Japanese Americans could not naturalize as citizens until 1952

Evidence

Before the Civil War, “free persons of color” were stripped of their right to vote—the key to citizenship status —in many states. The extension of eligibility to all racial groups has been slow indeed. Japanese, for example, could become naturalized citizens only after the passage of the McCarran-Walter Act of 1952. — Michael Omi, Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States, 144

Categorization

Category: Factual Claims

• SHARE: A stark fact for anyone interested in citizenship law — free Black people lost the vote before the Civil War; Japanese naturalization only in 1952.

Related

• Voting and citizenship rights were withheld from people of color until the mid-twentieth century (similarity 0.90)
• Formal citizenship rights trailed legal amendments by decades for nonwhites (similarity 0.81)
• National citizenship was historically assigned and withheld by race (similarity 0.78)