Alice Fong Yu

Alice Fong Yu (Chinese: 尤方玉屏; 2 March 1905 – 19 December 2000) was an American schoolteacher and community organizer. The first Chinese American to teach at a public school, she was a founding member and first president of the Square and Circle Club (方圓社), and was a prominent leader in the San Francisco Chinatown community.

Biography

Early life Alice Fong Yu was born Alice Fong in the small gold-mining town of Washington in Nevada County, California. Her Chinese name was Fong Yu P'ing, a variation of which she used as a pen name later in life. She was born on March 2, 1905, to Lonnie Tom and Fong Chow (Suey Chang). While in Washington, Fong Chow was superintendent of a leased gold mine and also ran a general store for Chinese miners.

Fong Yu was the second of ten children, seven of which were also born in Washington. The youngest three were born after the family moved to Vallejo. The family's eldest child was a son named Theodore, and Fong Yu's younger siblings were Minnie, who often went by Mickey, Taft, Helen, Albert, Marian, Leslie, Martha and Lorraine. All six Fong sisters graduated from college and four of the sisters, including Alice Fong Yu, were the first Chinese American women to enter their chosen professional fields. Of these women, Alice Fong Yu became the first Chinese American public school teacher and her sisters Mickey, Marian and Martha Fong became the first Chinese American public health nurse, dental hygienist and nursery school teacher respectively.

Identity as Chinese American and Christian Alice Fong Yu became familiar with anti-Chinese racial discrimination at a young age. In interviews, Fong Yu has recalled being taunted and shunned by white students as a child in Washington. Of the experience she has said:

The Fong siblings found comfort in the words of their parents and in the acceptance of local Christian communities. The Fong parents encouraged their children to take pride in their Chinese heritage, calling their children's tormentors “barbarians” whose taunts shouldn't be allowed to bother them.

Marriage and family On December 22, 1940, in Tucson, Arizona, Alice Fong Yu married Jon Yong Chang Yu, a writer and journalist who wrote editorials for the Young China newspaper. The couple met through the Chinese War Relief Association, where Fong Yu served as the Square and Circle Club's representative and Yu served as the organization's secretary and news release writer. They had two sons, Alon and Joal. Jon Yong Chang Yu died of a sudden illness in 1966, while the couple was on a trip to Asia to visit members of Jon's family that he had not been able to see in decades.

Career as an Educator

After graduating from high school in 1923, Alice Fong Yu moved to San Francisco to attend the San Francisco State Teachers College. When she had applied in 1922, she was personally introduced the president of the college, Dr. Frederic Lister Burk. This introduction was made by the head of the local Red Cross, whom she had worked with and impressed with her fundraising work for the YWCA Girls Reserve. This convinced Dr. Burk to admit Fong Yu to the program, and she graduated in 1926.

Commodore Stockton Elementary School Alice Fong Yu never moved to China to teach, and instead was hired directly after her graduation by Commodore Stockton Elementary School (formerly known as the Oriental Public School). Commodore Stockton was the required primary school for Chinese children in San Francisco at the time.

Fong Yu continued to experience discrimination throughout her time at Commodore Stockton. While she was hired as a schoolteacher, she was often required to serve in many different administrative and non-classroom roles. Her ability to speak Chinese, unlike the rest of the school staff, led her to be asked to fulfill almost all the duties that are required to run school, including those of an assistant principal, a translator, councilor, a nurse and a social worker. Despite 31 years of teaching experience, Fong Yu was never promoted and only received the salary of a normal teacher.

During her time at Commodore Stockton, Fong Yu worked to help her students navigate the bi-cultural experience of being Chinese American as her family had done for her. In a 1926 article by the San Francisco Examiner, Fong Yu explained that she believed that "'the Chinese boy or girl who wants to make a good American citizen cannot be one unless he retains the fineness and restraint of his own race," something that she "'[tried] to make plain to all the girls and boys I teach". Chinese Needlework Guild, the YWCA, and the Lake Tahoe Christian Conference. She also contributed to the Chinese Digest, a progressive Chinese language newspaper founded in 1935.

By the time Fong Yu was in her early 30s, she had already developed a reputation as a community organizer who was ready and willing to take on whatever project San Francisco Chinatown had a need for. Later in life, Fong Yu recalled that "'being so useful in the community, they put me in everything,'" and that "'[she] was always the superintendent wherever [she] went'". Fong Yu served as the club's first president.

