A Community Engagement mini-grant offered by the Office of Community Engagement has funded a partnership between Dr. Cherstin Lyon, CSUSB history student researchers Frankie Patino, Chance Douglas, Cecia Gonzalez, Breana Benegas, the National Archives at Riverside, and both the Chinese Historical Society of Southern California and the Save Our Chinatown Committee of Riverside. The project is designed to digitize the Chinese Exclusion Case Files in Riverside, and to partner with citizen archivists to make more records available to the public interested in Chinese immigration history. 

The case files document the entry into the United States of Chinese aliens and the reentry of U.S. citizens of Chinese ancestry under the Chinese Exclusion Acts passed by Congress between 1882 and 1930, and repealed in 1943. 

This project will make available hundreds of thousands of images in the National Archives Catalog that are rich in historical and genealogical information.

Series: Chinese Exclusion Act Case Files, 1899-1955. Record Group 85: Records of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, 1787-2004. (National Archives Identifier 5831060) https://catalog.archives.gov/id/5831060 

(Dec 14th, 2018)