How a Chinese Laundryman Shaped US Civil Rights From San Francisco

The evening commute rush hour was starting to take shape on a recent late afternoon in San Francisco’s SOMA district, at the corner of Third and Harrison streets.

Downtown office workers, wearing backpacks and headphones, wordlessly passed one another on their way to nearby train stations. Muni buses groaned and sighed as they pulled up to a bus stop near an unremarkable half-acre concrete parking lot.

“If you believe in civil rights, if you believe all Americans should have civil rights, it started right here,” said David Lei, pointing to the nearly full concrete parking lot that would soon begin emptying. He added: “And this was [the location of] the case that says noncitizens have rights as well … but we forgot. Most people have forgotten.”

The de facto local expert on Chinese American history believes a plaque should be installed here to commemorate Yick Wo, a Chinese-owned laundry business that operated at 349 Third St. from 1864 to 1886.

It became the focal point of a consequential U.S. Supreme Court case, Yick Wo v. Hopkins, when the laundry’s owner, a Chinese immigrant named Lee Yick, and another laundry owner, Wo Lee, resisted an unfair San Francisco laundry business permit ordinance — one emblematic of the targeted anti-Chinese hostility pervasive in the city at the time.

“Yick was an individual, a nobody, but the community supported him and organized,” Lei said.

When most people consider the contributions of America’s earliest Chinese immigrants, they often think of the Transcontinental Railroad. Lei, who is not related to the author, believes that’s a profound minimization of their influence — even among Chinese Americans themselves.

After the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, Chinese immigrants filed more than 10,000 lawsuits at the local, state and federal levels to challenge discriminatory laws and systemic racism. Dozens of those cases reached the U.S. Supreme Court, including one brought by Wong Kim Ark, a case recently spotlighted as the Trump administration continues an attempt to dismantle birthright citizenship, despite multiple court rulings to block the executive order.

Through the legal maneuvering of early Chinese community leaders, Yick Wo established that the 14th Amendment’s equal protection and due process clauses apply to “all persons” — including noncitizens in the U.S. These same rights are being tested today as the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown intensifies.

Yick Wo is just one way early Chinese immigrants helped shape constitutional principles that remain foundational to American democracy. Community leaders and immigrant advocates like Lei say the case is more relevant today than ever, serving as a powerful rebuttal to anti-immigrant rhetoric and a reminder that constitutional protections have long applied to noncitizens.

Echoes of the past in today’s immigration fight

Though Yick Wo v. Hopkins is a staple of constitutional law courses, it remains largely unknown outside the legal community. In 1984, an elementary school in San Francisco was named after the case, but its website offers only a cursory summary of its historical significance.

Legal experts herald Yick’s victory as extraordinary, given the anti-immigrant environment Chinese immigrants endured in the 19th century — attitudes that echo today.

Since returning to the White House, Trump has made good on his promise of a massive deportation campaign by aggressively targeting, detaining and deporting immigrants nationwide. High-profile Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity in Southern California captured national attention in June, as videos of militarized arrests circulated on social media and fueled protests locally and across the country.

The administration continues to portray undocumented immigrants as criminal invaders and threats to national security. Officials claim they target “the worst of the worst, including gang members, murderers, and rapists,” but most people detained by ICE have no criminal convictions.

Recently, in the Bay Area, ICE arrests have occurred outside of homes and courthouses in Concord and San Francisco, where plainclothes agents detained asylum seekers attending routine court hearings.

Cecillia Wang, national legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, began her role just before Trump’s second term. She oversees a department of about 200 attorneys and paralegals and calls this “the most consequential time in U.S. history.”

In late July, Republicans approved a spending bill that tripled ICE’s budget. The removal of immigrants from the country has accelerated through a variety of tactics: The Trump administration has broadened expedited removal, selectively enforced policies in sanctuary jurisdictions, targeted certain migrant groups and fast-tracked deportations — often without full hearings.

But because of Yick Wo, constitutional protections should apply to everyone on U.S. soil, regardless of citizenship status. That’s why immigration attorneys and advocates are especially vigilant.

“It’s a responsibility that I think is particularly heavy at this moment in time, with a president and administration that has so little respect for civil rights and civil liberties…and so little respect for all the fundamental pillars of U.S. democracy,” Wang said.

A San Francisco resident, Wang has worked for the ACLU in various roles for over two decades. The organization has filed more than 60 lawsuits challenging Trump’s second-term policies.

