Weekend Long Read: Pershing’s Chinese ― a Covenant of Life and Death

For 61 years, from 1882 to 1943, the U.S. enforced the Chinese Exclusion Act, barring Chinese laborers from entering the country and prohibiting those already within its borders from naturalizing.

Yet, more than a century ago, an American general named John J. Pershing defied this ban. Through sheer force of will, he led more than 500 Chinese men and their families out of Mexico and into the U.S., delivering them from the guns and nooses of Mexican rebels.