On June 19, 1982, Vincent Chin was killed by Ronald Ebens and his stepson Michael Nitz. Chin was a twenty-seven year old Chinese adoptee from Detroit, Michigan, whose father was a World War II veteran and mother a war bride. Chin was celebrating his upcoming wedding at a strip bar called Fancy Pants the night he crossed paths with Ebens and Nitz.

Chin got in a physical altercation with Ebens, an unemployed autoworker who was overheard saying, “It’s because of you motherfucker that we’re out of work.” Ebens mistook Chin for Japanese. The men were thrown out of the bar and the fight broke up. Later on, Ebens and Nitz stalked Chin to a McDonalds, where Ebens beat Chin over the head with a baseball bat. Chin uttered the words “It’s not fair,” before slipping a comma from which he never woke. Chin died of his injuries four days later on June 23, 1982.

For their crimes, Ebens and Nitz received lenient sentences and never served a day in prison. In the state criminal case, Judge Charles Kaufman convicted them of second degree manslaughter—which carried maximum sentences of fifteen years—but gave them each three years of probation and a $3,000 fine.

Across the nation, people of Asian descent responded in anger to Judge Kaufman’s light sentencing of Ebens and Nitz. Spearheaded by journalist Helen Zia, lawyer Liza Chan, and Lily Chin, participants founded the American Citizens for Justice. They held rallies in Detroit, Los Angeles, and San Francisco to campaign for federal prosecution of Ebens and Nitz, which resulted in the civil rights trial.

Subsequently, both men were tried for federal civil rights crimes, for which Nitz and Ebens were eventually both acquitted. A civil suit was brought against them and settled out of court. To compensate Lily Chin, Vincent Chin’s mother, for her son’s lost wages, Nitz agreed to pay $50,000 and Ebens $1.5 million. Ebens, now seventy-four, lives a free and anonymous life in Nevada and never paid his financial debt to Lily Chin, who passed away in 2002.

Although the movement failed to bring Ebens and Nitz to justice, it mobilized people of Asian descent for the first time as “Asian American.” While the population had grown rapidly since reform of U.S. immigration laws in 1965, it was divided by language, cultural, religious, and socio-economic differences. The killing of Vincent Chin compelled Asians of all backgrounds to recognize the dangers of “looking the same” like no other event. Despite their diversity, people of Asian descent share the experience of otherness.