When American-born Wong Kim Ark returns home to San Francisco after a visit to China, he’s stopped and told he cannot enter: he isn’t American. What happens next would forever change the national conversation on who is and isn’t American.
After being imprisoned on a ship for months, Wong Kim Ark takes his case to the Supreme Court and argues that any person born in America is an American citizen. I am an American: The Wong Kim Ark Story is an award-winning picture book by Martha Brockenbrough and Grace Lin that introduces young readers to the young man who challenged the Supreme Court in 1898 for his right to be an American citizen—and won, confirming birthright citizenship for all Americans.
The National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) offers a resource that uses the story of Wong Kim Ark and the inquiry design model to guide upper elementary students through primary source analysis, historical inquiry, and civic action, connecting nineteenth-century immigration history to contemporary citizenship debates. Using evidence from primary sources and children’s literature, students construct an argument to answer the question, What makes someone a citizen? Educators can download the NCSS Inquiry Design Model Blueprint at no charge.