Wang, who first studied Yick Wo as an undergraduate at UC Berkeley, feels personally connected to the case as an Asian American. She has cited it throughout her career as a civil rights lawyer.

“One of the lessons of Yick Wo that I think is really resonant for me right now is that someone who seemed politically powerless, under-resourced and invisible by all accounts was able to bring his claim up through the federal court system to the Supreme Court of the United States,” Wang said.

Redefining constitutional rights in the U.S.

When one considers the odds stacked against Chinese laundry owners as Yick brought his claim forward, the case becomes especially remarkable.

Though initially welcomed during the Gold Rush, Chinese immigrants eventually became targets as their population and industrial workforce roles expanded. They took jobs as miners and railroad laborers.

They were also entrepreneurial. Early Chinese immigrants filled a specific need that no one else seemed eager to do: laundry service. Chinese immigrants eventually dominated the industry, which would continue for the rest of the 19th century.

By 1860, about one in 10 California residents was Chinese. Their prominence alarmed white leaders, including then-California governor Henry Huntly Haight.

“An additional influx of Chinese to compete with white laboring men in all industrial departments ought to be discouraged by all lawful means. For the sake of some supposed advantage of cheap labor, such influx would inflict a curse upon posterity for all time,” he said during his 1867 inaugural address.

Widespread violence soon followed. By the 1870s, anti-Chinese sentiment escalated across the West Coast, with Chinese immigrants subjected to mob-led destruction, including mass lynchings.

According to In Search of Equality: The Chinese Struggle Against Discrimination in Nineteenth-Century America, a seminal book on Chinese American history by former UC Berkeley professor Charles McClain, there were about 2,600 Chinese laundrymen in California by 1870 — half of them in San Francisco.

Chinese laundry owners faced a flurry of discriminatory city ordinances. One imposed high license fees on those without horse-drawn carriages. Another required written approval from 12 citizens and taxpayers on the block where the business was located.

In 1880, the city passed a notorious law requiring permits for laundries not made of brick or stone. At the time, nearly all of San Francisco’s laundries, especially those owned by Chinese immigrants, were wooden structures. Of about 200 applicants, all were denied permits, while their white counterparts were not.

In 1885, Yick Wo’s owner refused to stop operating and was arrested by Sheriff Peter Hopkins. Rather than serve the sentence, Lee and other laundrymen fought back with support from the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association, also known as the Chinese Six Companies.

The Six Companies — a powerful coalition of family and district associations that functioned as both mutual aid organizations and political advocates for the Chinese immigrant community — coordinated legal strategies, raised sizable funds by taxing Chinese immigrants and, importantly, helped them navigate a hostile legal system.

“This was the GoFundMe of Chinatown from 1850,” Lei told KQED from inside CCBA’s ornately designed Stockton Street headquarters, where family association leaders and San Francisco politicians still meet.

Together with Tung Hing Tong, a 19th-century Chinese laundry association, substantial resources were pooled to fight San Francisco’s unfair permitting ordinance.

“They taxed themselves, raised $20,000 — equivalent to more than half a million dollars today — and hired the best lawyer money could buy to win this case,” Lei said.

That lawyer was Hall McAllister, a federal judge and founder of the California Bar Association, who became one of the key members of the Six Companies’ legal team as they filed lawsuits.

When asked why these powerful white lawyers would go against the popular grain to argue on behalf of Chinese immigrants, Lei said Chinese immigrants often paid up to about double of what other clients would pay.

The strategy worked.

In 1886, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously for Yick, declaring that even if a law appears to be race-neutral, “if it is applied and administered by public authority with an evil eye and an unequal hand,” then it violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.

Crucially, the court emphasized that its protections “extend to all persons within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States, without regard to differences of race, of color, or of nationality.”

The keyword here is “persons,” not “citizens.” Yick Wo marked the first time the Supreme Court extended constitutional protections under the 14th Amendment — including due process rights — to noncitizens.

Wang said Yick Wo “reverberates in almost every civil rights case that’s been brought under the Equal Protection Clause.” It laid the foundation for challenges involving interracial marriage, school desegregation, housing discrimination, voting rights, gender and disability discrimination and same-sex marriage.

Critically, Yick Wo provided a legal foundation to challenge discriminatory enforcement of laws — a central feature of Jim Crow. During the civil rights era, attorneys revived their principles in landmark cases, including Brown v. Board of Education.

