 Greetings from the National Archives. I'm David Ferriero, Archivist of the United States, and it's my pleasure to welcome you to today's virtual author lecture with Paula Yu, author of From a Whisper to a Rally in Cry. Before we begin, I'd like to tell you about two upcoming programs you can view on our YouTube channel. On Thursday, April 22nd at noon, we'll have a special Earth Day program with Richard J. Lazarus, the author of The Rule of Five, a book that tells the story of the most important environmental law case ever decided by the U.S. Supreme Court. And on Tuesday, April 27th at 1 p.m., Joshua D. Rothman will tell us about his new book, The Ledger and the Chain, a study of America's internal slave trade and its role in the making of America. Today, Paula Yu brings us the story of Vincent Chin, who in 1982 was beaten to death because he was Asian-American. When his two attackers were given lenient sentences, the outcry led to a federal civil rights trial, the first involving a crime against an Asian-American. Today, nearly 40 years later, Asian-Americans are still targets of violence. Records in the National Archives document a long history of injustices and the persistent fight against them. Our author today used records from the National Archives at Chicago. Retrieving the stories contained in these records ensures that we do not forget past inequities and cannot overlook pivotal figures such as Vincent Chin. Paula Yu is an author, screenwriter, and musician. Her young adult novel, Good Enough, is an honor book of the Asian-Pacific American Award for Youth Literature. She's also the author of several picture book biographies, including 16 Years and 16 Seconds, The Anime Wong Story, and 22 Cents. As a television writer and producer, her credits range from NBC's The West Wing to the CW Supergirl, and she is a former journalist with The Seattle Times, The Detroit News, and People Magazine. When she's not writing, Paula is a professional freelance violinist who has played and toured with orchestras and National Recording Acts. Now let's hear from Paula Yu. Thank you for joining us today. My name is Paula Yu. I am the author of this book. From a whisper to a rallying cry, the killing of Vincent Chin and the trial that galvanized the Asian-American movement. This book is being published on April 20th, 2021 by Norton Young Readers, which is an imprint of WW Norton and Company. And it is my honor to talk to you today about this book and about Vincent Chin and about Asian-American history for the National Archive. It's not fair, the Vincent Chin story. But what about Vincent Chin? In the summer of 1993, when I was offered a job to write for The Detroit News, that was the first question all my Asian-American journalist friends asked me. Are you scared of Detroit because of Vincent Chin? At the time, it had been barely a decade since Vincent Chin's death. On June 19th, 1982, Chrysler Foreman Ronald Ebenz, 43, and his stepson, recently laid off auto worker Michael Mintz, 24, got into a fight with Vincent Chin at a club on the night of Vincent's bachelor party. The fight escalated and Ebenz beat Chin to death with a baseball bat. According to witness testimony, Ebenz allegedly shouted, it's because of you little mother expletive that we're out of work. This happened during the height of anti-Japanese sentiment in the American auto industry in the 1980s due to increased competition from Japanese import cars and due to mass layoffs across the country, especially in Michigan, home of the big three, Ford, Chrysler, and GM. Ebenz and Knitz were white. Vincent was Chinese-American. Ebenz and Knitz pled guilty to manslaughter. In 1983, Detroit had one of the highest homicide rates in the country. This led to an overburdened court system where prosecutors were sometimes unable to attend all their hearings, including the March 16th, 1983 hearing for Ronald Ebenz and Michael Knitz as a result. Based on limited information, and because both men had never been in trouble with the law before, Judge Charles Kaufman sentenced Ebenz and Knitz to a $3,000 fine plus court costs and three years probation each. You don't make the punishment fit the crime, Kaufman famously declared. You make the punishment fit the criminal. The shockingly lenient sentence outraged Vincent Chin's mother, Lily Chin, and the Asian-American community in Detroit. Their anger led to activism as they formed a grassroots advocacy organization called American Citizens for Justice. The ACJ held a protest rally which ignited similar protests across the country. These protests led to an investigation by the Department of Justice and the FBI, resulting in the first federal civil rights trial for an Asian-American. In 1984, there was one question at the heart of the United States versus Ronald Ebenz and Michael Knitz. Was this a racially motivated killing? Were they angry at Vincent because they assumed he was Japanese and wanted to blame him for the layoffs and the competition from Japanese import cars? Or was this a drunken brawl and gone tragically, fatally wrong? Did the two white men attack Vincent Chin because of his race? Or was this a case of too