- [Narrator] Just ahead on "One Detroit", we're continuing our special series on the death of Vincent Chin 40 years after he was killed as a result of anti-Asian sentiment.

We'll examine the Asian-American activism spurred by his death and explore the Asian American experience here in Michigan.

Plus, we'll talk about a national Juneteenth collaboration between African American museums in Detroit and across the country.

It's all coming up next on "One Detroit".

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(mellow music) - [Narrator] Just ahead on this week's "One Detroit", the Juneteenth holiday celebrates the day when the Emancipation Proclamation was enforced in Galveston, Texas, freeing the last remaining enslaved people and bringing an official end to slavery in the United States.

Events are taking place throughout the nation to commemorate this historic day in 1865.

Coming up, we'll hear how African American museums in historical institutions are coming together for a national program on Juneteenth.

But first up, we're continuing our look at the life and legacy of Vincent Chin, a Chinese American who was beaten to death 40 years ago by two auto workers at a time when Japan bashing was rampant.

Detroit mired in recession, saw Japanese import slam the Detroit auto industry.

His killers never spent a day in jail.

Chin's story is etched into Detroit's history, as well as in national history.

His death launched a fight for Asian American justice here and across the country.

Today, Chin's killing is being remembered as another wave of anti-Asian hate sweeps the country.

One Detroit senior producer, Bill Kubota, has the story on the renewed movement for civil rights inequality and how more and more Asian Americans are calling Michigan home.

(dramatic music) - [Bill] In the '80s, the pervasive attitude beat the Japanese car companies.

Asian Americans just collateral damage, you might say.

(dramatic music) It's different now, new Asians, more Michigan Asians yet to learn about Vincent Chin and what went on around here.

- I decided, well, I think I'll buy a Toyota.

This is in the '80s, right?

- New car prices may never be lower.

So now's the time to buy.

- Because it was cheap and the same place that was selling Chevys and Chryslers and things were selling Toyotas.

So I didn't think much about it, but.

- See your Toyota dealer.

He's got what it takes.

- [Bill] The car ran fine, until it didn't.

Arthur Park took it to a mechanic.

- You find out what's wrong with my car?

And he said, "yes."

He said, I said, "What?"

He said, "It's shot."

"What do you mean?"

"No, somebody shot it.

Somebody shot the battery of your car."

So there's some of that anti-Asian sentiment.

- Arthur Park, Korean American, joined Detroiters taking action for Vincent Chin.

The group leading the fight, the American Citizens for Justice.

Asian American activism, not a new thing, goes back to the 1960s, the Vietnam era.

But mostly then, it was a West Coast thing because that's where most Asian Americans lived.

Protestors, mostly draft age, being asked to go kill other Asians.

- It was young folks.

What made the Vincent Chin case different is it brought together the first generation immigrants.

Their American born children brought together the Mandarin speaking and the Cantonese speaking, the suburban and the inner city.

It brought together Chinese Americans and Japanese Americans who knew, there it is again, you all look alike.

- [Bill] Frank Wu, president of new York's Queens College, grew up in suburban Detroit.

- The Vietnam war was a raw wound.

And if you had this color of skin, texture of hair, shape of eye, you had the look of the enemy.

You had the look of the enemy from World War II, the Korean war, the Vietnam war, from all of these conflicts that people remembered well.

- [Bill] The killing of Vincent Chin less than a decade after the fall of Saigon.

In Ann Arbor, the university of Michigan, they're talking activism then, and now.

- I think the start of Asian American studies or a class in the American studies program.

So those kind of gradually occurred in, during this, later on in the '70s.

- [Bill] Parker Wu, campus activist, he joined the American Citizens for Justice, leaving history to students today.

- So I was already a sophomore in college when I was starting to become more aware of Asian American history and activism.

- Learning about Vincent Chin was one of my earliest experiences and exposure to any semblance of Asian American history.

- And I remember being, reading this poem about Vincent Chin and being wrecked by it.

And going back to my mother asking, you know, why didn't you tell me, why didn't you tell me that this had happened, that it happened so close to us?

- That's a big turning point in my life, when I realized there was Asian American history, not only like broadly, but specific to Southeast Michigan, specific to Detroit.

And so for this not to ever come up in the conversation, I was a little bit astounded and I think that she was trying to protect me in a way.

When I asked my parents if they had heard of Vincent Chin, that my dad finally disclosed the instances of racism he faced as a Korean American engineer in the auto industry.

And the story he told me involved an exchange of words that was really akin to, because of you mfs, the infamous words from the Vincent Chin story.

- I think the younger generation needs to learn maybe certain things in the past.

They need to learn the struggles that we went through as older activists and so forth.

