A Chinese-American family is paying back the kindness they received decades ago.
The Dong family shared with NBC News that they will donate $5 million to black students across the U.S. — a donation that will be funded by the sale of their home in Coronado, California, which they say they got in 1939 thanks to a black entrepreneurial couple in town.
The family told the magazine that when they first moved to Coronado, they were unable to rent properties due to racially restrictive housing laws at the time. However, Emma and Gus Thompson took a chance on the family and let them rent the property, which they eventually bought.
“Without them, we wouldn’t have the education and everything,” Lloyd Dong Jr. said. for NBC News.
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The Dong family was able to flourish in the US over the next few decades, and now they want to give some money back to the black community. “It might allow some kids to go and thrive in college that otherwise wouldn’t be able to,” Janice Dong, 86, said of the donation.
Her husband, Ron Dong, 86, added: “It’s exactly what’s appropriate.”
They also plan to go a step further in honoring the Thompsons by working to have the University of San Diego’s Black Resource Center named after the couple who gave them an opportunity in California.
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Gus Thompson traveled from Kentucky to California to work at the Del Coronado Hotel in the 1800s. In 1895, he built a house and barn along Avenue C before the city’s racial housing contracts were in place, Coronado historian Kevin Ashley told NBC. After the laws changed, he eventually allowed minorities and immigrants to stay in the boarding house on the upper level of the barn.
Brothers Lloyd Jr. and Ron Dong shared with NBC News that their father, Lloyd Dong Sr., moved to Coronado to become a gardener after working as a farmer in the Central Valley. However, their choice of places to stay was limited and they ended up at Gus Thompson’s boarding house.
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In 1955, Emma Thompson sold a Coronado house and barn to the Dong family, making them the first Chinese Americans to buy real estate in the city, Ashley told NBC.
The family eventually converted the barn into an apartment complex and moved out of the city to different parts of California. They managed the properties from afar for decades before deciding it was time to sell as they became increasingly difficult to maintain.
“It’s about time,” Janice said of the decision to sell. “We want to give back.”
Categories: Trends
Source: HIS Education