much alcohol and toxic masculinity gone awry? The first trial resulted in a guilty conviction for Ebenz, the man who held the bat, on one count of violating Vincent Chin's civil right to be in a place of public accommodation because of his race. Ebenz was sentenced to 25 years in prison. Knitz was cleared of both counts, including conspiracy. Ebenz, however, never spent a day in prison because his conviction was appealed on the grounds of alleged witness coaching. As a result, Ebenz's guilty verdict was reversed in a second trial in 1987. He would never spend a day in prison for Chin's death. To this day, Ebenz expresses remorse but denies ever being racist. In writing Vincent Chin's story, I also refer to other important milestones in Asian-American history. Although this book is for everyone, I wrote it especially for middle school and high school students because I want to make sure they don't grow up like me with this whole in their education. My first book was 16 Years in 16 Seconds, The Sammy Lee Story, published by Leon Lowe Books in 2005. It was about the first Korean-American man to win a gold medal in the Olympics in 1948 and 1952 for diving. I had accidentally stumbled across this story while doing research on the internet for another project. I was intrigued by Dr. Lee's story. He was forbidden as a child in the 1930s to use his town's public swimming pool because of the color of his skin. Later he would become a doctor and qualify and win gold medals at the Olympics for diving. As a Korean-American, I wondered why I'd never heard of him before. I thought his story would be inspirational for children. So I wrote a children's picture book biography about him. It won the Leon Lowe New Voices Award in 2003 and became my first children's picture book. From there, I wrote two more children's picture book biographies for Leon Lowe Books. One is Shining Star, The Anna Mae Wong Story, and it's about the first Chinese-American female movie star in Hollywood who had to fight against racism in an industry where she was often cast in stereotypical roles. For my next book, 22 Cents, Muhammad Yunus and the Village Bank, that one is about Muhammad Yunus who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006. His microlending banking concept worked to combat poverty in Bangladesh and around the world. I also wrote my first young adult novel called Good Enough published in 2008 by Harper Collins, which was loosely based on my life as a Korean-American violinist and my youth orchestra adventures. I explore, however, the damaging stereotypes of the Asian overachiever and the model minority myth. Because you see, growing up, I was a straight A student and I went to Yale. I was concertmaster of my youth orchestra and yes, I was really good at math. But these stereotypes of the Asian overachiever and the model minority myth diminished my individual achievements. I became part of a monolith. This devalued me, this dehumanized me and this is why the model minority myth is a racist stereotype. I also grew up in a mostly all-white town in Connecticut where I rarely saw anyone who looked like me. Because Asian-American history was not taught at my high school, I started researching Asian-American history on my own in my early 20s to fill in these gaps. During this time, a feature-length documentary called Who Killed Vincent Chin by Christine Choi and Renee Tajima-Pena came out while I was in college. It would later be nominated for an Academy Award. That was when I first heard about the Vincent Chin story. So let's go back to the night of June 19th, 1982. Vincent Chin had gone out for a night with his three best friends to celebrate his wedding in a bachelor party. While at the Fancy Pants Club, Ronald Evans, 43 and his 24-year-old stepson, Michael Knitz also stopped by the club. They were actually on their way to a baseball game but heard on the car radio that the Milwaukee Brewers were winning 10-3 to the Detroit Tigers. It was a blowout game. They impulsively decided to stop by the club for last call. And this club was the Fancy Pants Club. It was an adult entertainment nightclub. What happens next remains debated. Some witnesses claim they heard racist slurs like chink and jab coming from the direction where Evans and Knitz were sitting. Vincent confronted Evans, which led to a fight in the club. Everyone was kicked out. The fight continued in the parking lot, which led to Evans grabbing a baseball bat from the car trunk. That's when Vincent ran. His friend Jimmy Choi followed him. Evans and Knitz got in the car and took off. Vincent's two other friends, Gary Koyvu and Bob Soroski, got into Gary's car to find Vincent and Jimmy. During the first federal trial of 1984, some witnesses testified that Evans and Knitz were on the hunt for Vincent. But Evans testified that he and his stepson were just looking for a hospital to get stitches for Knitz, who had been hit over the head with a chair at the club. As they drove by a McDonald's, they spotted Vincent and Jimmy sitting on the curb, waiting for Gary and Bob to find them. They were laughing. And something snapped for Evans. He got angry again and pulled over. He