The kinds of difficulties that we had trying to maintain people's awareness, keeping information flows, and things like that.

- Today, with 24 million Asian Americans, it's possible for, you know, you know, Fujianese not talking to Mandarin speaking people, not speaking to Cantonese, just within the Chinese American community.

Back then, it was very clear.

If we didn't stand together, we wouldn't have a voice.

- The situation, it was very bad, don't get me wrong.

I know that the unions would have these car bashing.

We pay a dollar and you took a sledge hammer, and you could hit a Toyota or whatever in a parking lot at a rally.

But as bad as that was, I don't think the atmosphere then was nearly as bad as it is right now.

It wasn't as pervasive as we have at this point.

You've got a lot more attacks.

You've got political figures and elderly people that are just legitimizing that kind of behavior.

- [Man] Kung Flu.

- Kung Flu.

Yeah.

(crowd cheering) Kung Flu.

- It's gonna get a lot worse before it gets better, and I think we're going through a very, very- - [Donald] COVID.

- Trying cycle.

Social behavior and the political dialogue between the trade war with China, COVID, and the fact you have this white nationalist movement running rampant.

- The Vincent Chin case was a precursor to everything that we've seen during the COVID-19 pandemic.

When the violence first started to happen, you know, Asian Americans would remark, this isn't new.

It's only the awareness of it that's new.

- [Bill] Then it happened March last year, the Atlanta spa shootings.

Six Asian women gunned down leading to perhaps the biggest Asian American rally here since the Vincent Chin days.

- [Woman] And it was just an overwhelming number.

Like, I did not think that that many people were gonna be there.

- To be here gathered today in unity, but, unfortunately, for such a devastating purpose.

- [Bill] Ceena Vang and her friend, Zora Bowens, led the rally, the first of a few around the city, rooted in the George Floyd protest the year before.

- It was really nice to be able to bring so many people together that really cared about a cause about stopping hate and just unity in general.

It was definitely a big first time for a lot of the older generation there.

And it was nice to have them come out, especially when the older Asians have been like such a big target in all of the hate crimes.

I remember a lot of them coming up to us and just thanking us.

- [Bill] How to keep this going, keep people together, around here, different communities are dispersed across the region.

Detroit had a Chinatown once.

Its last vestiges seen in the film, "Who Killed Vincent Chin?".

By then, most of the Chinese had moved to the suburbs.

Now more Asians.

a mosque in Warren, south Macomb county, just north of Detroit.

Bangladeshis, the highest concentration of them in the US outside of New York.

They're also on the east side, a Detroit neighborhood called Banglatown.

And in Hamtramck, the once Polish enclave, surrounded by the big city.

This vaccination clinic's part of a program coordinated by Eastern Michigan University.

- Say Hamtramck.

can you say Hamtramck?

- [Bill] Dr. Tsu-Yin Wu is connecting Asian Americans in a different way.

- Yes, so.

- [Bill] By promoting better healthcare.

- As a Taiwanese American, you know, I know that sometime it's not the best to be the smaller group because you get overlooked and people don't know you even exist.

- Are you doctor Wu?

- I feel like it's my mission.

I guess, you know, early days, I had some sort of breast issue and I was in my very early age of my life.

And I feel like I was all alone and I was in the doctoral program of nursing.

And I should have all the solutions.

If I have all those capabilities and I cannot do it myself, what about those people in the community who just came to the United States and do not have anyone to go to?

So I feel like, hey, you know, as a researcher, I need to find a way.

I need to find a way to support the, especially the most underserved communities in Asian Americans.

- [Bill] Dr. Wu's program operates across the state.

In Battle Creek, Southwest Michigan, a gathering at the Burma Center.

- If you look around today, all of us came from Burma.

Most of us here, this room would be, you know, be almost empty if refugees didn't come here.

And refugee, to me, is a great thing because that's freedom.

- I have a lot of experience that when I introduced myself that I'm from Burma and then it was like, Burma?

Where's that country?

- [Bill] Burma, or call it Myanmar by India and China, more than 3,000 Burmese settled in Battle Creek now.

- It's all based on social connection.

So we got Battle Creek has been very accepting to immigrants like us.

- So back in 2007 is, you know, we have a huge military coup.

- Par Mawi, refugee, the keeper of books, stories of Burma and Battle Creek, last year, she became a US citizen.

- And then I have no choice to living there.

So I have to leave.

- We were discriminated based upon our religion and also for ethnicity.

We're a minority ethnic group in Burma.

- [Bill] The Burmese hear they're Chin people, mostly Christian with their own culture of many in that country.

- They send me to Houston.

But, you know, it's a big city and I don't think that I can survive there.

So I choose living in Battle Creek, 'cause it's here, it's a huge Burmese community here so we can help each other.

