Historical photos capture the strength of Asian American activism and its impact throughout US history

One of the most important labor movements in US history was the Delano Grape Strike, a collaborative effort between Filipino American and Mexican American farm workers in California.

On September 8, 1965, Filipino-American farm workers, members of the Agricultural Labor Organizing Committee, walked out and declared a strike against Delano-area table and wine grape growers in Bakersfield, California.

They demanded a raise in their hourly wage from $1.25 to $1.40 and in the pay rate per packed box of grapes from 10 cents a box to 25 cents.

Third World Liberation Front Strikes (1968)

The Third World Liberation Front strikes ignited the first Asian American activist movement.

Held at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1968, the five-month strike was led by a coalition of student groups demanding ethnic-focused courses be added to the university’s curriculum.

During the strikes, the students conducted large rallies, teach-ins, sit-ins, and picketing on the campus. In response, the university called the police, and riot squads began mass arrests of students.

The same year, Yuji Ichioka and Emma Gee, both graduate students and key organizers of the Asian American Political Alliance, coined the term “Asian American.” This term was created to “unify Asian ethnicities together based on their shared experiences under Orientalist US racism.”

In 1969, the first Asian American studies curricula were established at the UC Berkeley, San Francisco State University, and the University of California, Los Angeles.

Protests Against the I-Hotel Evictions (1977)

With the last vestige of Manilatown destroyed after the building was demolished in 1979, community members and supporters of the former I-Hotel residents continued to resist local real estate developers. Organizations such as the Chinatown Community Development Center and the Manilatown Heritage Foundation formed as a result of the community’s efforts to fulfill social needs and fight for grassroots housing for their fellow residents.

In late June, they crowded Columbus Park and made their demands, and their employers signed the new International Ladies Garment Workers Union contract. With the help of city councilmen, local businesses, and community advocates, the garment shop employers began to sign the contract. They managed to get the signatures of every manufacturer by mid-afternoon.

Despite the swiftness and scale of the strike, May Chen, one of the ILGWU strike organizers, said she believes the strike’s success remained “invisible up to the millennium” given the limited media coverage on Asian American communities and issues at the time.

K.W. Lee, founder of the Korean American Journalists Association, brought Lee’s case to public attention. After investigating the case, he was convinced of Lee’s innocence and began a series of writings advocating for his freedom.

This caught on with Asian Americans nationwide, and the “Free Chol Soo Lee Defense Committee” was created. The committee raised more than $120,000 to support Chol Soo’s appeal of his initial murder conviction. The collective effort of Lee’s supporters won him a retrial, which successfully led to the overturning of his murder conviction.

On the night of his bachelor party on November 2, 1983, Vincent Chin, then 27, was brutally beaten to death by two white men in Detroit.

Chin, who was Chinese-American, was targeted by the men who blamed Asians for job losses in the American auto industry amid the success of Japanese automakers.

Ronald Ebens and Michael Nitz denied the attack was racially motivated and were charged with manslaughter after pleading to a second-degree murder charge. They left with three years of probation and a $3,000 fine and did not spend a single day in jail.

The judge presiding over the trial said Ebens and Nitz “aren’t the kind of men you send to jail … You fit the punishment to the criminal, not the crime.”