then beat Vincent unconscious with the baseball bat. As Vincent's friend Jimmy Choi held him in his arms, Vincent's last words were, it's not fair. Highland Park police officer Morris Cotton was only 24 on the night of Vincent Chin's beating death. He had just joined the police force. He was moonlighting that same night as a security guard at the McDonald's. He pulled out his gun and shouted for Evans to drop the bat. Later at the police station, there were only two races listed on the police report, black and white. Officer Cotton had no choice but to check the box marked white. Vincent Chin was in a coma for four days. He died on June 23rd, 1982. He was buried on June 29th, 1982, one day after his wedding with Vicky Wong was supposed to take place. As I had mentioned earlier, Vincent Chin's killing happened during the height of anti-Japanese and anti-Asian sentiment in the American auto industry due to the increased competition for the Japanese import cars. Unemployed auto workers literally paid money to bash a Japanese import car with sledgehammers for family fundraisers. Both Democrat and Republican politicians used racist Pearl Harbor imagery to warn Americans of the trade war with Japan. One congressman even called Honda quote, the little yellow people. At their hearing in March, 1983, both men planned guilty to manslaughter. Evans expressed remorse for his actions saying he was quote, deeply sorry about what happened. Judge Charles Kaufman believed both men were quote, not the kind of people you send to prison which led to his infamous lenient sentencing in letting both men walk free. Judge Kaufman served as a fire pilot during World War II and was shot down. He was captured and sent to a Japanese prisoner of war camp where he lost more than 60 pounds and nearly died. Given his law school background, he was able to negotiate with guards for more food and shoes for him and his cellmates. Having lived in a POW camp for two years, Judge Kaufman was known as the merciful judge who often gave probation because he knew what it was like to be in prison. He was also very liberal having set up scholarships for law students of color, including Asian-Americans. So he was confused and devastated by the anger over his decision. But Vincent Chin's mother, Lily Chin, was also devastated by this shockingly lenient sentence. She was all alone now. Her husband had died just eight months earlier from kidney disease and now her son had been killed. Growing up in China, Lily Chin was inspired to move to America by her great-grandfather who was one of the 20,000 Chinese laborers who helped build the Continental Railroad. During that time, the railroad companies preferred having the Chinese laborers carry the dynamite because the explosives were very volatile. No one knows exactly how many Chinese laborers were killed by accidental dynamite explosions, but it's estimated to be in the hundreds if not the thousands. Her father warned her that America was not a safe place to be, but Lily was determined to find new life. But when Vincent was killed and his killers set free, Lily's American dream became an American nightmare. Vincent's death made the front page of the Detroit Free Press and Detroit News and other local newspapers. This shocked Asian-Americans in the Detroit area because they were rarely, if ever, covered in the news. Helen Zia, a journalist and activist who worked for three years in the stamping plant of Chrysler, was among the growing number of angry Asian-Americans who were shocked and outraged by the lenient sentence given to Ronald Ebbins and Michael Nitz for the manslaughter death of Vincent Chin. Helen, along with several others, including two young lawyers named James Shamorah and Roland Huang, as well as Kidney and Henry Yee, no relation who were elder statesmen in Detroit's Chinatown, banded together to form the American Citizens for Justice Group to protest Vincent's death. Today, the members of the American Citizens for Justice are baby boomers. They are all in their 60s and 70s. But in 1982, they were the original millennials, the youth generation who fought back against injustice. They handed out flyers instead of posting angry tweets on social media. They sent telegrams instead of texts. They conducted their own investigation and discovered many things had slipped through the cracks, including Racine Colwell. The 25-year-old dancer at the Fancy Pants claimed she heard Ronald Ebbins allegedly shout, it's because of you little mother, expletive, that we're out of work. Because Ebbins and Nitz had pled to and were found guilty of manslaughter, they could not be tried again for the same crime. That would be double jeopardy. But Racine Colwell's witness testimony meant that the ACJ had a new way into this case. As a violation of Vincent Chin's civil rights, this young woman would become a key witness of the federal trial. In the meantime, Lily Chin's grief turned to anger as she began speaking at protest rallies across the country. Her courage inspired Jesse Jackson and others to join her and the ACJ at some of their events. Lily and the American Citizens for Justice soon organized what would become