Chinese Historical Society of America Looking Good: “Glamour & Grace” gala highlights exciting year
September 25, 2007
A capacity crowd celebrated with the Chinese Historical Society of America at its “Glamour & Grace” gala on Sept. 15.
This year’s event featured past and present Miss Chinatown USA beauty queens. Since 1958, the modern-day pageant, traditionally held during the Lunar New Year, has brought goodwill and tourism to the San Francisco Chinatown community, while the contestants have served as ambassadors of Chinese American heritage.The regal sophisticates holding court at the event included: June Gong, 1958; Marion Lee, 1970; Linda Shen Lei, 1971; Sandi Wong, 1973; Rose Chung, 1981; Carol Chen, 2005; and Betty Hsu, 2007. Cynthia Gouw, Miss Chinatown 1984, served as mistress of ceremonies. Gouw went on to become an actress, model and Emmy Award-winning journalist who reported locally for KPIX-TV.
Each beauty queen has contributed in advancing the civil rights of Chinese Americans, using their crown and title as a community voice. “I hope that in reforming immigration policy, lawmakers will learn from the inequities of the past,” said Gouw. Gong added that the challenges and struggles Chinese Americans continue to face make the community stronger and “better, not bitter.”
Pianist Jon Jang performed original pieces for the evening, accompanying images of Chinese American civil rights struggles displayed on a screen. Guests were also treated to a heartwarming music and video tribute to architect Philip Choy, known as a grand historian of Chinese American history.
Founded in 1963, the historical society is one of the oldest and largest organizations in the country dedicated to the documentation, study, and presentation of Chinese American history and culture.
It operates a museum and learning center in the landmark Julia Morgan-designed Chinatown YWCA building that highlights the legacy of Chinese Americans through exhibitions, publications, and educational and public programming. Proceeds from the gala help fund these endeavors.
A prominent highlight of the historical society’s work this year is the landmark traveling exhibit and program, Remembering 1882: Fighting for Civil Rights in the Shadow of the Chinese Exclusion Act, that opened in May in the Northern California District Court to commemorate the 125th anniversary of the Exclusion Act. Remembering 1882 explores the historical debate around the Exclusion Act’s origins through its full repeal in 1968, and the civil rights struggles of Chinese Americans and their allies.
As part of efforts to eliminate people of Chinese descent from the state, California’s Governor George Perkins proclaimed “the 4th day of March 1882 a legal holiday, that it may be made the occasion for one universal demonstration, conveying to Congress and to our Eastern brethren the deep interest which inspires us to check this evil and stop this curse.”
Chinese Californians and their allies fought the unjust and unconstitutional Exclusion Act through legal and political challenges. While it would only be fully repealed in 1968, the 1943 partial repeal that reinstated the right of naturalization to persons of Chinese descent forms, in historian Connie Young Yu’s words, “one of the great victories for the Constitution.”
Helen Kim, a Los Angeles attorney and president-elect of the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association, has secured the traveling Exclusion Act exhibit for the Association’s annual convention in November in Las Vegas. Kim believes that the issues are particularly salient now and are ones to be noted among APAs in the law. “Given the current immigration debate — and the 125th anniversary of the 1882 Exclusion Act — it is particularly timely now to remember and honor those who fought against exclusion, while upholding democracy for Chinese and other disenfranchised communities,” said Kim. “The argument that the Exclusion Act was necessary to preserve jobs for the laboring and middle class are arguments we hear in today’s immigration debate.”
The National Asian Pacific American Bar Association is now fighting those who would restore the history of racial and immigration discrimination, says Tsiwen Law, chair of the group’s Civil Rights Committee.
“Remembering 1882 is an opportunity for us to renew our vigilance about government abuse of the law,” said Law.
Julie D. Soo is a former CHSA board member. For more information on CHSA, go to www.chsa.org or call (415) 391-1188.
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