While Yick Wo didn’t end anti-Chinese sentiment, it established a constitutional principle that still underpins civil rights protections for both citizens and immigrants today.

Why due process is critical now

In early July, a viral video showed ICE agents clashing with protesters during an arrest in San Francisco. One protester jumped onto an ICE van’s hood before falling as it drove off.

Other similarly viral videos show community members confronting ICE agents, demanding to see arrest warrants and reminding immigrants of their due process rights.

For longtime immigrant advocates like Lisa Knox, legal director of the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice, ICE’s actions aren’t surprising.

“ICE has always been a rogue agency,” she said. “Yes, we are seeing some new tactics … but I would emphasize that this isn’t a complete departure for this agency. [ICE] has a long history of these abusive tactics, of doing things that violate the law.”

Formed after Trump’s first election in 2016, CCIJ offers legal help to detained immigrants in Northern and Central California and plays a central coordinating role in the state’s rapid response organizing, including activating attorneys and mobilizing volunteers during ICE activity. They also raise awareness of the inhumane living conditions inside detention centers.

Knox said the Bay Area is well organized when it comes to defending immigrant rights. She believes that may have helped prevent mass raids and more severe rights violations in the region, compared to other parts of the country.

But what is striking to Knox is the mainstream attention around the constitutional rights of immigrants.

“There has never been a conversation about due process in my lifetime [like this],” said Knox, who also teaches an immigration and citizenship class at UC Berkeley. “Law is influenced by politics. The fact that people are taking an interest in these decisions and wanting to defend these fundamental rights is really important and really key.”

Attorneys like Jordan Wells, a senior staff attorney with the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, have defended immigrants in court, including a legal permanent resident targeted for participating in a pro-Palestine rally at Columbia University. Another lawsuit challenges ICE courthouse arrests as violations of the Due Process Clause.

According to Wells, due process has always provided a counterbalance to any presidential administration’s attempts to test the limits of constitutional protections. He said it is especially critical now as the Trump administration has tried to block immigrants from legal counsel and coerce deportation agreements.

“We are seeing all manner of attempts to prevent people from communicating with counsel about their immigration status,” Wells said. “They have tried to get people to concede to their removability from the country, no matter how long they’ve been here, and just get them shipped out as quickly as possible.”

For Knox, public education is critical, as demonstrated by local grassroots efforts to form rapid response networks during Trump’s first term.

“That first 24-hour period is really crucial for the person to be informed of their rights and options, and to exercise them so that they’re not just deported without the chance to access the process that is their right,” Knox said. “As lawyers, a lot of the time we show up after somebody has already been placed in detention … but if people can be educated and know their rights and assert them before that happens, often they can prevent their detention or they can have more options.”

She emphasizes that drawing connections between communities is also a powerful way to build collective strength.

“If we allow the government to take away immigrants’ rights to due process, then we’re all at risk,” Knox said. “We are building and exercising our power, so that’s our focus. We say over and over: power, not panic.”

Knox said Yick Wo is more than a legal decision — it’s a historical reminder.

“We’ve been here before, and some of these questions have come up,” she said. “Who gets to enjoy the rights of citizenship? What rights should be afforded to anyone, regardless of legal status, because they’re part of this community?”

Wang is grateful that early Chinese immigrants asked these questions, forcing the U.S. to follow its own constitutional laws: “The fundamental promise of the 14th Amendment was only as good as the writing until people like [Lee Yick and Wo Lee] took their fights and fleshed out those words on paper… and made it a lived reality for people.”

Wang said it took the mobilization of an entire community to defend the Chinese laundries — with people contributing in both small and large ways — and said a similar collective effort is needed today.

“I have family members in my Chinese American family who probably agree more with President Trump than they agree with me on issues of immigration,” she said. “What I try to do with my community … is not only point out the history, but to really draw some intersectional lines so that [they] can understand how we must all stand or fall together.”

Back at the parking lot on Third and Harrison, Lei reflects on the mountain of overlooked legal battles waged by early Chinese immigrants — cases that shaped modern protections such as Miranda rights, public education access and political asylum.

At 75, he said, “The clock is ticking,” estimating he has about five more years left in him to keep telling these stories. He shook his head, thinking about how much more there is to share.

Then he chuckled.

“We’re branded as very quiet, that we don’t cause trouble — model citizens, model minority, all these things,” he said. “But the Chinese were very hard to manage … We have to organize. That’s what our ancestors did, and they were successful, so this is what we need to do now.”