There are more than 22 million people of Asian descent living in the United States now, and at least another 1.5 million people who identify as Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander. The chance to celebrate their heritage and culture, though, started with one family of immigrants a handful of decades ago. The celebration was first proposed by Jeanie Jew, a second-generation Chinese American who worked on Capitol Hill in the 1970s (via NPR).
One day Jew brought up the idea of a week in honor of her culture to U.S. Rep. Frank Horton. Jew proposed the idea in part because of the discrimination and difficulties her own family had faced. According to NPR, her great grandfather, M.Y. Lee, was killed during a period where racism against Asian Americans was rampant.
It took about 15 years from when Jew first voiced the idea for it to be passed into law as an annual celebration, according to Time. The process wasn’t without its difficulties, either. Time reports the first legislation was passed in 1978 — but the legislation wouldn’t renew automatically, so the community had to push for the same celebration to happen again each year. It was expanded into a month-long celebration in 1990, but the recurring “annual” designation wasn’t added until 1992 (via Time).
