They Made A Difference
“Black family helps Chinese Family”…not your typical headline.
As I transition to adding to my stories about race in America essays about people and organizations that have made a difference in moving the needle on America’s Thing With Race, you may have noticed that the frequency of my writing has slowed down a bit. That’s an indication of how scattered those stories are. Or maybe just an indication of my skill at ferreting them out. At any rate I came upon this story today in the NY Times about a Black Family helping a Chinese family who, facing discrimination, was having difficulty finding housing. “Black family helps Chinese Family”…not your typical headline.
In reading this story, I was reminded about a similar story in Ta-Nehisi’s Coates’ important essay, The Case For Reparations. Coates’ recalled a Jewish neighborhood that, like other Jewish neighborhoods in America, had sought to ease the burden on Black Americans who faced personal and government sanctioned discrimination when seeking home ownership - that most American of all dreams - by inviting them into their neighborhoods.
“In the 1950’s and 60’s North Lawndale, a Chicago suburb, had long been a predominantly Jewish neighborhood, but a handful of middle-class African Americans had lived there starting in the ’40s. The community was anchored by the sprawling Sears, Roebuck headquarters. North Lawndale’s Jewish People’s Institute actively encouraged blacks to move into the neighborhood, seeking to make it a “pilot community for interracial living.” In the battle for integration then being fought around the country, North Lawndale seemed to offer promising terrain. But out in the tall grass, highwaymen, nefarious as any kleptocrat, were lying in wait.”[1]
People doing what they could to move the needle on America’s Thing With Race.
If you’ve listened to Louis Farrakhan, leader of the Nation Of Islam, you may think that American Jews and American Blacks are enemies. But only in the world of Farrakhan. For generations Jews were considered sorta White, but not really. Their skin was thought of as ‘swarthy’. Which according to Merriam Webster, means of a dark color, complexion, or cast.
But for a while, there was some solidarity between Black Americans and Swarthy Americans.
This solidarity between Jewish Americans and Black Americans seemed to dissolve - likely when Jews, like every European ethnic group before them, began to realize that by identifying as White instead of Italian or French or Polish or Lithuanian as they had originally, that the American benefits of whiteness flowed to them more freely. People stopped being Irish and identified instead as White.
At any rate, this is an unusual and uplifting story that showed up today in the NY Times about one group helping another and making a difference over eighty years ago.
In 1939, a Black couple rented a California home to a Chinese American family when others would not. Now, members of that family are donating house sale proceeds to Black students.[2]
Gus Thompson and his daughter, Edyth Thompson, in about 1910.
In 1939, Gus Thompson and his wife rented a home to the Dongs, a Chinese American family, at a time when others would not and when anti-Asian segregation permeated housing policy.
Ron Dong was only 2 years old when his Chinese American parents moved to Coronado, Calif., a change that had been possible only because of a Black couple who defied anti-Asian segregation to rent a house to his family.
More than 80 years later, Ron and his younger brother, Lloyd Dong Jr., 81, are carrying on the legacy of that couple, Gus and Emma Thompson, by donating part of the proceeds from the sale of the Coronado house and an apartment complex next door to support Black college students at San Diego State University.
The university said the brothers’ donation, which is expected to be $5 million, would be “by far” the largest ever made to its Black Resource Center. The center will be renamed to honor the Thompsons.
Ron Dong, 86, said it was “amazing” that the money would be able “to do things that we didn’t ever anticipate our assets be able to do.”
The brothers decided to donate the money to the university’s Black Resource Center after learning more about the Thompsons, who rented their house to the Dong family in 1939. The donation was earlier reported by NBC.
“It was a real leg up for the Dongs to have that ability to live there,” said Ron’s wife, Janice Dong, 86.
Coronado, an island across the bay from San Diego that is known for the red-roofed Hotel del Coronado, was accessible only by ferry or a long drive up the strip of land that connects it to the mainland near the border with Mexico until a bridge opened in 1969.
In 1939, Lloyd Dong Sr. and his wife, Margaret Dong, were living in San Diego while he worked six days a week as a gardener for wealthy Coronado residents. They had each been born in the United States to Chinese immigrant parents, Lloyd Dong Jr. said.
