Paying it forward

history and celebration

Few things are as vital for society as education. We know that investment is now insanely expensive as too many equate the name of a particular institution to the quality of associated learning even no equivalency exists. Education matters while costs are unavoidable.

Evidence of appreciating the importance of learning opportunities appears in Coronado, California, however. It brings together the history of two familie within a community and payback for a kindness from decades ago so Chinese American family could defy all odds as an African American family was already doing.

Americans forget how virulently most communities opposed Chinese immigrants early in the twentieth century. We have rarely welcomed immigrants with open arms, even in the mid-1840s and 50s when industrialisation led to an insatiable need for workers. Irish, German, Italians, Jews, and the successive waves of peoples from various parts of the world repeated the same terrible tale: immigrants’ physical contribution to the economy was most welcome but not the workers themselves or their families.

The Chinese confronted the draconian 1882 Exclusion Act signed by President Chester Arthur during this first term, prohibiting workers for a full decade unless they happened to be teachers, travelers, merchants, diplomats, or students. Cities around the nation further passed zoning laws and subtle unwritten agreements prohibiting landlords from renting to the people considered ‘the Yellow Peril’ from Asia, as racist a moniker as one found. Immigration law was not the only discriminatory set of rules as many communities in the United States, such as Coronado, included covenants preventing Chinese from leasing or owning homes, sending their children to school, and further actions to prevent relocation to these communities.

African Americans have been too familiar racial discrimination for four hundred plus years beginning with the importation of slaves in the seventeenth century. Deciding the colour of one’s skin somehow determined the character of a person was far too familiar for African Americans who similarly lived too often in poverty or extremely deprived conditions across the nation.

In 1939, however, an African American family took to heart the pain and frustration of parallel experiences between minority populations. Gus Thompson, born a slave in Kentucky immediately before the Civil War began, migrated onto Coronado, then an island only accessible by boat across the channel from San Diego. Thompson and his family built a home between 1895 ad 1901 (the latter the date of the deed) against odds themselves in this community. As we know, African Americans were hardly the most common landowners in this community but the work ethic of the post-Civil War era opened a few doors. Thompson marched through one of those doors in his new SoCal life.

In 1939, Gus Thompson’s family rented a portion of their property, the upstairs of a livery stable, to the first generation Americans Lloyd (Senior) and Margaret Dong with two young sons. This radical step was illegal but the Dongs sought to live a shorter distance from Lloyd Dong Sr.’s gardening jobs for the affluent Coronado landowners. The anti-Chinese and overall Anti-Asian sentiments did not welcome them as renters, much less owners, but the Thompsons and Dongs persisted. Despite the covenants, the increasingly prosperous Thompson family rented their home entirely to the Dongs six years later. Eventually, the Thompsons moved to San Diego proper so they sold the home to the Dongs outright. The new owners remodeled, rebuilt and expanded the property, retaining it even after the Dong children (two sisters in addition to the original sons of 1939) departed southern California.

Gus Thompson advanced financially because he worked for E.S. Babcock, founder of the magical Hotel del Coronado of fame along the island’s beach. Thompson’s actions were courageous and arguably landmark as the black history of this island community largely evaporated as the homes became more expensive in Coronado following the Navy’s expansion during the 1940s and beyond.

This is a feel good story of one family helping another, sharing experiences as minorities in an era of overt, legal, and unmitigating discrimination in America. But this is not the crux of paying it forward.

The Dongs recently sold the old Thompson property for between $7 and $8 million, unsurprising in the town. The Dongs announced they are giving the Black Resource Center at San Diego State University $5 million to support African American students struggling with the cost of education.

Talk about paying it forward. Facilitating education to include the aspects of daily life beyond tuition and fees is much more important than it might seem if you haven’t been to school recently. It won’t pay for everyone needing assistance but it is a start. The perfect too often can be the enemy of the good.

Paying it forward based on knowing history, respecting elders, and seeking to strengthen community. Isn’t this what we always bemoan not happening?

Most of us never have $5 million to support others but what paying forward do you do? I welcome some good news.

Thank you for your time on this lovely Sunday. I appreciate you circulating this or any column if you find it of value. I am deeply thankful for the paid subscribers to this column.

It was pretty early on in Annapolis and it remains bright with a few puffy clouds as we end the weekend.

Be well and be safe

Amanda Holpuch, ‘They Helped a Family Facing Discrimination 80 years ago. Now They are Being Celebrated’, NewYorkTimes.com, 14 March 2024, retrieved at https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/14/us/sdsu-college-donation-chinese-immigrants.html?searchResultPosition=1