.⁵ By 1902, Chinese immigrants were required to register and carry photo identification proving their status, the first time this was required of a group in the United States.⁶

All five men before the U.S. Commissioner in Richmond were “laundrymen.” Three of them were released after their two-week detention, their lawyers successfully arguing that despite not having “laborer papers,” they had paperwork that proved they were legally in the United States. They had “merchant papers,” and although as laundrymen they were no longer considered merchants, they had met the legal requirements to be merchants before the criteria changed, so ipso facto they met the legal requirements to now be laborers.⁷

The Richmond Times Dispatch assured readers that the two remaining men would “be given every opportunity to prove their right to remain in this country.”⁸ After five long months, Ye Hun Sun, who had “burst into tears” when arrested, was released after being given “time to get his papers.”⁹ The final man, Chew Ying, was deported after being unable to produce a “certificate that he was entitled to remain the United States.”¹⁰ The Richmond Times Dispatch surmised he would be “taken across the continent in company with a bevy of Norfolk Chinese” for deportation via the West Coast.¹¹

Many obstacles stood in the way of early Chinese and Chinese American residents in Virginia, exacerbated by the “terror and consternation” of changing status and identification requirements.¹² The Chinese Exclusion Act also prevented even legal Chinese residents from becoming United States citizens, no matter how long they had been in the United States.

In 1875, Woo Sing arrived legally in California at the age of nine. In 1894 he married a Chinese American woman, Sue King, in San Francisco and together they moved to Richmond where he opened a laundry business at 2 South 7th Street.¹³ Anti-Chinese sentiment was widespread on the West Coast, along with steep competition in the limited businesses that Chinese immigrants were forced into. Perhaps resettling on the East Coast afforded Woo Sing and his family some breathing room from both the most overt forms of anti-Asian racism and financial strain.

Nothing, however, could shield the Chinese community from federal legislation. Despite having spent most of his life in the United States, Woo Sing could not become a citizen and feared for the safety of his two native-born Chinese American children. An 1884 case had declared that the 14th Amendment guaranteed the right of citizenship to children born of non-citizen Chinese parents on U.S. soil, but that had not kept Wong Kim Ark, a man “born in the United States of parents of Chinese descent” from spending five months in limbo aboard a ship until the Supreme Court ruled that he had the right to re-enter the country.¹⁴

This was the environment in which Woo Sing contemplated sending his only son to China. Charles William Sing, born in Richmond in 1895, was the “City’s first Chinese baby” and probably the only Asian American child living there in 1899 other than his infant sister.¹⁵ In China, Charles William Sing could stay with family and be further immersed in his father’s homeland and culture. It is unclear how well Charles spoke English at this point in his life, and there might have been some concern, or even confusion, over which segregated school system the boy would have to attend in Virginia. So, with the intention of having his son travel to China and the atmosphere of uncertainty around the stability of his citizenship status, Woo Sing did something that surprised his fellow Richmond residents enough to write it up in the newspaper – he registered his son’s birth with the court.

In August 1898, just a few months after the Virginia Assembly stopped requiring the recording of new births, Woo Sing filed an affidavit in the Richmond Chancery Court as proof of his son’s native-born status. Sing paid $1.75 (or about $68 in 2025 dollars) to the court clerk to notarize his statement and those of three witnesses: that his son Charles William Sing had been born on November 16, 1885 at 2 South 7th Street, Richmond, Virginia.¹⁶ The Richmond Dispatch called the document, “[one] of the most unique papers ever filed in the archives of the Chancery court of this city.”¹⁷ It reads, in part (see the full document at the bottom of this post):

I, Woo Sing…do make the following statement…: Knowing that because of the race and color of my son, Charles William Sing, his nativity within the territory and Jurisdiction of the United States of America may be questioned in future years and his rights under the Constitution thereof may be indangered [sic], I have caused this statement to be written…¹⁸

Woo Sing laid out the facts of his son’s birth, signing his name in Cantonese. The first witness, the midwife Caroline Cla[y]ton, was able to testify to being at the birth. The second witness was Mrs. Bettie Hayes, the family’s landlady. The third witness was a frequent customer at the laundry, no less than the chair of the Richmond City Council, Jefferson Wallace. The birth was recorded, witnessed, and notarized; a copy was given to Woo Sing.

