• Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to secondary sidebar

New York Almanack

History, Natural History & the Arts

  • Email
  • Facebook
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • Adirondacks & NNY
  • Capital-Saratoga
  • Mohawk Valley
  • Hudson Valley & Catskills
  • NYC & Long Island
  • Western NY
  • History
  • Nature & Environment
  • Arts & Culture
  • Outdoor Recreation
  • Food & Farms
  • Subscribe
  • Support
  • Submit
  • About
  • New Books
  • Events
  • Podcasts

Scott D. Seligman

Joseph Thoms: Defending America’s Chinese

September 28, 2015 by Scott D. Seligman 7 Comments

Old Fulton NY Post Cards   By Tom TryniskiThe first Western-trained Chinese physician to practice in the U.S. lived most of his life in Brooklyn, where he established America’s first modern hospital for Chinese patients. A strong civil rights advocate at a time when his community could boast few of them, he spoke out frequently and forcefully against the injustices to which Chinese in America were subjected.

China-born Joseph Chak Thoms (1862-1929), known in his native Cantonese dialect as Tom Ah Jo, arrived in California as a teenager in the mid-1870s. He had a gift for language and soon mastered English with hardly an accent. After being baptized by a Presbyterian missionary – which earned him a beating from his uncle – he took a job as a cabin boy and sailed around the world on a steamer, visiting Japan and India before returning to America. [Read more…] about Joseph Thoms: Defending America’s Chinese

Filed Under: History, New York City Tagged With: Brooklyn, Immigration, Medical History, NYC, Political History

Primary Sidebar

Help Finish Our 2022 Fundraising

Subscribe to New York Almanack

Subscribe! Follow the New York Almanack each day via E-mail, RSS, Twitter or Facebook updates.

Recent Comments

  • Bob Meyer on Poetry: Stairway from Heaven
  • Carol Drew-Peeples on Manhattan Street Names Tied to Slavery Listed from A to Z
  • Edythe Ann Quinn on Poetry: Stairway from Heaven
  • Ellen Brown on How Does A Land Trust Protect A Watershed? One Parcel At A Time
  • Nell Rapport on Transforming The Niagara Falls Experience
  • Jimmy on World War II POW Camps in Upstate New York
  • Paul Huey on Advocates: Pass The Unmarked Burial Site Protection Act
  • NOEL A SHERRY on Adirondack Logging History: Wood’s Lake & Beaver River Stations
  • NOEL A SHERRY on Adirondack Logging History: Wood’s Lake & Beaver River Stations
  • Jim Fox on Adirondack Logging History: Wood’s Lake & Beaver River Stations

Recent New York Books

battle of harlem hights
Ladies Day at the Capitol
voices of wayne county
CNY Snowstorm book front cover
The Struggles of Boston's Black Workers in the Civil War Era
Expanded Second Edition of Echoes in These Mountains
historic kingston book
Buffalo Sports cover re-re-sized.indd
With an Ax and a Rifle Vol I

Secondary Sidebar

preservation league
Protect the Adirondacks Hiking Guide