The Pigtail Ordinance was an 1873 law intended to force
prisonA prison is a place in which people are physically confined and, usually, deprived of a range of personal freedoms. Other terms are penitentiary, correctional facility, and jail , although in the United States "jail" and "prison" refer to different subtypes of correctional facility...
ers in
San Francisco, CaliforniaSan Francisco is the fourth most populous city in California and the 12th most populous city in the United States, with a 2008 estimated population of 808,976. It is the eighth most densely populated city in the U.S. and is the financial, cultural, and transportation center of the larger San...
to have their hair cut within an inch of the scalp. While the law did not discriminate between races, it affected
Han ChineseHan Chinese are an ethnic group native to China and, by most modern definitions, the largest single ethnic group in the world.Han Chinese constitute about 92 percent of the population of the People's Republic of China , 98 percent of the population of the Republic of China , 75 percent of the...
prisoners in particular, as it meant they would have their
queueThe queue or cue is a hairstyle in which the hair is worn long and gathered up into a ponytail. It was worn traditionally by certain Native American groups, Indian Brahmins and the Manchu of Manchuria.-Queue:...
, a waist-long, braided pigtail, cut off. The proposal passed by a narrow margin through the
Board of SupervisorsThe Board of Supervisors is the body governing counties in the U.S. states of Arizona, California, Iowa, Mississippi, Virginia, and Wisconsin. In other states it may be called the County Council or County Commission; for Louisiana parishes, the equivalent body is a police jury. In New Jersey, the...
in 1873 but was not enacted until 1876.
The Pigtail Ordinance was proposed as a solution to the overcrowding of jails due to the 1870
Sanitary OrdinanceThe Sanitary Ordinance was a law passed in San Francisco, California on July 29, 1870. The purpose of the law was to prevent unsafe tenement conditions as the city grew. Under the law, boarding houses were required to have 500 cubic feet of air in a room for each occupant...
, which was originally meant to prevent unsafe tenement conditions in San Francisco.
The Pigtail Ordinance was an 1873 law intended to force
prisonA prison is a place in which people are physically confined and, usually, deprived of a range of personal freedoms. Other terms are penitentiary, correctional facility, and jail , although in the United States "jail" and "prison" refer to different subtypes of correctional facility...
ers in
San Francisco, CaliforniaSan Francisco is the fourth most populous city in California and the 12th most populous city in the United States, with a 2008 estimated population of 808,976. It is the eighth most densely populated city in the U.S. and is the financial, cultural, and transportation center of the larger San...
to have their hair cut within an inch of the scalp. While the law did not discriminate between races, it affected
Han ChineseHan Chinese are an ethnic group native to China and, by most modern definitions, the largest single ethnic group in the world.Han Chinese constitute about 92 percent of the population of the People's Republic of China , 98 percent of the population of the Republic of China , 75 percent of the...
prisoners in particular, as it meant they would have their
queueThe queue or cue is a hairstyle in which the hair is worn long and gathered up into a ponytail. It was worn traditionally by certain Native American groups, Indian Brahmins and the Manchu of Manchuria.-Queue:...
, a waist-long, braided pigtail, cut off. The proposal passed by a narrow margin through the
Board of SupervisorsThe Board of Supervisors is the body governing counties in the U.S. states of Arizona, California, Iowa, Mississippi, Virginia, and Wisconsin. In other states it may be called the County Council or County Commission; for Louisiana parishes, the equivalent body is a police jury. In New Jersey, the...
in 1873 but was not enacted until 1876.
Origins
The Pigtail Ordinance was proposed as a solution to the overcrowding of jails due to the 1870
Sanitary OrdinanceThe Sanitary Ordinance was a law passed in San Francisco, California on July 29, 1870. The purpose of the law was to prevent unsafe tenement conditions as the city grew. Under the law, boarding houses were required to have 500 cubic feet of air in a room for each occupant...
, which was originally meant to prevent unsafe tenement conditions in San Francisco. When in violation of the Sanitary Ordinance, one could either pay a fine or serve a week or more in jail; for thousands of impoverished Chinese immigrants, free room and board was a welcome punishment. Ostensibly to prevent outbreaks of lice and fleas, the Supervisors began requiring that all prisoners' heads be shaved. Many equal rights advocates, however, claimed the Supervisors' true intent was to stem the tide of willing Chinese convicts.
Since the beginning of the
Qing dynastyThe Qing Dynasty , also known as the Manchu Dynasty, was the last ruling dynasty of China, ruling from 1644 to 1912...
in 1644, Han men in China had been required to wear the queue as a sign of submission to the ruling Manchus. The penalty for refusal was death. By the time the Pigtail Ordinance was passed in the United States, the queue was a symbol of national identity for the Chinese. The power of the Pigtail Ordinance came from the fear of losing this vital symbol; the theory was that Chinese immigrants would be less likely to ignore the Sanitary Ordinance if such a heavy penalty was the result.
Veto and passage
After passage through the Board of Supervisors, the order was immediately
vetoA veto, Latin for "I forbid", is used to denote that a certain party has the right to stop unilaterally a piece of legislation. In practice, the veto can be absolute A veto, Latin for "I forbid", is used to denote that a certain party has the right to stop unilaterally a piece of legislation....
ed by mayor
William AlvordWilliam Alvord was a San Francisco merchant, banker and political leader. He was the 14th Mayor of San Francisco from 1871 to 1873 and served as president of the Bank of California from 1878 until his death.- Biography :...
. In his veto, the mayor stated that "this order, though general in its terms, in substance and effect, is a special and degrading punishment inflicted upon the Chinese residents for slight offenses and solely by reason of their alienage and race." Instead, enforcement of the anti-tenement law was relaxed.
On April 3, 1876 the state of California passed its own law identical to San Francisco's Sanitary Ordinance. The city no longer had the power to ignore the enforcement of the law, so the board made a second proposal of the Pigtail Ordinance. This time the law passed with a vote of 10-2, and was approved by mayor
Andrew Jackson BryantAndrew Jackson Bryant was the 17th Mayor of San Francisco serving from December 6, 1875 to November 30, 1879....
.
Lawsuit
As a result of the new law, a Chinese immigrant named Ah Kow was arrested for living space violations and had his queue removed at the jail. He sued the sheriff for damages, claiming that the Pigtail Ordinance caused him
irreparable harmAn irreparable damage or injury is, in tort law or equity, "the type of harm which no monetary compensation can cure or put conditions back the way they were...." It is harm where no amount of money can compensate the harm that is being done, or will be done....
. On June 14, 1879 United States Supreme Court Justice
Stephen Johnson FieldStephen Johnson Field was an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court from May 20 1863, to December 1 1897...
, sitting in the local federal court—despite much criticism from the general public—found in favor of the plaintiff; his decision held that it was not within the powers of the Board of Supervisors to set such a discriminatory law and that the ordinance was, in fact, unconstitutional. In particular, he cited the
Fourteenth Amendment to the United States ConstitutionThe Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, along with the Thirteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, was adopted after the Civil War as one of the Reconstruction Amendments. It was adopted on July 9, 1868....
which guarantees equal protection under the law to all persons within its jurisdiction.Ho Ah Kow v. Nuner, 12 Fed. Cas. 252 (1879).