Edmond J. Gong

Edmond Joseph Gong (October 7, 1930 – May 19, 2015) was an American attorney and politician in the state of Florida. He was the first Asian American elected to the Florida House of Representatives.

Gong was born in Miami to Chinese immigrant parents, who worked as grocers ultimately creating a chain of mom-and-pop grocery stores in the Overtown section of Miami. An attorney, he was an alumnus of Harvard University and the University of Miami School of Law. As a member of the Democratic party he was elected to the Florida House of Representatives from 1963 to 1966 and was elected to the State Senate in 1966 and served until 1972.

Early life and family

In 1915, at the age of 15, Gong's father immigrated to the U.S. going to Tifton, Georgia to work in his father's laundry. He returned to China to marry in 1925. Gong stated, "as Daddy used to say, the soil was getting pretty barren and not so productive, and they all wanted to come to the 'golden mountain' that was the name for America. " Gong's father was politically conscious and voted in every election. It was this spirit and his father's encouragement that led Eddie and his four sisters to be politically active in high school. At Miami High School, Gong was elected president of the student body. In 1947 he was elected to Boys State and in the same year became president of Boys Nation.

Gong won a scholarship to Harvard University from the Harvard Club of Miami and graduated cum laude in political science in 1952. in 1960. Eddie said of his father, "he believed in education because he didn't have one

He 1971 served as Associate Director of the Institute of Politics at John Fitzgerald Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.

In describing a summary of his political life, he said," That's what American does. I mean, here we had the grocery store in the black ghetto--that's what you would call it," he said. " It could only happen in America. My father, my grandfather, all had to come half way around the globe for us to have a chance because we wouldn't have had this chance. We'd have been working in the rice paddies in China.