The late 1960s and early 1970s were a turning point for many Chinatowns across the country. The 1965 immigration law brought a new generation of immigrants, while the generation that had survived decades of workplace exclusion, housing segregation and overt racism, still needed housing, jobs and social services.
Federal funds were available for much-needed urban upgrades, but questions remained as to how changes could be done while preserving community character, promoting the local economy, and meeting the needs of both rich and poor community members.
Today, the National Coalition for APA Community Development serves as a national umbrella group for development in APA communities, but there was no such resource 40 years ago.
In the 1960s, a Chinese farmer’s son named Kumshui Stephen Law owned a variety store on Bowery Street near Division Street in New York’s Chinatown.
From his store on the west side of the street, he looked across Bowery to a trash-filled lot that was an eyesore for residents of Chinatown and Little Italy. Rather than simply lamenting his fate, he had the vision to turn this urban blight into an urban dream. Because he lived in a Model Cities housing project in upper Manhattan, he had the audacity to ask why the same thing could not be built in Chinatown.
Turning that dream into a reality was no easy task. After talking to his customers and writing editorials in the local Chinese-language papers, he organized a community-based development group to build a 760-unit, mixed-use high-rise in place of the eyesore.
He and the development group needed 10 years to raise money and gather support from the community, but eventually the Confucius Plaza development was completed.
Today, the 44-story Confucius Plaza tower is still the tallest building in New York’s Chinatown. The 760 families who would have moved to Queens, Brooklyn and New Jersey are instead a source of commerce for the local Chinatown economy. The elementary school and medical center on the lower floors of the Plaza continue to thrive, as do the pharmacy and other businesses on the Bowery side of the building.
Without the vision and determination of Law and the others who brought Confucius Plaza into reality, this almost certainly would not be the case.
One unintended consequence of Kumshui’s activism was that his son, Tsiwen, has also become an outstanding public servant.
After years of watching preparations for the Plaza, Tsiwen participated in the Third World Strike at the University of California at Berkeley in 1969, which led to the rise of the Asian American studies program and department of ethnic studies, and immediately embraced the ethos of community service at its core.
Tsiwen went on to get J.D. and M.P.H. degrees, and has taught APA courses at Berkeley, Michigan, the University of Pennsylvania and Temple University. He also helped to found the National APA Bar Association and serves as a partner in the law firm of Law and Zaslow.
In fall of 1988, Philadelphia Mayor Wilson Goode responded to years of demands for representation by the local APA community by creating the Mayor’s Commission on Asian American Affairs. Tsiwen, who had remained in Philly after law school at the University of Pennsylvania, was elected as one of the 13 board members. He subsequently served as chair for three years.
Once his service was completed, the Balch Institute and Historical Society of Pennsylvania established a collection of Tsiwen’s materials to document this important stage in the political maturation of Philadelphia’s APA community.
Not content to rest on his laurels, Tsiwen decided to run for a school board seat in the Philadelphia suburb of Radnor Township, where he now lives, and his years of community service have garnered him the support and endorsements he deserves.
Meanwhile, after spending so many years and so much energy to overcome language barriers, cultural barriers, and the opposition of both City Hall and the entrenched old guard in Chinatown, Kumshui Stephen Law chose to return to his job as a shopkeeper and not seek a life of executive positions, titles, fame and awards.
When he died in 2005, the only reminders of his pivotal role in New York’s Chinatown were a line on a plaque bolted to a column outside the Confucius Plaza entrance and a son and community he had inspired to carry on.