“San Francisco’s Three Graces,” illustration by George Frederick Keller for The Wasp, May 26, 1882
Courtesy Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum, The Ohio State University Libraries
San Francisco authorities, believing that epidemics of smallpox and plague originated in the city’s Chinatown, passed quarantine and vaccination laws that applied only to people of Chinese origin. In 1900, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that such ethnically-based quarantines violated the Constitution.
