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On the Boundary of White: The Cartozian Naturalization Case and the Armenians, 1923–1925
EARLENE CRAVER
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INTRODUCTION | |
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ON A SPRING DAY in 1923, close to seventy immigrants gathered in the federal courtroom of Judge Robert S. Bean in Portland, Oregon, anxiously awaiting their citizenship papers. Sixty-two immigrants from western and eastern Europe and Canada left the courtroom as American citizens on May 17, 1923. A few petitioners were told by the judge to return with their petitions in a year when they had become better acquainted with American laws and customs. Three were denied citizenship outright for having been "draft dodgers" during the world war. Two "Hindus" were denied their final papers in accordance with the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision in U.S. v. Bhagat Singh Thind on February 19, 1923, finding Hindus not white and, therefore, within the racial category ineligible for citizenship—a category of exclusion applied to Asians. Also in the courtroom were two aspirants, a Syrian and an Armenian, whose whiteness had been challenged by the naturalization officer of the Portland district. They had been directed by the federal official to bring their families to court so that the judge could determine if they fell within the ineligible nonwhite category, as the naturalization officer maintained. The Syrian, a purveyor of soft drinks at a small establishment on Portland's North End, had with him his wife and three children. When he was called, The Oregonian reported, the family filed to the front of the courtroom carrying small American flags. The judge dodged the racial issue in the Syrian's case. Saleba Kaiel's petition for naturalization was rejected simply on the grounds of "illiteracy." Upon being told he could not become an American, Mr. Kaiel proved unable to contain his emotion and broke into tears, the Portland paper said.1 |
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The socioeconomic profile of the Armenian petitioner, Tatos Cartozian, was quite different from that of the Syrian. Cartozian owned in partnership with his brothers a successful Oriental rug establishment located in the newly constructed Pittock Block in downtown Portland where, in fact, The Oregonian had its offices. As Mr. Cartozian's name was called, his wife, three sons, and one of his two daughters, "all distinctly American though a trifle olive-complexioned," took their place at the front of the courtroom with the petitioner. (Newspaper photographs from the later court case show a well-dressed, middle-aged Mr. Cartozian posed with his two daughters, both fashionably dressed young ladies.2) Judge Bean granted Cartozian's petition for naturalization, leaving the decision to challenge his status up to the U.S. government: "If the government does not think that an Armenian comes under the meaning of the naturalization law, it can commence suit to cancel the [citizenship] paper."3 The naturalization inspector, Vernor W. Tomlinson, immediately declared that the judge's action in admitting Cartozian to citizenship would be called to Washington's attention, The Oregonian said. Shortly thereafter, the Cartozian matter became a federal test case on the admissibility of Armenians to American citizenship. |
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The issue involved whether Armenians were white within the meaning of the relevant naturalization statute (Section 2169, Revised Statute). U.S. Supreme Court decisions in the cases of the Japanese, Takao Ozawa, in November 1922, and the Hindu, Bhagat Thind, in February 1923, had settled the question of whether Japanese and Hindus were eligible to citizenship in the negative. However, the Thind case, in particular, had raised new questions as to who was white and therefore eligible to citizenship.4 The Cartozian case was foreseen by the commissioner of naturalization, Raymond F. Crist, as the first in a series of test cases regarding the "admissibility to citizenship of members of other Asiatic races, such as Afghans, Syrians, Armenians, Turks, Kurds, Arabs and Bedouins." By means of "cancellation proceedings," the commissioner hoped to get a set of cases up to the U.S. Supreme Court that would result in a clarification of the boundary between white and Asian and, thereby, provide the Naturalization Service with, as Crist put it, "the correct interpretation of the law."5 |
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