Many Pilipino Americans living in the US today are either recent immigrants or the children of recent immigrants. Due to this fact, a lot of people don't know there were actually groups of Pilipino Americans that made the journey across the Pacific even earlier, actually hundreds of years earlier. The first Pilipinos stepped foot on what is now California back in October of 1587. There was also a settlement made up of Pilipinos who jumped from Spanish ships at Saint Malo near Louisiana back in 1768; however it wasn't until the colonization of the Philippines during the first decade of the 20th century by the United States that Pilipinos began to migrate in large numbers.
Brought to California to replace the Japanese as a form of cheap labor for the agricultural industry, many Pilipinos made the perilless journey in order to seek a better life for their families; although, they were not allowed to bring over or create families of their own. Many US citizens did not want the new immigrants to become rooted in the US like the Chinese and Japanese had done prior, so Pilipino migration was generally restricted to men; while some Pilipinas were able to migrate this was an extreme rarity.
Needless to say, many of these men were lacking female companionship, so they often would turn to the dance halls to socialize (it definitely seems like things haven’t changed). However, these dance halls were pretty different from the clubs we go out to today. The men would pay a dime and receive a ticket to dance with the women who worked for the club. These women would vary in ethnic background from white, black, and Mexican; however being in the employ of the dance hall, the similarity between the women was that they all came from a low socio-economic standing.
During this time period racism was in full swing and it was socially taboo for a white woman to be seen with a colored man, and through what was known as anti-miscegenation laws, illegal for a white woman to marry a non-white male. This brought two implications: a white woman of high social standing would never think of being seen with a Pilipino and even if it was a poor white woman with a Pilipino man, there would be repercussions from other white males if they were to be seen together. Not only do these situations show how drastically dangerous the anti-Pilipino sentiment was, they also show that interracial relationships did occur in the past and that it is not something that is new and a result of changing beliefs in society.
After World War II, the citizenship status of Pilipinos changed from US National to alien, reflecting the Philippines’ removal as a formal colony of the US. This also marked a shift in immigration patterns that included a lot more Pilipinas. Unfortunately, what also occurred was the gentrification of many of Pilipino communities that housed these dance halls. With the destruction of many Pilipino homes and businesses, much of the history has been lost; however organizations such as the Little Manila Foundation in Stockton seek to preserve these precious stories from our collective past.
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