ABOUT THE PROJECT

LOGLINE
American Gilded Age activist Wong Chin Foo—a then-famous speaker and prolific writer in the mainstream press—champions citizenship and equality as anti-Asian bigotry culminates in the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, and forges a path for today’s Asian Americans to claim their rightful place in a “more perfect union” and reclaim whitewashed history.

SYNOPSIS
This is the world’s first comprehensive documentary on the life of Wong Chin Foo, a famous American Gilded Age journalist, speaker, and forerunner of Martin Luther King Jr., who is being rediscovered at a critical point in United States history. After Wong falls from childhood privilege to poverty in China, he moves to America, where he becomes naturalized and wields pen and pulpit to defy racists seeking to banish Chinese from the United States. The film draws parallels between the issues in Wong’s day with today’s anti-Asian harassment and U.S.-China tensions.

Wong Chin Foo’s words and activism are especially poignant today as America wrestles with growing xenophobia and anti-Asian harassment. The film helps to reclaim whitewashed American history and empower under-represented minorities by presenting a forgotten Asian-American pioneer who dared to dream and fight for equal rights and challenge the status quo with the charisma and eloquence of a Southern Baptist preacher. It helps to establish Wong’s rightful place in the American consciousness.

In response to the alarming escalation in xenophobia and bigotry resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, AAPI Equity Alliance (AAPI Equity), Chinese for Affirmative Action (CAA), and the Asian American Studies Department of San Francisco State University launched the Stop AAPI Hate coalition on March 19, 2020. The coalition tracks and responds to incidents of hate, violence, harassment, discrimination, shunning, and child bullying against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in the United States. Following overwhelming support from both chambers of Congress, President Biden signed legislation that addresses hate crimes throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, with particular emphasis on the increase in violence against Asian Americans.

PROJECT TYPE Documentary Feature

DIRECTOR Douglas Ross
SCREENWRITER Richard Chang
PRODUCER Douglas Ross, Richard Chang

WEBSITE citizenwong.org

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