a seminal point in Asian American history, a nationwide Asian American protest for Vincent Chin. In May 1983, almost 1,000 Asian Americans marched in downtown Detroit to protest the killing of Vincent Chin and demand a federal investigation. This protest inspired other Asian American protest rallies across the country with huge demonstrations from New York to Chicago to LA and San Francisco. As a result, the Department of Justice started an investigation which led to a grand jury indictment. Ronald Ebans and Michael Nitz were charged with two counts, one, conspiracy and two, violating Vincent Chin's civil rights by preventing him from using and enjoying a place of public accommodation, the Fancy Pants Club, on account of his race. In June 1984, Judge Anna Diggs-Taylor presided over the first trial, the United States of America versus Ronald Ebans and Michael Nitz. Just 20 years earlier, however, in 1964, this judge was pregnant with her first child and had driven from Michigan to Mississippi to help register African American voters. When she arrived, an angry white mob confronted her and the other young lawyers, threatening them. She was scared for her life. She would later learn that three young activists, two white men and one black man, had just been murdered and buried by members of the Ku Klux Klan. That horror and injustice inspired the young lawyer to become the first black female judge appointed to the federal bench in Michigan by President Jimmy Carter in 1979. And now, she would be the judge in what would become known as the first ever civil rights trial for an Asian American. During the first trial in 1984, both Ronald Ebans and Michael Nitz testified on the stand, denying all the witnesses' claims that they had killed Vincent Chin on account of his race. Ronald Ebans wept for 10 minutes on the stand. But in the end, the jury found Ronald Ebans guilty of one count of violating Vincent Chin's civil rights by preventing him from being in a place of public accommodation because of his race. Michael Nitz, however, was cleared on both counts. Ebans was then sentenced to 25 years in prison. But in 1986, the US Sixth Court of Appeals agreed with the defense attorneys that a new trial must be held because of a technical error in the first trial. What was this error? Well, during the initial investigation, a young lawyer named Lisa Chan had interviewed Vincent Chin's three friends from his bachelor party, Gary Koyvu, Bob Soroski, and Jimmy Choi. She interviewed them together and also tape-recorded their conversation to ensure accurate note-taking. However, Lisa Chan's recording opened the door for the defense to claim that there may have been some alleged witness coaching based on what's said on the tapes. These tapes were not allowed as evidence in the first trial. The US Sixth Court of Appeals agreed with the defense's claim. So in 1987, a second federal trial was held with Judge Anna Diggs-Taylor presiding again. This time, the trial was held in Cincinnati, Ohio because Judge Taylor agreed with the defense's claim that they could no longer have a fair trial in Detroit due to the case's local notoriety. During this trial, the tapes of Lisa Chan interviewing the three witnesses were played to the jury. On May 1st, 1987, the jury found Ronald Ebenz not guilty. His original guilty sentence was overturned. He was a free man. He never spent a day in prison for the death of Vincent Chin. We had a very, very tough decision to make, said jury foreman Jeffrey Heffron, a machinist from Cincinnati. He was the only jury member in the second trial to speak on the record to the press. He said, when the judge said beyond a reasonable doubt, there you have it. I agonized over this for two weeks. Still, I'm still agonizing over it now. So what was the point to all of this? Was this court case a failure? Not really. Despite what happened, a spark had been lit, inspiring the Asian American community to continue speaking out and fighting back against racism and injustice. To this day, the Asian, the American Citizens for Justice Organization in Detroit still exists and monitors hate crimes against Asian Americans as well as for all marginalized communities. In fact, during the 1980s, Vincent Chin's name made national and even international headlines. His death was one of the first times an Asian American was featured on the front page of all the local Detroit and Michigan newspapers. The 1984 and 1987 federal civil rights trials for Vincent Chin were covered across the country from the New York Times to the Los Angeles Times. He was the lead story on all the major network news broadcasts. His story remained in the public consciousness for several years, including being the topic of an Academy Award nominated documentary feature who killed Vincent Chin. The federal trial, the United States of Ronald Ebers and Michael Knitz was taught in colleges and law schools across the country. However, by the mid to late 1990s, Vincent Chin's name started to fade. He remained well known in the Asian American Pacific Islander community, but not to the general public. In 2009, writer and filmmaker Curtis Chin produced a new documentary