Legendary Asian American actor Anna May Wong will be among a group of women with a new U.S. quarter designed in her honor, reports NPR.
Wong will be included in the new American Women Quarters Program to celebrate the achievement of women.
The actress overcame discrimination in Hollywood beginning in the 1920s. Despite being at first relegated to bit roles, she emerged as a star and went from silent films to talkies, according to Biography.
She moved to Europe in order to get better parts, but later returned to the United States. There she appeared in Broadway in the play On the Spot before signing with Paramount Studios and appearing in Daughter of the Dragon and Shanghai Express. Despite her rising stardom, she was still at times cast in stereotypical roles.
Wong is considered the first Chinese American movie star in Hollywood
Other notable women to be included on the quarter are poet Maya Angelou, Wilma Mankiller, the Cherokee Nation’s first female principal chief, suffrage leader Adelina Otero-Warren, and Sally Ride, first U.S. women astronaut in space.
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