Vincent Chin Memorial Marker

01 / The story of this place

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Vincent Chin worked weekend shifts at the Golden Star Chinese Restaurant, which once stood at Woodward Avenue and Nine Mile Road in Ferndale, an ordinary part of life for a young Chinese American draftsman living in metro Detroit in the early 1980s. In June 1982, during a bachelor party at a Highland Park club, two autoworkers who blamed Japan for the struggles of the American auto industry beat Chin with a baseball bat, mistaking him, as a Chinese American, for Japanese; he died of his injuries days later, just before his planned wedding. His killers received only probation and fines, and the outrage over that light sentence pushed Detroit's Asian American community to organize, giving rise in 1983 to American Citizens for Justice and a national Asian American civil rights movement that continues to cite Chin's case today. In 2010, the Ferndale City Council and the State Bar of Michigan placed a historical marker at the former restaurant site, recognizing Ferndale as the birthplace of that movement.

1. Marker stands where the Golden Star Chinese Restaurant once stood
2. Chin was beaten to death in June 1982 in a racially motivated attack
3. His killers received no prison time
4. The case helped launch the Asian American civil rights movement in 1983
5. Marker placed in 2010 by the State Bar of Michigan and Ferndale's city council