California Supreme Court Grants Law License to Hong Yen Chang, Denied License in 1890
The California Supreme Court on this day reversed a 125-year old wrong by granting a law license to Hong Yen Chang, who had been denied a license in 1890 simply because he was a Japanese-American.
The Court acknowledged that the denial of his license was a “sordid chapter” in California history. Chang never practices law, but had a successful career as a banker. He died in Berkeley, California, in 1926. Faculty and students at the University of California at Davis Law School took up his case in 2011, and fought for the posthumous granting of the law license.
The most notorious mistreatment of Japanese-Americans in the U.S. was the evacuation and internment of Japanese-Americans on the west coast during World War II. The program was authorized by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in Executive Order 9066, which he signed on February 19, 1942.
Learn more about the Hong Yen Chang case here.
Learn more about the Japanese American evacuation and internment: Peter Irons, Justice at War: The Story of the Japanese-American Internment Cases (1983)
Read: Greg Robinson, By Order of the President: FDR and the Internment of Japanese Americans (2001)
View Dorothea Lange’s Internment Camp Photographs:
http://www.sfmuseum.org/hist/lange.html