[WEBCAST] The First Chinese American: In conversation with Scott D. Seligman
VIEW EVENT DETAILSAsian Pacific Book Series
Free Admission
Chinese in America endured abuse and discrimination in the late nineteenth century, but they had a leader and a fighter in Wong Chin Foo (王清福, 1847–1898), whose story is a forgotten chapter in the struggle for equal rights in America. The first to use the term “Chinese American,” Wong defended his compatriots against malicious scapegoating and urged them to become Americanized to win their rights.
A trailblazer and a born showman who proclaimed himself China’s first Confucian missionary to the United States, he founded America’s first association of Chinese voters and testified before Congress to get laws that denied them citizenship repealed. Wong challenged Americans to live up to the principles they freely espoused but failed to apply to the Chinese in their midst.
In the Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, we hear from the author, Scott D. Seligman, about this evocative biography, which is the first book-length account of the life and times of one of America’s most famous Chinese—and one of its earliest campaigners for racial equality.
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Scott D. Seligman is an award-winning writer, a historian, a former corporate executive and career “China hand.” He holds an undergraduate degree in history and American civilization from Princeton University and a master’s degree from Harvard University. Fluent in Mandarin, he lived and worked in Taiwan, Hong Kong and China for eight years and reads and writes Chinese. He is the author of The Third Degree: The Triple Murder that Shook Washington and Changed American Criminal Justice, Tong Wars: The Untold Story of Vice, Money and Murder in New York's Chinatown and Chinese Business Etiquette, among other titles. He lives in Washington, DC.