Immigration attorney Bonnie Youn of Atlanta comes from a history of fighting for justice and civil rights.
The Korean American recalls in the 1960s when a family friend, Chinese American Jack Shaw, fought to integrate a competition that wouldn’t allow his black judo players to compete. According to the Epoch Times, Shaw worked with Martin Luther King’s Ebenezer Baptist Church to end segregation.
Today Youn is an immigration attorney and was recently awarded the 2013 Cesar Chavez Champions of Change Award from the White House.
“America has strengths unlike any other country,” Youn said. ““We have the freedom to vocalize in a public, peaceful setting. We have that setting in a stable democracy.”
From the Japanese American Citizens League co-sponsoring the 1963 March on Washington, to the leadership of Filipino Americans Philip Vera Cruz and Larry Itliong in the Delano Grape Strike with the United Farm Workers in 1964, to the Asian American’s community’s role in winning equal right for students in public school who may not speak English as a first language (Lau v Nichols, 1974), Asian Americans have been an important part of the civil rights movement.
Yet that involvement has largely been under the radar of the mainstream media.
Martin Luther King’s dream is still alive today in the Asian American community. You can read about that in the Epoch Times.