Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month
Mazie Hirono, the first AAPI woman elected to the Senate. (U.S. Senate)
The month of May was designated Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month because the first Japanese person immigrated to the United States on May 7, 1843, and to mark the anniversary of the completion of the transcontinental railroad on May 10, 1869. The majority of the workers who laid the tracks—between 12,000 and 20,000—were Chinese immigrants.
Of course, “Asian American” is a broad term—so broad as to be almost meaningless, since it comprises many different peoples with ancestors throughout the Eastern Hemisphere. Asia embraces mainland nations from the Koreas, Japan, and China to Vietnam, the Philippines, India, and other Southeast and South Asian countries. “Pacific Islander” encompasses the many islands of Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. In fact, the term “Asian American” itself reflects a nineteenth-century European proclivity to lump these disparate peoples into a monolithic “other.” Anti-Asian xenophobia and prejudice found expression in anti-immigrant measures ranging from the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 (notably enacted after completion of the transcontinental railroad) to the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II to a rise in anti-Asian hate speech and crime emerging in recent years.
This, despite a rich and invaluable legacy that has contributed so much to this nation’s history and achievements thanks to contributions from Asian American politicians, physicists, biologists, physicians, jurists, artists, teachers, scholars, computer scientists, and others too numerous to list here. For more information online, start with the Library of Congress’s Asian American [and] Pacific Islander Heritage Month portal.
Jewish American Heritage Month
Florence Prag Kahn, the first Jewish woman elected to Congress. (Harris & Ewing, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)
May is also designated Jewish American Heritage Month. The month of May was chosen due to the highly successful celebration of the 350th Anniversary of American Jewish History in May 2004, which was organized by the Commission for Commemorating 350 Years of American Jewish History, comprising members of the Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives, the American Jewish Historical Society, the Library of Congress, and the National Archives and Records Administration.
Jews have suffered oppression that has endured for literally hundreds of years, starting in the Middle Ages. Consequently, the worldwide Jewish diaspora is huge. The earliest Jewish settlers in North America (discounting those converted Jews who traveled with Columbus) arrived in the mid-seventeenth century and proceeded to contribute at every level of society and in all areas of endeavor. Among the Jewish Americans—many of whom fled persecution abroad to reach our shores—are Albert Einstein, Elie Wiesel, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Gloria Steinem, Billy Wilder, Irving Berlin, Betty Friedan, Jerry Lewis, Barbra Streisand, Dianne Feinstein, Louis Brandeis, Henry Kissinger, Mark Rothko, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Madeleine Albright, and Florence Kahn, the first Jewish woman elected to Congress. The list, like that for AAPI Americans, is endless.
Commemoration of this month also means that we can never forget the Holocaust of World War II, during which more than six million Jews were murdered in gas chambers, by mass shootings, and by enforced labor and starvation. While the Holocaust was occurring, it was not unknown to Americans. But many Americans ignored or distanced themselves from the horrors happening abroad. As Eleanor Roosevelt put it, “I hope that in the future, we ... remember that there can be no compromise ... with the things we know are wrong.” (The current genocide of Ukrainians comes to mind.) For more information online, start with the Library of Congress’s Jewish American Heritage Month portal. And be sure to stop at the national Holocaust Memorial Museum as well as the Holocaust Museum LA.
—Chris Moose, Editor, the Voter
