Killing of Vincent Chin

Vincent Chin was a 27-year-old Chinese-American who was brutally beaten to death by two white men, Ronald Ebens and Michael Nitz, in a racially motivated attack in Detroit in 1982. 

The attack occurred after Vincent got into an argument with Ebens and Nitz at a local strip club where Vincent was having his bachelor’s party.  While the perpetrators claimed that the attack was not racially motivated, some witnesses say that the attackers mistook Vincent for a Japanese and blamed him for the decline of the American auto industry. They followed Chin to a nearby parking lot where they beat him with a baseball bat, leaving him in a coma for several days before he eventually died.  

Ebens and Nitz were arrested at the scene and were initially charged with second-degree murder, but they eventually reached a deal by pleading guilty to manslaughter and were only sentenced to three years of probation (thus serving no jail time at all) and a fine of $3,000. This lenient sentence sparked outrage and led to a civil rights movement in the Asian American community, demanding justice for Vincent Chin and an end to hate crimes. 

The call for justice galvanized the Asian American movement bringing together many East Asian groups such as Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans.