America's shameful Chinese Exclusion Act now largely forgotten

Most Americans know about the United States' history of slavery and the later internment of Japanese-Americans in special camps during the second world war.

But what is less well known is that for more than 60 years, the US officially excluded an entire ethnic group - Chinese immigrants, who were seen as a threat to native workers.

The Chinese Exclusion Act, as it came to be known, was passed by Congress in 1882 and was not lifted until 1943, when politicians acted partly out of embarrassment over the fact that China was a US ally in the second world war.

While the law kept many Chinese out of the United States, certain immigrants could get in, especially if they had money to start a business.

One of those early arrivals was Hoy Fung, who set up what may have been the first Chinese restaurant in the Pittsburgh region, the Bellevue Tea Garden in Bellevue, Pennsylvania, which operated from 1926 to 1997, said his daughter, Karen Yee.

The legacy of official discrimination against the Chinese is one reason that Yee became involved in the 1970s with the Organisation of Chinese Americans, now known simply as OCA.

Another OCA activist is Ted Gong, a retired State Department employee who helped set up the 1882 Foundation to educate people about the exclusion act.