The immediate impetus behind the club's creation was to raise money for flood and famine victims in China. However, the founding members had long spoke about ways to better their community and perform public service, and also organized the club to serve these more long-term objectives. Of the club and its founding goals, Fong Yu has said that at the time, "so much community service had to be done, and nobody was doing it... We felt that we could bring women together and use our talents, our energy, and be more loving and caring in doing things for the community"".

Fong Yu advocated for the women of the Square and Circle Club to be allowed to perform community service work that was previously the domain of Chinatown men's organizations. Regarding the organizations' first benefit dance organized to fundraise for Chinese Flood and Famine Relief, Fong Yu was quoted by a local newspaper as saying, "Usually the Chinese Chamber of Commerce or the Six Companies are in charge of these charitable and public affairs... But we wanted to help, too. American girls can do these things. Why shouldn't we?'" In this way, Fong Yu was a vital part in starting the Square and Circle Club's tradition of community service, leadership, sisterhood and pride that has impacted several generations of Chinese and Asian American women.

Journalism and Writing Alice Fong Yu was a prolific journalist, writing many opinion and lifestyle articles that spoke on many political, social, and day-to-day issues of her time. Some of her earlier writing was published in the Chinese Christian Student, which was the official newspaper of the Chinese Christian Student Organization (CSCA) . However, it wasn't until 1937 that she began writing her own regular column for the Chinese Digest aimed at Chinese American women entitled the "Jade Box”. For this column, she wrote under the pen name “Lady P’ing” and later “Lady P’ing Yu” after her marriage. This was a reference to her Chinese name, Fong Yu P’ing, though she used different Chinese characters in her pen name.

Fong Yu often used the “Jade Box” as an extension of the community activism and advocacy she performed in other part of her life. For example, when the Square and Circle Club was rejected from the Federation of Women's Clubs on racial grounds, Fong Yu wrote about this act of discrimination in her column, connecting it to the larger phenomenon of anti- Chinese racism. Finally, with the onset of the Second Sino-Japanese War and the later entrance of the United States into WWII, Fong Yu often wrote in support of strikes, fundraisers, and anti-Japanese boycotts that she was involved in through organizations like the Square and Circle Club and the Chinese War Relief Association.

Under her leadership, the Square and Circle Club was the major player in the “Non-Silk Movement”, a nationwide boycott of Japanese silk stockings. During this time, the “Jade Box” praised Chinatown merchants who “submitted to the coercion of group conscience and have openly stopped their trade with the Japanese” and admonished women who did not join the “Non- Silk Movement”. In response to a letter written to the column criticizing Chinese American women who did not support the boycott, the column agreed and openly criticized women who “weep openly and sicken over the ghastly reports on the rape of Chinese women by Japanese soldiers, and yet feel no shame to have their money go to support these soldiers on Chinese soil by continuing to buy Japan[ese] silk.” She was of the opinion that women knew better than men about the horrors of war. This was because she felt women in wartime experienced the “piecemeal” and heart-wrenching deaths of their sons and loved ones over time, while men are often sold the myth of the glorious sacrifice of war. In her mind, “war was neither right nor reasonable”

Chinese Needlework Guild While she was teaching at Commodore Stockton Elementary School, Alice Fong Yu worked to help her students' families if they were in need. One way she accomplish this was by establishing the Chinese chapter of the Needlework Guild. This group was started partially because many of her students' parents could not speak English well enough to participate in the Commodore Stockton PTA. In response to this issue, Fong Yu started her chapter of the Needlework Guild to serve as an alternative PTA. This group provided shoes and clothes to children in Chinatown, as well as provided a space for Chinese mothers to sew for their own children. In her role as the YWCA's first house mother, Fong Yu ran a Friday breakfast club and started a Bible class for Sunday School teachers.

Yu's legacy

In 1996 San Francisco's Chinese immersion school was named Alice Fong Yu Alternative School in Yu's honor.

At the San Francisco Jazz Festival in October 2007, composer and jazz pianist Jon Jang performed the world premiere of "Unbound Chinatown: A Musical Tribute to Alice Fong Yu.” Jang called the piece a "musical portrait" of Yu's experience as an activist in the late-1930s.