- Here in America, we just drive cars so we never move anymore.

And then we just eat and all the things that we eat don't go anywhere.

- Health is a priority.

And the reason we are here today is, you know, diabetes.

When these people come to this country, they have no insurance, they won't go to see doctors.

They don't even think about doing any cancer screening like you have to do the colorectal or you know, breast and mammography.

And the awareness, if we know that there are some groups out here, Burmese, Bangladesh, Nepali, Bhutanese, you know, smaller groups and we could work each other, you know, support each other, and I think that's very important.

- [Bill] Madison Heights, another mostly white working/middle class entering Detroit suburb.

But here, the past couple of decades, a change to this city.

- And I think that Madison Heights, for quite a while has been not just our Chinatown, it's been our unofficial Asian town of Metro Detroit.

And then where we are here, which is John R, and just south of 14 Mile, this strip, this area, really is our unofficial Asian town of Madison Heights.

- Usually, when people want to come down for Asian food, they come to Madison Heights.

- [Bill] Kevin Chai works with his family at a Taiwanese bakery.

Lots of specialty items.

The most popular?

- Probably the pork bun.

It's like the Chinese barbecue sauce with the roast pork in it.

It's probably our most popular.

There was a while where there was a lot of Chinese immigrants, I think mostly from just like Greenland China, probably coming here for school or work.

- [Bill] Since then, more Asians from different places.

- I'd say about a lot of Vietnamese, Filipino, and Chinese.

- Just behind us across the street that way is 168 Asian Mart.

It is the largest Asian Mart in the state.

I mean, they have everything.

Like attracts like, so we have Asian businesses who see that this is a really great place to be.

They see how welcoming the city is and they see the kind of business that they can get that they're gonna get the foot traffic.

So they're just setting up around it.

- [Bill] Michigan's Asian experience.

- Hello?

- [Bill] How can you know if there's no one to tell you?

- I just want some of these people to know the truth of what happened to us in World War II, which was not right.

- [Bill] Mary Kamidoi, an American Citizens for Justice activist since the '80s, speaking to sixth graders at Detroit Prep on the city's Near East Side.

- And my dad was one of 13 people that came to Kalamazoo, Michigan to just get out and do something worthwhile.

Even today, because when I go to middle schools, I have seventh and eighth graders ask me, "How can you speak English so well?"

I said, "Because I don't know anything else to speak."

"Well, how long have you been here?"

I said, "All my life."

- [Bill] Kamidoi, in her early 90s, spent the war years incarcerated in an internment camp only because her parents came from Japan.

- You know, even at 11 year old, I remember all of this thinking, my goodness, they treated us like we were cattle.

But, you know, this is how we were treated at the time when they were going to evacuate us on our homes.

- [Bill] The last of a generation.

Here's history from someone who lived it.

- You know, now that I'm older and all, and I've lived through it and I've accepted a lot of it, but I haven't forgot a day of it.

- [Bill] Which brings us back to Vincent Chin.

- [Crowd] We want justice!

- [Bill] Where Asian Americans and Michigan history intersect.

- It turns out that my dad was actually at one of the first rallies in 1983, but I don't think I really had conversations with my parents about it until late, much later.

Of course, learning about what happened to Vincent Chin, I think that sort of sparked a lot of my interest in wanting to work on civil rights issues, realizing that there was, you know, many, many issues going on that we need to continue to fight for.

- [Bill] State Senator Stephanie Chang has introduced a bill requiring Asian American history in Michigan schools, part of a package of laws covering other people's history too.

- So we have actually been pushing for our bills, which are about teaching, not just Asian American history, but Latino history, indigenous history, Arab and Chaldean history and black history within all of our schools because we know that so many of our marginalized communities are not, we are not learning about that history.

- So there's precedent.

- [Bill] Lawyer and longtime American Citizens for Justice leader, Roland Hwang, teaches Asian American issues at the University of Michigan.

While some are getting it in college, he believes more needs to be done at the K12 level.

- What students are getting are snippets of incidents, whether it is the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II, and that may warrant a couple of paragraphs.

Maybe a little bit about the Exclusion Act, but I doubt it.

So really, there needs to be a more comprehensive understanding of the contributions and the trials and tribulations of the Asian American community woven into US history because- - [Bill] The Exclusion Act?

The US barred the Chinese from our shores from 1882 to 1943, if you didn't know.

- What I think led to the Vincent Chin attacks was really the same things that probably led to the Chinese Exclusion Act and Japanese American internment that it's this other that is coming in and threatening our jobs and threatening our society.

- [Bill] At Canton High School, west of Detroit, students are getting more of this history because Richard Mui is there to teach it.

