On this day, June 23, in 1982, Vincent Chin died after he was bludgeoned in Detroit by two auto workers who apparently thought he was Japanese. The murder generated public outrage because of racial overtones, and the killers received no jail time.
At a strip club, Chrysler plant superintendent Ronald Ebens blamed Chin for the loss of American jobs to Japan. Chin was Chinese American.
Ebens and his stepson, Michael Nitz, later saw Chin at a McDonald’s, and beat him with a baseball bat. Chin died at Henry Ford Hospital four days later.
Ebens and Nitz pleaded guilty to manslaughter. The judge later explained, “These weren’t the kind of men you send to jail.”
Chin’s slaying led to an expansion of an Asian-American political movement and a broadening of hate crimes.
-Scott McCabe
