(gentle music) The kiosk that marks what was once Detroit's Chinatown's still stands.

And this week another marker to be unveiled.

- I think about the message today and why the street naming is so important.

We need to keep telling and retelling the story of Vincent Chin.

(crowd cheering) - [Zosette] Local Asian American groups pushed for the street naming, getting help from Detroit City Council person, Gabriela Santiago-Romero.

- While a small token of recognition, it's my hope that the secondary street sign helps us do just that.

May his name and every time we read it and hear it, serve as a reminder of what we have to overcome together and what we have overcome.

- We're here for remembrance of this Vincent Chen.

An individual who was very much like many of us growing up in Detroit.

He was a typical 27-year-old Chinese American, a draftsman, a waiter in a Chinese restaurant, working his way through school.

- [Zosette] In 1982, anti-Asian hostilities had risen in Detroit as Japanese imports displaced US-made vehicles.

That's when Vincent Chin was killed with a baseball bat.

Judge Charles Kaufman handed down a sentence requiring no prison time for the two men involved.

Nationwide, Asian Americans were alarmed, and so were others like Mayor Mike Duggan, who was in law school at the time.

- And it hit me particularly because one of Judge Kaufman's colleagues on the Wayne County Circuit Court was my father, who was also a judge.

I called him that night so angry.

And of course my father felt he discredited everybody on the bench.

But he said to me, "Don't discount the role of the prosecutor.

The prosecutor fled the case down, and it didn't bother to show up the day of the sentencing."

- Justice for Vincent Chin.

- [Zosette] the Vincent Chin case United Asian Americans in a fight for justice.

- The protest spread from the Asian American community to everybody.

And Bill Kehela resigned the next year under that protest.

And a new prosecutor, John O'Hare, got elected in 1984.

And one of John O'Hare first hire was a young graduate at University of Michigan Law School, was me.

(crowd laughing) - [Zosette] The Chinese population left this neighborhood decades ago, but Sandy Fatt still remembers.

- All sets of my grandparents came over from Canton, China when a missionary from Central Methodist Church came to Canton and welcomed the Chinese people to come to Detroit.

- [Narrator] Sandy Fatt said this photo was taken in 1942.

- This is my mom's mom and this is my dad's mom.

We have identified 17 of the 22 women and we're trying to identify the last five.

So these women were all, you know, fixed up marriages, and they came and followed their husbands here from Canton, China.

- [Zosette] Two years ago, one of the last historic Chinatown structures that had served as a community center was demolished.

That made headlines.

Long vacant, some wished it could have been preserved.

Last year, better news, a million dollar Chinatown theme street scape improvement project was announced, expected to start soon.

- They're gonna start building it out to really improve the public look and feel of this space.

And then leveraging this cultural heritage of the neighborhood.

And have it be, you know, sort of a foundation for what can come next, in a broader sense.

And really that's the open question.

It's like, what do we want to see next?

- [Zosette] There's room for more housing and businesses here, while the Detroit Chinatown Vision Committee wants to see some Pan-Asian restaurants in the future.

The former Chung's restaurant closed for several decades, now renovated, looking for tenants according to our reporting partner "Bridge Detroit."

- I just felt that it was- - [Zosette] Matt Hessler, he preserved the Chinatown signpost, commissioning the banners on display after he bought one other surviving Chinatown building 10 years ago from the Chinese Merchants Association.

- We ended up going to the closing with two old Chinese people who sort of said, "What are you gonna do with this place?"

And I said, "I'm gonna fill it full of businesses."

You know?

- [Narrator] One of those businesses, The Peterborough, a Chinese restaurant, in business nine years.

- We know it's not gonna be the epicenter of a Chinatown, but we wanna preserve the history of what was historically Chinatown in Detroit.

And there's no reason why it can't be something like Greektown which celebrates Greeks, or Cork Town, which is Irish.

Like, we gotta we gotta build this area up.