The murder that galvanized Asian American activism

As part of making his documentary, producer Curtis Chin asked about 80 young Asian Americans a simple question: Have you heard of Vincent Chin?

The answers came back:

No.

No.

"Um, from the riot, a long time ago?"

"From Canada?"

No.

The correct answer: Vincent Chin was a 27-year-old Chinese American who in 1982 was beaten to death by two Detroit autoworkers. They thought he was Japanese and, thus, somehow responsible for the job losses that accompanied the decline of the U.S. auto industry.

The crime was notable for its gruesome details: One man held Chin as the other struck him with a baseball bat. And for its heart-wrenching timing: Chin died five days before he was to have been married.

But what compelled Curtis Chin to make the film Vincent Who? was the aftermath. The protests that followed Chin's death sparked the creation of the modern Asian American civil-rights movement.

Until then, different ethnicities had fought solo battles, the Chinese against the exclusion laws, the Japanese against World War II internment. But Chin's killing provoked a pan-Asian response toward larger white society.

"They can't tell the difference between us anyway, right?" said filmmaker Chin, 41 and no relation to Vincent Chin. "Before, it would have been annoying. Now, it could get you murdered. It literally could have been any one of us."

Today at the University of Pennsylvania, Vincent Chin's life, death, and meaning will be discussed at a screening of Vincent Who? It's part of the annual East Coast Asian American Student Union conference, which will bring more than 1,200 students here from across the country.

They'll hear panels and speakers on everything from hate crimes to cooking to health to how Hollywood portrays Asians in movies, according to conference director Carlin Yuen, a Penn engineering student. Much of the three-day event is aimed at raising political awareness and encouraging activism.

A keynote speaker will be Helen Zia, the journalist whose work on the Chin killing helped persuade federal prosecutors to act.

The case echoes here, given Philadelphia's own troubled history with Asian minorities.

In 1990, a 37-year-old Cambodian named Heng Lim was beaten to death in South Philadelphia by a white, club-wielding assailant who called him a racial slur. More recently, on Dec. 3, Asian students at South Philadelphia High School were assaulted by large groups of mostly African American classmates.

Those confrontations and others drew immediate action from Asian Americans United, founded here three years after Chin's death.

"It was such a horrific crime, and it was such blatant racism," said Mary Yee, an AAU founder and Penn doctoral student. "It called up things in Asian American history" - lynchings and beatings of the late 1800s - "that I'd only read about. Now they'd become real in the 20th century."

Curtis Chin slightly knew Vincent Chin when he was growing up in Detroit. Both lived in the same small Chinese community. In fact, Curtis Chin had been invited to the wedding.

He remembers seeing the invitation lying on the kitchen counter after Chin died and thinking how that was one wedding he wouldn't attend.

On June 19, 1982, Vincent Chin joined friends for a bachelor party at the Fancy Pants strip club in Highland Park, Mich.

Ronald Ebens, a Chrysler supervisor, happened to be there with his stepson, Michael Nitz, who had been laid off.

Chin and Ebens got into an argument. A witness heard Ebens say, "It's because of you little [expletive] that we're out of work."

Anti-Japanese sentiment was running high in Michigan, where the car industry was reeling.

The argument escalated into a fight, which was broken up. Chin and his friends left. Ebens and Nitz, testimony showed, searched the neighborhood for Chin for nearly half an hour.

When they found him at a McDonald's, Ebens bashed Chin's leg with a Louisville Slugger. Nitz held the injured man, and Ebens smashed his head with the bat. As Chin lost consciousness, he spoke his last words: "It's not fair."

He died four days later.

Ebens and Nitz, originally charged with second-degree murder, were allowed to plead guilty to a lesser charge of manslaughter. The judge sentenced them to three years' probation and a $3,000 fine.

"These weren't the kind of men you send to jail," Judge Charles Kaufman said then.

The sentence spurred demonstrations from New York to San Francisco. Asian lawyers and advocates demanded that the federal government intervene - and prosecutors charged the two men with violating Chin's civil rights.

Nitz was acquitted in the 1984 trial. Ebens was convicted and sentenced to 25 years in prison. However, on appeal he won a new trial.

Because of publicity, the 1987 retrial was moved to Cincinnati. The jury found Ebens not guilty.

The result did not deliver justice, community advocates say, but it spawned other things: Legal processes changed in Michigan and elsewhere. Social-justice groups formed. People got involved - many would go on to lead their communities.

"When Vincent was killed," said Zia, the journalist, "there was really nothing."

Even the American Civil Liberties Union, the most liberal of legal advocates, was unsure if civil-rights law covered Chin, she said. Though he was a U.S. citizen, he had been born in China, then adopted from an orphanage there.

"There was a lot of conversation about, 'It's too bad, it's a tragedy, but . . . this law wasn't created for Chinese immigrants,' " Zia said. "Civil-rights law has changed because of the Vincent Chin case."

It wasn't until Curtis Chin went home to Michigan three years ago, after the death of his father, that he thought deeply about the case. The more he thought, the more he recognized its importance.

"It's not surprising to me that people would forget about this case," said Chin, who is based in Los Angeles. "Asian Americans and civil rights are not things you think of together. We've got to change that."

The first thing that connects those who see the film is that they haven't heard of the Chin case. The second thing is they're shocked they haven't heard.

"Asian Americans, though," Chin said, "see it and feel like they need to take action."