An African American couple defied racism by renting to a Chinese family. Now comes $5 million in thanks

Here is a “feel good” story for the day.   In the early 1900s, an African American  couple defied racism by renting to a Chinese family. Now comes $5 million in thanks.   

Here is the story.  Gus and Emma Thompson rented the Dong family when no one else would. Decades later the Dongs have found a way to say thanks with a $5-million gift.

Every morning, Lloyd Dong Sr. would take the ferry from San Diego to Coronado, where he worked as a gardener. And every night, he would return home, barred by racially restrictive housing practices in the early 1900s from renting or buying his own house in the town.

Gus and Emma Thompson, bought the Coronado property before restrictions took hold and rented a house to the Dong family, whose Chinese heritage blocked them from living in the community. As the Los Angeles times described, “[t]he intersection of these two families amid the embedded racism of the time would decades later become a story of gratitude, made possible by the very home that once belonged to the Thompsons.”

Lloyd Dong’s sons are donating $5 million from their portion of the sale of the house they eventually came to own to San Diego State University’s Black Resource Center.

KJ