Vincent Chin, the victim of arguably the most notorious anti-Asian civil rights crime in American history, is not a household name, but his racially motivated murder in 1982 is widely considered the seminal moment of political awakening for the Asian diaspora in the US. Amid a national reckoning on racism in America after the death of George Floyd and a new wave of anti-Asian hate crimes, Asian-American advocates and political leaders say the case that shook them to the core nearly four decades ago has new relevance today. “Vincent Chin’s death was a turning point for the Asian-American community,” said US Representative Judy Chu, the first Chinese-American woman to be elected to Congress. “We began organising and fighting for change like never before.” “George Floyd’s death is having a similar impact on our country and we cannot let the momentum die,” said Chu, a California Democrat who chairs the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus. Vincent Chin was Chinese-American, but his death was tied to the charged anti-Japanese mood in declining early 1980s Detroit. The Michigan city had once been the capital of the global automobile industry, but fear of a Japanese takeover – led by an invasion of imported Japanese cars – was sweeping through the city, which was also enduring a recession and high unemployment. People blamed Tokyo, Toyota, and anyone who might be Japanese. They smashed Japanese cars. Startling his colleagues in Congress, John Dingell, the long-time representative from Detroit, even warned about “the little yellow people – you know, Honda”. Friday marks 38 years since Vincent Chin was beaten into a coma with a baseball bat. He was out that night with close friends, celebrating the end of his bachelorhood. His wedding was a few days off. They went to a topless bar. Testifying later, one of the bar’s dancers said that the killers – Ronald Ebens and his stepson Michael Nitz, both white auto workers – had taunted Chin about taking their jobs. Ebens worked for Chrysler and Nitz had been laid off. “It’s because of you … that we’re out of work,” she testified they said, quoting them using a profanity. A fight started in the club and then made its way outside. And then Ebens and Nitz went to their car. Ebens grabbed a Louisville Slugger. Vincent Chin fled. “These guys chased Vincent Chin for almost half an hour,” said James Shimoura, a lawyer who advised Chin’s mother, Lily. “I’ve walked the route many times over the years.” They pursued him in their car and found him near a McDonald's restaurant. “They probably covered the better part of a third of a mile or more chasing him,” Shimoura recalled. “These guys stalked him like an animal.” When they caught him, Nitz held Chin and Ebens started swinging the bat into his head. A nearby police officer pulled out a gun and ordered Ebens to stop. Vincent Chin’s last words before he lost consciousness: “It’s not fair.” He fell into a coma and died four days later. “The killers in the Vincent Chin case – they never denied they did it,” said Frank Wu, a Detroit native and former chancellor and dean of the University of California’s Hastings School of Law. “They didn’t dispute that.” “They just said, oh, well, we’re not bigots,” said Wu, now the president-designee of Queens College in New York City. “As if that meant that they were the victims. They always portrayed themselves as victims of the accusation of racism.” Ebens and Nitz were charged with second-degree murder, but a plea bargain softened the charges to manslaughter. The judge, Charles Kaufman, sentenced each of them to three years of probation and a $3,000 fine, plus court fees. The prosecutors didn't attend the sentencing. Kin Yee, the president of the Detroit Chinese Welfare Council at the time, called it ''a license to kill for $3,000, provided you have a steady job or are a student and the victim is Chinese”. Protests erupted, led by the community but joined as well by the Anti-Defamation League and the NAACP. Chin’s last words – “It’s not fair” – became a rallying cry. The New York Times called it a “rare outcry here for Asian-Americans”. “The climate was very similar, even before the videos about Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor, and what happened to George Floyd,” said Helen Zia, an author and activist who also advised Lily Chin during the trial. “It’s strikingly, starkly similar.” After the protests over the plea deal, the US Department of Justice brought another suit, charging Ebens with violating Chin’s civil rights – but the federal trial also failed to achieve justice for the victim and his family. Ebens was initially found guilty and sentenced to 25 years in prison, but upon appeal, the US Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals said the case needed to be retried – because, among other reasons, it found that the trial should not have been held in Detroit, where widespread anger might have affected the outcome of the case. “Public outrage at the perceived lenity of the penalty was extensive, especially within the Chinese-American community,” the appeals court ruled. The court did offer Chin’s supporters one positive: Ebens had argued that the 1964 Civil Rights Act did not apply to Asian Americans. The appellate court affirmed that it did. Still, the case was eventually sent to Cincinnati, Ohio, where Ebers was acquitted of the charge in 1987. “Vincent Chin’s killing was also a failure of police, law enforcement, prosecutors, the whole criminal justice system,” said Zia. “His two killers got probation for beating Vincent Chin’s brains out onto the street.” She added: “Had the police department not been infected by systemic racism, had its support system in Michigan not been already also infected by systemic racism, the whole outcome in the Vincent Chin case might have been different, and not only that, Vincent Chin might be alive today. He’d be 65.” Lily Chin was devastated by her son’s death, travelling around the country to raise awareness of Vincent’s case and the justice system. She died in 2002. Zia is also the executor of the Chin family’s estate. In a separate civil suit the family brought that was settled out of court, Ebens was ordered to pay $1.5 million – the estimated value of Vincent Chin’s lost wages as an engineer. Decades later, according to Zia, Chin’s estate has never received a dime. Asian-Americans join in support of protests after George Floyd’s death Representative Chu said that Vincent Chin was killed “because an atmosphere of mounting anti-Asian prejudice made his murder acceptable”. “Unfortunately,” she said, “that same prejudice pervades the criminal justice system, and devalues the lives of black Americans who have been the victims of horrific atrocities, including the recent murder of George Floyd.” Now, amid a pandemic and a trade war, anti-Asian violence is quietly on the rise again in America. But Covid-19 has replaced cars, and China is the new Japan. In March, a Burmese family – including a two-year-old and a six-year-old – was stabbed in a Sam’s Club parking lot in Texas. According to the FBI, the suspect thought the family was Chinese and infecting people with the coronavirus. “The same mentality that killed Vincent Chin even prevails today,” said Shimoura, the lawyer. Annie Tan, a 31-year-old teacher and activist in New York’s Chinatown, said she first learned about Vincent Chin’s story from a PBS documentary when she was 13. Then she discovered that Lily Chin, Vincent’s mother, was her great aunt. She said that learning about the murder and what happened afterward changed the way she looks at the world. “If my great auntie Lily Chin didn’t speak up for Vincent Chin, then no one would know his name today,” said Tan. “If the mothers and the aunties and the sisters and the relatives of all of these people who are getting killed right now didn’t speak up, we wouldn’t know their names today. It just wouldn’t happen.” After almost four decades, Chin is still less known than other Americans whose names have been written in the annals of civil rights history. One documentary about him is called “Vincent Who?” “He is iconic and obscure, and that reflects the status of Asian-Americans,” said Wu. “You know, the most famous Asian-American civil rights martyr is not – the name is not a household name, even among Asian-Americans.”