Remembering the past
But advocates in San Francisco are working to ensure Wong’s memory is never forgotten again.
In San Francisco’s Chinatown — the oldest of its kind in the US — organisers recently unveiled a mural depicting Wong beneath the slogan, “I am an American.” It is painted on the site where he was born, at 751 Sacramento Street.
A few blocks away, a bust of Wong is set to be installed at the Nam Kue Chinese School, which teaches children about Chinese culture.
Vincent Pan, the co-executive director of the San Francisco nonprofit Chinese for Affirmative Action, is among those who opposed Trump’s birthright citizenship order.
Born to immigrant parents, he considers himself among those who benefitted from Wong’s Supreme Court case.
“It’s easy to distance ourselves when we think it’s just pages in a history book,” said Pan.
Community projects like the mural and the statue, he added, can help keep Wong’s legacy alive.
“It’s an important check on ourselves when we start to believe that these names are abstractions,” Pan said. “The individuals who compose our history are and were real-life human beings.”
Sandra and her brother Norman Wong, another one of Wong’s great-grandchildren, have also stepped forward as spokespeople.
Sandra describes herself as a private person, inclined to shy away from cameras. But last week, at the mural’s unveiling, she stood in front of journalists in Chinatown to celebrate her great-grandfather and the community that rallied around him.
“You do need to come together and fight for rights,” Sandra said. “They did back then because, being [a] simple, regular guy — it wouldn’t have happened on his own.”
Growing up, she remembers relating more to her mother’s Japanese American history than her father’s Chinese roots. Her father was more distant.
“I feel a bit of a disconnect because my father wasn’t around, so we weren’t immersed in Chinese culture,” Sandra explained.
Still, she remembers walking through Chinatown with her dad not long before he died, thinking, “You know, gosh, I wish I had more of a connection to San Francisco and to all of this.”
“Little did I know, a few years later,” she said, “what it would evolve into.”