Press Release - Exhibition of Y.C. Hong Archive Materials to Go on View at The Huntington This Fall

“Y.C. Hong: Advocate for Chinese-American Inclusion” will tell the story of the prominent Los Angeles immigration attorney and civic leader during the period of the Chinese Exclusion Act

On view Nov. 21, 2015 - March 21, 2016
Library, West Hall

SAN MARINO, Calif.— A new exhibition at The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens examining Chinese-American immigration in early 20th-century Los Angeles goes on view this fall in the Library, West Hall. The name You Chung (“Y.C.”) Hong (1898–1977) still elicits respect and pride among longtime residents of Los Angeles’ Chinatown. As one of the first Chinese Americans to pass the California Bar, Y.C. Hong was a major figure in the Los Angeles Chinese community during the period of the Chinese Exclusion Act and beyond. He was one of the founding members of the “new” Chinatown in Los Angeles, a prominent immigration lawyer, an authority on U.S. immigration laws, and an active proponent of equal rights for Chinese Americans, lobbying and befriending U.S. senators and California governors to fight for Chinese inclusion. The exhibition “Y.C. Hong: Advocate for Chinese-American Inclusion” will be on view Nov. 21, 2015 to March 21, 2016.

Drawn from The Huntington’s You Chung Hong Family Papers, acquired in 2006, this exhibition is the first opportunity for the public to get a deeper sense of the life of this extraordinary figure in Chinese-American history through some 75 items, including historical documents, correspondence, photographs, maps, and ledgers.

The Chinese Exclusion Act, a federal law in effect from 1882 to 1943, prohibited the immigration of Chinese laborers to the United States. Regarded as one of the leading authorities on Chinese immigration, Y.C Hong gave testimony in Washington, D. C., on several occasions at congressional and presidential commission hearings. “During his lifetime, he facilitated and worked on at least 7,000 immigration cases,” said Li Wei Yang, curator of Western American History at The Huntington and curator of the exhibition. “This exhibition will give visitors a rare and comprehensive view of the life and career of a legendary lawyer who advocated relentlessly on behalf of Chinese Americans striving to achieve the American dream.”

Divided into six sections, the exhibition will provide visitors with insight into the early history of the Chinese experience in California, in part through photographs of Chinese gold miners and railroad laborers; it will cover Hong’s early years in San Francisco, where he was born and educated up though high school; it then segues into his career as an immigration attorney, through examples of a coaching scroll and village map that some of his clients had to memorize in order to pass the questioning of U.S. immigration officials.