The family wanted to live in Coronado to shorten Lloyd Dong Sr.’s commute, but were confronted by anti-Asian racism.
The Chinese Exclusion Act signed in 1882 blocked Chinese people from immigrating to the United States, though many still entered illegally. The act, which was repealed in 1943 and replaced with a quota system allowing around 105 visas per year, and other laws institutionalized anti-Asian discrimination.
This racism was also baked into housing policy. In the early and mid 1900s, home deeds could include clauses, known as racial restrictive covenants, that barred people of certain races and religious groups from buying homes or living in particular neighborhoods. The Federal Housing Authority financed and insured the vast majority of mortgages during the years after WWII and required such covenants that barred sales of homes to Blacks and Chinese. This requirement remained until 1968 when it was outlawed by the Fair Housing Act, but remains on many property documents, although such clauses are now unenforceable.
“As the Realtors took hold in the ’20s and ’30s, the Black community began to vanish,” said Mr. Ashley, a local historian who has been researching Black history in Coronado and sharing his findings online and in a Coronado Historical Association exhibit.
Mr. Ashley contacted the Dongs in 2022 after learning about their connection to the Thompsons, who had been a prominent couple in business and society. The brothers knew the Thompsons had helped their family, but little else until Mr. Ashley filled them in.
Gus Thompson was born into slavery in Cadiz, Ky., sometime between 1859 and 1862, according to Mr. Ashley. Years after slavery was abolished, Mr. Thompson moved to Coronado and worked for E.S. Babcock, an industrialist who founded the Hotel del Coronado.
He built a livery stable next to their house with an upstairs boardinghouse for Black people who needed a place to sleep in Coronado, such as laborers and chauffeurs who had driven their clients to the island. The Thompsons rented their house to the Dongs after moving to San Diego.
“You had the Thompsons still holding on to their property amidst this heightened period of racial restrictions against African Americans, Chinese, Mexicans and others,” Mr. Ashley said.
After the Dongs, who had four children, bought the house from the Thompsons in 1955, they replaced the stable with an eight-bedroom apartment complex, which is also for sale. The brothers eventually moved away to other parts of California, and their two sisters have died, so the family is ready to sell.
Lloyd Dong Jr. said the properties were estimated to be worth $7 million to $8 million. He and his brother are donating their portions of the sale proceeds, which he said “would give some deserving people a leg up.”
San Diego State University said: “The donation is a confirmed $5 million, and will come from the sale of two properties, which are now in the final stages.”
Janice Dong said that the couple had considered using their portion of the proceeds to fund scholarships, but learned that college students from underrepresented groups often need support beyond financial aid and chose to direct the funds to the Black Resource Center. Ron Dong worked as a high school math and science teacher before he retired and Janice Dong was a special-education teacher at a middle school.
Gus and Emma Thompson’s great-grandson, Ballinger Kemp III, 76, said that he was “tickled” by the donation. “It’s a beautiful thing,” he said.
Mr. Kemp said that his great-grandparents’ decision to help the Dongs fit in with the family ethos of doing good deeds without making a fuss.
“Given what I know of my great-grandparents through my grandmother, I don’t think that it was something that they thought a whole lot about,” Mr. Kemp said. “It was just the right thing to do.”
“We could use more of that — the spirit of the Thompsons and the Dongs — right now,” he said.
Tonika Green, San Diego State’s associate vice president for campus community affairs and a professor, said in a statement that the donation would be used for mentorship and career development programs.
“The Dong family will change lives with this gift,” said Dr. Green.
Mr. Ashley, the historian, said that the donation was especially important amid efforts to cancel diversity and inclusion programs in the United States and discussions about reparations.
“Many people want us to forget about tough history, right? It’s easier to forget than it is to remember,” Mr. Ashley said. “And the Dongs are saying: ‘We don’t forget.’”
So there you have it. In 1939 ordinary people doing what they could to move the needle on America’s Thing With Race. We can do this. We can move the needle. We have to. I have faith.
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/14/us/sdsu-college-donation-chinese-immigrants.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
We, America, need to uplift more stories like this, as you are doing. They are reminders of who we aspire to be; an America for which many of us yearn .