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Digital Collection: Survey of Race Relations Records, 1924-1927
(38 manuscript boxes)

This digital collection documents the social and economic status of Chinese, Japanese, Mexicans, and other minority residents of the Pacific Coast of the United States and Canada, and to race relations on the Pacific Coast, in the 1920s.

The original records, including a report, correspondence, interview transcripts, questionnaires, and printed matter, are housed at the Hoover Institution Archives. The entire collection was digitized and is available online through a collaborative agreement with Stanford University Libraries.

Historical Note on the Survey

In the early 1920s, a group of scholars set out to make a complete investigation of economic, religious, educational, civic, biological, and social conditions among the Chinese, Japanese, and other non-white residents of the Pacific Coast of the United States and Canada. Extension of the study into northern Mexico and Hawaii was contemplated as well. In the words of Eliot G. Mears, Executive Secretary, "The Survey seeks to impose no program, advocates no specific policy, and champions no special interest. It aims to find the facts, and all the facts, and plans to make them accessible to the public." The findings were to be published in a series of volumes edited by the director, Dr. Robert E. Park.

After only one publication ("Tentative Findings of the Survey of Race Relations," edited by Mears), the Survey ran out of money, and research was discontinued.

Later, Mears wrote a book based on the work of the Survey, Resident Orientals on the American Pacific Coast: Their Legal and Economic Status, 1928. The original manuscript of this monograph is in the collection.

In addition to the digitized collection, a guide or finding aid to the Survey of Race Relations records is available in two formats, xml and pdf.