- I know in our district in the high school level, it's taught throughout the social studies, right?

And that's one of the benefits, I think.

I can share my resources with other teachers.

- And we know that our students deserve to know our, the truth about what's happened in our country.

Both the painful parts, but also the contributions of communities of color.

- The Asian American history law could be like others enacted in Illinois and New Jersey.

But with Michigan's legislature controlled by Republicans, that's unlikely anytime soon.

- Thank you for your time.

- Well, you're welcome.

You're welcome.

And I'm just hoping that you learn something from what I had to say.

- When students are learning history, they should be able to see some of their own images in that history, because otherwise it could be viewed as not relevant.

You know, if I don't see myself in that history, then I'm not a player in the community and in history.

- [Narrator] And you can see the Academy-Award-nominated documentary, "Who Killed Vincent Chin?"

on Detroit Public Television on June 20th at 10:00 p.m. Plus, Detroit Public TV, the city of Detroit, and several other organizations are hosting a series of events commemorating the 40th anniversary of Vincent Chin's death.

The remembrance and rededication runs through June 19th.

It includes a film series and national conversation.

Get the fullest of events @onedetroitpbs.org/vincentchin.

Turning now to the celebration for the nation's newest federal holiday, Juneteenth.

Here in Detroit, the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History is hosting local activities and it's participating in a national virtual presentation focusing on freedom.

American black journal, Stephen Henderson, got the details from the Wright Museum CEO, Neil Barclay.

(gentle music) - We, for the last several years, have been trying to get this point out to our colleagues in the museum field, particularly the African American museum field.

And we started out with just a few of us wanting to do something together to celebrate this holiday, now holiday.

And so we gathered together and we put together a kind of video presentation where each of our cities contributes something about how Juneteenth and blood is particularly resident in our communities, right?

We're now up to nine this year of other museums who are doing this.

And on, I guess it is on Juneteenth at one o'clock, this will air on our website and also on DPTV's website.

This sort of hour-long presentation.

This is a montage of five or so minutes from each of the cities.

- And so what does that mean for us here in Detroit?

- For here in Detroit, we'll see, you know, we'll show that video that people will have, that will have access to it at one o'clock on the 19th as well as at three o'clock here in the museum and online.

But our celebration is actually starting the day before.

So we are doing a Underground Railroad treasure hunt, actually, in Greek Town.

That'll happen on the 18th from 10 to four.

Different sites of historical significance, particularly as it relates to freedom of theme of this particular holiday will be highlighted in this treasure hunt where folks will be able to discover certain places in this city that are particularly important to African Americans.

It's sponsored with, in a conjunction with the Michigan Underground Railroad Exploratory Collective, which is one of our affiliates.

We, then, on the 19th, we have a member of our community partners that same day in the museum.

We'll be really focusing on things like the partners included trade chapter, for example, the league of women voters or the craft insurance company, which insures a lot of our homes and other properties here.

A museum store features unique and classical imagery, et cetera.

And then we're gonna do a concert called Spirit Soar, which basically translates all this to music.

- I kind of feel like we still have a lot of education to do.

- We do.

- Of people, African American people and the rest of the population about what this commemorates and why it matters.

I think there's still a lot of confusion about that.

- Sure, you know.

It is the occasion, I guess, it's the story.

It marks day when federal troops arrived in Galveston, Texas, right?

1865 to take control of the state and ensure that all enslaved people were freed.

However, this was months after the Emancipation Proclamation had happened.

So these soldiers were just really finding out about this months later.

And it, you know, in our internet world or social media world where you could find out about anything instantaneously, that idea of people having been free for some time, according to the law, but not actually knowing about it, something that may not seem as what, significant and important or big deal to us living today.

But back then, it was huge that they would find out about this, and really an occasion for celebration, right?

- Yeah.

Yeah.

- And it had gotten to them and got to their communities, right?

- Yeah, and it's a reminder of, I think, not taking for granted the idea of freedom.

Even when it seems you've won, or it seems- - Right.

- You've reached that point, there's always more work to do.

- There absolutely is.

And I think our present moment is really highlighting that, isn't it?

You know, the things that are happening in our country now really demonstrate how much freedom is not, is something that we must fight for, but, you know, to preserve every day, right?

And otherwise, they are taken away, as we were seeing in the political process and climate that we find ourselves in.

- We the people.

- [Narrator] You can watch the national presentation of "We The People" on June 19th at one p.m. on PBSbooks.org and Facebook Live.

That will do it for this week's "One Detroit".

Thanks for watching.

Make sure to come back for "One Detroit Arts and Culture" on Mondays at 7:30 p.m. Head to the one Detroit website for all the stories we're working on.

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(gentle music)