Walter Uriah Lum (, 1882–1961) was a

Chinese American Chinese Americans are Americans of Han Chinese ancestry. Chinese Americans constitute a subgroup of East Asian Americans which also constitute a subgroup of Asian Americans. Many Chinese Americans along with their ancestors trace lineage from ...

leader, newspaper editor, educator and an advocate for Chinese American

civil rights Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from infringement by governments, social organizations, and private individuals. They ensure one's entitlement to participate in the civil and political life of ...

Early life

Lum was born in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

to Lum Guey Yue and Yan Lan, and was the fourth child and only son. In the 1860s, upon receiving stories from his brother Guey Yee about the successful mining ventures in California, Guey Yue, Yan Lan, and Choy Fung (Walter U. Lum's older sister) emigrated to the United States from

Xinhui Xinhui, alternately romanized as Sunwui and also known as Kuixiang, is an urban district of Jiangmen in Guangdong, China. It grew from a separate city founded at the confluence of the Tan and West Rivers. It has a population of about 735,500, ...

in the

Siyi The Siyi (Seiyap or Sze Yup in Cantonese; ) refers to the four former counties of Xinhui (Sunwui), Taishan (Toisan), Kaiping (Hoiping) and Enping (Yanping) on the west side of the Pearl River Delta in Southern Guangdong Province, China. Geogra ...

area of

Guangdong Guangdong (, ), alternatively romanized as Canton or Kwangtung, is a coastal province in South China on the north shore of the South China Sea. The capital of the province is Guangzhou. With a population of 126.01 million (as of 2020) ...

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

. However, rather than mining, the Lum brothers catered to Chinese and Euro-American miners by opening up a grocery store in the Sacramento River area. In 1879, the entire family relocated to San Francisco so the Lum brothers could open another grocery store. By the time Lum was born in 1882, the family had established their roots in the city. When it came time for Lum's formal education, his parents wanted to prevent him from being teased in the American school system due to his Chinese-style clothing and background. Thus, Lum received his education from private tutors; thereby becoming fluent in both Chinese and English.

Career

In 1904, Lum, Joseph Lum (no relation) and Ng Gunn reorganized the Native Sons of the Golden State (renamed the Chinese American Citizens Alliance, CACA, in 1915) to support Chinese American rights and oppose the

Chinese Exclusion Act The Chinese Exclusion Act was a United States federal law signed by President Chester A. Arthur on May 6, 1882, prohibiting all immigration of Chinese laborers for 10 years. The law excluded merchants, teachers, students, travelers, and diplom ...

of 1882, including a boycott in China of American goods. Lum was Grand President of the organization and its governing body the Grand Lodge on different occasions for a total of about twelve years. Around 1912 he joined the staff of Young China, the newspaper of the

Chinese Nationalist Party The Kuomintang (KMT), also referred to as the Guomindang (GMD), the Nationalist Party of China (NPC) or the Chinese Nationalist Party (CNP), is a major political party in the Republic of China, initially on the Chinese mainland and in Ta ...

in the US for a few years. He worked at various times as a reporter, translator and editor. He briefly served as vice president and

managing director A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especially ...

of the Chinese-owned China Mail Steamship Line. When financial difficulties increased, Lum received

death threat A death threat is a threat, often made anonymously, by one person or a group of people to kill another person or group of people. These threats are often designed to intimidate victims in order to manipulate their behaviour, in which case a deat ...

s from one of the “fighting tongs” and had to hire bodyguards. Eventually, he resigned. Many members of CACA had, like Lum, received their formal education in English. However, in order for CACA to fully reach out to both immigrant and American-born Chinese, in 1924 Lum founded the ''Chinese Times'' newspaper, written in Chinese, and referred by some as the first Chinese language newspaper in the United States. By 1929, ''Chinese Times'' had the highest circulation among the Chinese newspapers in San Francisco. For thirty-five years, Lum served as the editor, managing editor, vice president, and president of the Chinese Times Publishing Company.

Personal life

In 1899, Lum married Gum Young Lee (1885–1936). They had seven children, including daughter Emma Ping Lum (born August 10, 1910).

Advocacy

One of his early political efforts focused upon repealing the

Expatriation Act of 1907 The Expatriation Act of 1907 (59th Congress, 2nd session, chapter 2534, enacted March 2, 1907) was an act of the 59th United States Congress concerning retention and relinquishment of United States nationality by married women and Americans residi ...

, which stated "that any American woman who marries a foreigner shall take the nationality of her husband." This effort failed; the policy in question was later partially repealed by the Cable Act, but still applied if the husband was ineligible for citizenship due to Asian descent. Lum wanted to block the bill that supported the racial ideas of the

(Caminette Bill). Caminette Bill made it so that if a father of a Chinese American was not a Native American, he would not have the power to vote and as a result, the offspring of that father will also be denied the power. Lum funded study courses for Chinese Americans that taught 3000 to 4000 characters. The method of teaching in this school was similar to the western way of teaching. In 1941 Lum started an experimental school that ran two hours a day, five days week and taught about fifty mostly American-born children of members divided into two classes. Lum was the principal and one of the instructors. He seized the opportunity to implement some of his ideas on teaching Chinese to the American-born. The classes used both were in the more easily understood vernacular style and were chosen with an emphasis on teaching vocabulary commonly used in contemporary society. These

teaching methods A teaching method comprises the principles and methods used by teachers to enable student learning. These strategies are determined partly on subject matter to be taught and partly by the nature of the learner. For a particular teaching method ...

generated some favorable results. In 1943, the school became a casualty of World War II. Enrollment dropped to twelve. By mid 1943, the school closed.

Legacy

Walter U. Lum Place is a street in San Francisco's Chinatown named in Lum's honor. In addition, the Chinese American Citizens Alliance named the National Walter U. Lum Scholarship after him.

References

Sources

civilrightssuite.org

''Remaking Chinese America: immigration, family, and community, 1940–1965''

''Claiming America: constructing Chinese American identities during the exclusion era''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lum, Walter U. 1882 births 1961 deaths Activists from the San Francisco Bay Area American people of Chinese descent Educators from California People from San Francisco