Postcards from the Past
Snapshots from Indian-American history
“Native Hindu” woman graduates from medical college in Pennsylvania
May 14, 1901 -
A newspaper article announces the upcoming graduation of Dora Chatterjee, the third “Native Hindu” woman to graduate from the Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania.
The article describes her as the daughter of one of the two chief Princes of India, but notes that because her parents converted to Christianity her family was “lowered in rank in consequence.” After earning her M.D., Chatterjee worked as a medical missionary in her home city of Hoshiarpur and later moved to Rawalpindi with her husband, Mangat Rai.
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Congressman Dalip Singh Saund with President John F. Kennedy
May 18, 1961 -
A photograph
shows California Congressman
Dalip Singh Saund (far left) with
President John F. Kennedy at
a Congressional Coffee Hour
in the White House Blue
Room, Washington, D.C.
Saund immigrated to the
U.S. in 1920 to study at the University
of California, Berkeley
and earned a Ph.D. in Mathematics. Due to the 1923 U.S. Supreme
Court decision barring South Asians from becoming American
citizens, Saund and other members of the community struggled
to find jobs despite their qualifications. Saund worked as a farm
laborer in California’s Imperial Valley. After the passage
of the Luce-Celler Act in 1946, allowing South Asians to
naturalize, Saund became a U.S. citizen and continued his
involvement in local politics. Saund won the Democratic seat
in the House of Representatives in a closely contested election
in 1956, making him the first Asian American to be elected
to Congress.
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Bhairavi Desai leads the New York Taxi Workers Alliance on a Strike
May 13, 1998 -
Bhairavi Desai,
founder and executive director
of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance
is interviewed by a Daily
News reporter on Strike Day.
Desai started the organization
in 1998 with an initial
membership of 700 workers; the
union has grown to represent
15,000 taxi drivers in New
York City. Desai, an Indian
American from New Jersey,
organized the strike—the
first taxi workers’ strike in 30
years—to demand economic
rights, respect, dignity, and
justice for all taxi drivers in
New York City. About ninetyfour
percent of the city’s taxi
drivers are immigrants. An
estimated 23 percent are from
Bangladesh (which represents
a recent large increase),
13 percent from Pakistan
and 9 percent from India.
Sindya N. Bhanoo contributes to the Observatory column in the Science section of The New York Times. She is also a board member of South Asian American Digital Archive. This column’s material is from SAADA. https://www.saadigitalarchive.org/.
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