In 1908, Woo Sing’s preparations were put to the test. Various newspaper reports diverge on whether Woo Sing was awaiting the rest of his family in Seattle or Richmond, or if he was with his family as all four tried to return to the United States. But whatever his physical location, records in the National Archives in Seattle state that Woo Sing had his lawyer ask officials in Seattle to check his now 13-year-old son’s papers.¹⁹

One newspaper article reported,

Woo Sing with his wife and son…attempted to pass the immigration inspectors at Seattle and San Francisco and other Pacific ports without success…Finally Woo Sing was allowed to file a formal protest.²⁰

This “protest” set in motion an investigation. As Woo Sing had predicted, the officials did not take Charles William Sing’s citizenship at face-value and decided to investigate further.

In the absence of a formal birth certificate, Captain John C. Williams, “Chinese inspector” at the Norfolk Immigration Office, was dispatched to Richmond to verify Charles William Sing’s citizenship. As the first Chinese American to be born in Richmond, Charles William was well remembered. Williams was no doubt aided by the fact that Charles William Sing’s birth registration had made both local and state news.²¹ Richmonders, “both Chinese and American…remembered well the interest in Richmond at the birth of the child.”²²

In fact, “a number of Richmond physicians, out of curiosity, [had] visited the little Chinese citizen of Richmond,” and a Sergeant on the police force remembered him as “a toddling boy of three or four years, playing in Seventh Street.”²³ Williams was also able to locate Betty Hayes, the landlady who had provided a notarized statement years before.²⁴

Based on “the affidavits of persons who remembered [Charles William]…and a statement filed by the boy’s father at the Hustings Court in 1898,” Williams recommended that “Charles William Sing be allowed to enter…and grow up a United States citizen.”²⁵ The family was allowed re-entry and eventually moved to Seattle, but in all subsequent re-entries to the United States Charles William Sing is recorded as “native-born.”

The Chinese Exclusion Act was not repealed until 1943 and continued to cause issues for both legal residents and United States citizens of Asian and Pacific Island ancestry. This not only included re-entry into the country but leaving it as well. In 1924, naturalized U.S. citizen Woo Gong Tong, living in Richmond but born to an American citizen in China, wished to travel.²⁷ He had visited China in 1918, but when he tried to renew his passport, he was initially denied. The recently passed 1924 Immigration Act had further restricted travel to and from China by including “a provision excluding from entry any alien who by virtue of race or nationality was ineligible for citizenship.”²⁸ Under the Chinese Exclusion Act, men born in China were unable to become naturalized citizens. In 1924, if Wong Gong Tong could not prove that he was a jus sanguinis citizen, he risked being unable to return even as a legal resident.

The issue was the “most execrated of all immigration documents…the very name of [which] is an anathema” – the Form 430.²⁹ The infamous “Form 430” (the “Application of Alleged Citizen of the Chinese Race for Pre-Investigation of Status”)  was used to streamline re-entry while placing the burden of proof of citizenship on the individual. Sometime between the 1918 and 1924 applications, the form “which disclosed that the citizenship of Mr. Woo was established” had gone missing.³⁰ And so on the night of his going-away party, Woo Gong Tong had to inform his guests that there was to be no party, because he was in fact, not going away.³¹ However, the form was later found in San Francisco and reported to the Washington D.C. office.³² His passport application, part of the Emergency Passport Applications at the National Archives, has the written note, “Form 430 Seen.”³³

The Richmond Times Dispatch proclaimed that the trip was back on and the party rescheduled, only to report a few days later that it all had been postponed once more.³⁴ In the interim, Woo Gong Tong’s cousin Chin Bark Yung had decided to travel with him, only to run into his own “maze of red tape” with the “detestable ‘Form 430,’” which involved spending several days in the immigration office in Norfolk.³⁵ The last mention in the Richmond Times Dispatch reported that everything had been resolved and “no further form or ceremony devolves upon the departure…beyond the…going away party.”³⁶Both Woo Gong Tong’s and Chin Bark Yung’s applications are stamped “issued.”³⁷ Woo Gong Tong later became the owner of Lido Gardens restaurant on Broad Street and lived in Richmond until his death in 1956.³⁸

By 1909, the Chinese Exclusion Act and related legislation compelled most American citizens of Chinese descent, and others mistaken as Chinese, to carry citizenship papers to minimize the risk of arrest.³⁹ The Chinese Exclusion Act was only repealed during World War II when China became part of the Allied forces. Anti-Asian sentiment was directed at those of Japanese descent during WWII, but that did not stop racist actions against other Asian groups, including the Chinese community in Richmond. In 1941, “Charley” Woo Noon, a Chinese American business leader in Richmond, distributed Chinese flag pins sent by the Chinese Consulate in New York City. They were intended to be worn “to make sure [the Chinese are] not confused with the enemy.”⁴⁰ The Richmond Times Dispatch headlined the article, “Richmond’s Chinese to Get Identification.”⁴¹