In 1982, an Asian life didn’t matter.
June 23, 1982: Vincent Chin, a Chinese American, was beaten to death by two men who blamed the Japanese for Detroit’s auto job losses.
Vincent Chin was 27 years old. He was about to get married. The bachelor party was going well.
That night in Detroit, two white autoworkers — Ronald Ebens and his stepson Michael Nitz — started a fight with Vincent outside a strip club. They blamed him for the loss of American jobs in the auto industry. “It’s because of you little motherf***ers that we’re out of work,” one of them reportedly shouted.
Vincent was Chinese American. But they didn’t see any difference.
They tracked him down after the initial fight and beat him with a baseball bat. Cracked his head open. He died in the hospital four days later — never waking up. Chin was pronounced brain dead. His wedding would have had 400 guests. It became a funeral instead.
The two men who took Vincent’s life were convicted of manslaughter instead of murder, and was “sentenced” to three years’ probation and a $3,000 fine. There was no jail time.
The judge, Charles Kaufman, said: “These aren’t the kind of men you send to jail.”
One of them, Ebens, was later retried in federal court for violating Vincent Chin’s civil rights and sentenced to 25 years in jail — but the conviction was overturned on appeal. He was never retried since.
Ebens still hasn’t paid the full $1.5 million amount he owes from the civil case that followed. He lives freely, while the interest on the judgment continues to grow.
But Vincent’s mother refused to stay silent.
Instead of mourning in private, Lily Chin turned her grief into activism. She went on national television. She spoke at rallies. She told the world what happened to her son — and why it couldn’t happen again. Her courage galvanized a new movement.
A coalition formed — not just of Chinese Americans, but Asian Americans of all ethnicities, and beyond. For the first time, there was a pan-Asian, grassroots civil rights movement in the United States. They called it the American Citizens for Justice (ACJ) — and it brought together communities who had long been isolated from each other. Filipino, Korean, South Asian, Japanese, Vietnamese, Cambodian, and more.
For the first time, there was a unified voice: Asian Americans matter. Our rights matter. Vincent Chin’s life mattered.
Vincent Chin’s last words as he was beaten to death were, “It’s not fair.” Indeed, it wasn’t, and neither was what followed.
Don’t stop saying his name. Demand justice. Never forget. Until all lives really do matter.