In 1939 Coronado, Gus and Emma Thompson rented to Lloyd Dong Sr. and Margaret Dong, when nobody else would. Decades later, the Dong's children are donating $5 million to serve Black college students at SDSU.
S1: It's time for Midday Edition on Kpbs. Today we're talking about a multimillion dollar gift and the story of Cross-racial solidarity behind it. I'm Jade Hindman. Here's to conversations that keep you informed and inspired and make you think. A Chinese American family , gives a multimillion dollar donation to honor the African American family who helped them achieve the American Dream.
S1: Joining me now to unpack the story is local historian Kevin Ashley. Kevin , thanks so much for being here.S2: I came across a newspaper article , um , that mentioned this group of African Americans that came to Coronado in 1886 from Henderson , Kentucky , and Gus Thompson was one of those. So from there , I , I , I just went further into his life and his marriage to Emma and all the great things that happened after.S2: Gus was born in 1859 , in Kentucky , into slavery.
S1: You're listening to Kpbs Midday Edition. Welcome back to Kpbs Midday Edition. I'm Jade Hindman. We continue our conversation about the story of a Chinese American family paying back a decades old gesture. The Thompsons , an African American family rented to Lloyd Dong senior and Margaret Dong in 1939 despite anti-Asian housing laws at the time. Now , the Dong's children are donating $5 million to San Diego State University's Black Resource Center.
S6: Citizens of , you know , the United States , but particular citizens of Sdsu and paying it forward. So in our classes , particularly our Henrietta Goodwin Scholars program , we have classes for entering students in second year students. And if you're not familiar with Henrietta Goodwin , but she is the first black person to graduate from San Diego State. An interesting tidbit about her story is that she came to Sdsu with her sister.
S6: So I'm just very , very proud of Sdsu. I'm proud of our staff , our student staff. I always wanted to give them a shout out and proud of our supervisor , Doctor Tanika Green , who's our associate Vice president. And one of the things that we've been able to do is create a welcoming environment. How do we create a welcoming environment where we really take into account where students are coming from ? So some of it is is somewhat science.
S6: There are people out here who want to support you , who want to connect with you , want to see you do well , and that idea of paying it forward to make sure that you have access to land , that you have access to health care , that you have access to the basic things that people need to live a high quality life. That's a big part of San Diego. We share such beautiful landscape together. We might as well share a beautiful life together.S5: Right.
S8: James and Grace Lee Boggs were well known community organizers in Detroit , Michigan. Uh , Grace had a PhD in philosophy , which is extremely rare for a Chinese American woman to obtain in 1940. But because of race and gender discrimination , she never worked at all , uh , at a university.
S8: We I learned only , you know , minimal , superficial things about black history a little bit about slavery , a little bit about , you know , Martin Luther King. Um , but we learn history largely through , you know , famous people and icons and we don't really understand , you know , the depths of people's experiences. Right.
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