Chin was especially offended by the treatment of Hong Yen Chang, who was reportedly the nation’s first lawyer of Chinese ancestry in 1888 but was banned from practicing in California based on his national origin. When Chin became a University of California, Davis law professor, he enlisted Asian-American students in an effort to right the historical wrong.
The goal was achieved last week when the California Supreme Court granted a posthumous law license to Chang. Members of UC Davis’s Asian Pacific American Law Students Association (APALSA), with Chin as their faculty adviser, had petitioned the state’s high court to do so.
Chin calls the ruling “gratifying” but emphasizes that the main purpose of the pursuit was to educate students and others about old exclusion laws. “It’s a symbolic result from the court, but a teachable moment for the community at large,” he says. “Many people don’t know this history.”
The students also saw firsthand that “there’s more than one way to win a case,” he says. “We didn’t pursue just legal avenues, but we delved into lobbying, community engagement and working with news media. The APALSA members developed a range of skills.”
Students immersed themselves in researching the prevailing social attitudes of the 1800s, such as how White Americans resented the thousands of Chinese who immigrated to work California’s Gold Rush and then to build the Transcontinental Railroad. They were willing to work for cheaper wages than Whites, who opposed competition for jobs and lobbied for immigration restrictions against Chinese laborers. So, in 1882, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act banning Chinese laborers from entering this country. It was also the only U.S. law that banned naturalized citizenship against a specific ethnic group.
Meanwhile, California enacted its own restrictions against Chinese residents there.