about Vincent Chin called Vincent Who? And it was about how Vincent's story had disappeared from relevance for the current generation of Asian American youth. Vincent Chin had become a footnote in history. But after the 2016 presidential election, there was a notable spike in hate crime and bias incidents against people of color in this country. Hate crimes tripled in Michigan alone. In 2017, Vincent Chin's name made national headlines again when a white male shooter reportedly yelled, get out of my country at a bar in Kansas as he shot and killed two Indian American men. An NPR reporter wrote that the South Asian American community wondered if this was their quote, Vincent Chin moment. The killer was ultimately found guilty of federal hate crime charges and is now serving three consecutive life in prison sentences. In 2020, Vincent Chin's name and story resurfaced again after former President Donald Trump nicknamed COVID-19 as the China virus and Kung Flu. Trump's refusal to apologize and stop using this racist rhetoric has been directly attributed to an exponential rise in more than 3,800 violent hate crimes against Asian Americans this year, according to statistics from the FBI and the Stop AAPI Hate Crime Tracker provided by the Asian Pacific Policy and Planning Council. As of today, one out of four Asian American teenagers have reported being verbally or physically harassed and bullied because of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic. One out of 10 Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders have reported experiencing a hate crime or hate incidents since the start of 2021. I myself have experienced coronavirus-related anti-Asian racism myself. A white man refused to get on the elevator with me because I was Asian, even though we were both wearing masks and following COVID-19's socially distanced protocol by standing six feet apart at the specifically marked spots in the elevator. I was racially profiled outside my own house by a white family who were afraid I might infect their children. And members of my own family have reported passengers requesting to be seated away from them on airplane flights. Many Asian American and Pacific Islander politicians including representatives Ted Lu, Judy Chu and Grace Meng criticized Trump for his racist rhetoric. In September, 2020, the US House of Representatives voted to pass a resolution introduced by Representative Grace Meng, condemning anti-Asian sentiment during the COVID-19 pandemic. And then Atlanta happened. On March 16th, 2021, a 21-year-old white man deliberately shot and killed eight people and wounded one other person at three separate spas in Atlanta, Georgia. Six of the eight people killed were of Asian descent, four Korean American women and two Chinese American women. Authorities declared the shooter was having a, quote, bad day and did not think these killings were racially motivated. This outraged the Asian American Pacific Islander communities who held nationwide protests across the country, very similar to the same protests held for Vincent Chin almost 40 years earlier. As I watched the news interviews with grieving family members and friends of the eight people killed in Atlanta, I flashed back to when I interviewed Vincent Chin's family, friends and members of the American Citizens for Justice and those involved in the actual court case. I was moved by how many people cried during our discussion. Even though Vincent had happened almost 40 years ago, they shed fresh tears as if it had just happened. That made me realize how profoundly traumatic and lasting Vincent Chin's death had on everyone. They were not just remembering what happened, they were reliving it. It was an honor and privilege to hear their stories. As I wrote this book, I felt a great responsibility to make sure their voices were heard and not forgotten. Vincent Chin's name reminds us never to be complacent whenever we witness injustice. We must always speak out and fight back in solidarity against all forms of hatred and racism. That is what his legacy has taught us. That's for me. Writing about Asian American history for young readers from children to teenagers is an honor and privilege I do not take lightly. I don't want children and teenagers to grow up like me where much of our history was raced because our voices, our stories, our history, and our contributions to this country matter. I write about our stories so history can stop repeating itself. Thank you very much to the National Archive for allowing me this opportunity to talk to everyone about the Vincent Chin case. It was an honor and privilege to share Vincent's story with you. And you can find out more in my book Coming Out, April 20th, 2021. And I just want to say, although I'm honored to tell Vincent Chin's story, I'm also heartbroken by the recent spike in anti-Asian racism due to the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic. But I also want to say I'm also hopeful despite all this, because I know that today's youth and today's generation will not forget and will continue to fight on and make sure that Vincent Chin's name is never forgotten again. Thank you.