Born in 1870 in Mendocino, Look Tin Eli’s influence would travel far beyond the coast.
Built on the south side of Main Street, Mendocino’s Chinatown grew quickly in the mid-1800s with the increase in Chinese immigration to the U.S. In the early 1860s, Look Bing Tai immigrated to the U.S. He married Su Wang, and the couple had four children on the coast, the eldest being Look Tin Eli. Look Bing Tai opened his general store in 1870, where it operated for more than 40 years before a fire destroyed it in 1911.
At nine years old, in 1879, Look Tin Eli was sent to his father’s home in Guangzhou, China for his education, a common practice at the time. At the same time, significant anti-Chinese sentiment spread across the U.S. Federal lawmakers passed the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which banned Chinese laborers from entering the country and banned them from becoming naturalized citizens.
Five years later, in 1884, young Look Tin Eli began the journey back to his family and arrived in San Francisco. He was denied the right to reenter when he could not produce a document proving his prior U.S. residency, a requirement that didn’t exist when he’d left five years earlier. At the time, birth certificates were not regularly issued yet and passports were rare.
He was detained at Angel Island for 21 days. With the help of Chinese groups in San Francisco, the Look family hired attorney Thomas Riordan, who requested a habeas corpus hearing. Riordan argued that Look Tin Eli was indeed a citizen based on the Fourteenth Amendment, which deemed anyone born in the U.S. a citizen.
The prosecution questioned whether Look Tin Eli had rescinded his birthright because he spent so many years abroad, questioning his allegiance to the U.S. Justice Stephen Field did not find any evidence to support this argument and ruled that children born in America were citizens regardless of their ancestry.
Look Tin Eli was able to return to Mendocino. As an adult, he moved to San Francisco where he established the first Chinese-American bank in the city and played an important role in rebuilding San Francisco’s Chinatown after the 1906 earthquake. His court case was later used as precedent for the 1898 United States vs Wong Kim Ark decision, which upheld that anyone born in the U.S. was a citizen.
Kelley House Museum curator Averee McNear writes a weekly column on Mendocino County history for Mendocino Voice. To learn more, visit kelleyhousemuseum.org.