Chang Hong Yen was the first person of Chinese ancestry allowed to practice law in the United States. In the face of consistent racial oppression, Chang continuously resisted. While he was able to practice law in New York, California never allowed him to. He then spent the rest of his life working in banking, education, and law. Nearly a century after his death, he is finally getting the recognition he deserved when he was alive.
Chang was born in 1860 in Guangdong China. After his father’s death, he came to the United States at the age of 12. He came as part of a program called the Chinese Educational Mission, an institution which tried to modernize China by educating talented boys abroad. He excelled in his studies in the United States, but was interrupted when the Chinese government canceled the Chinese Educational Mission.
He returned to the United States on his own and graduated from Columbia Law School in 1886. The State of New York, who had the power to decide who could and who could not practice law, initially refused to grant him a law license. The New York Bar Association only granted law licenses to citizens, and Chang was ineligible. He was born in China, so he did not have birthright citizenship. The Naturalization Act only allowed white immigrants to become citizens. Two years later, in 1888, both a New York judge and the state legislature granted him citizenship, allowing him to practice law in New York. The white lawyers and judges showed solidarity in helping stop racial discrimination that didn’t affect them directly. Chang achieved both his personal goal of practicing law and also being able to represent the interests of Chinese and Chinese Americans.
California had a much larger Chinese population, though, so Chang moved there. Unfortunately, he faced the same obstacle in California that he initially did in New York. In contrast, though, California did not make any exception for him. Chang was skilled and experienced, but California refused to allow him the same opportunities as a white person. His rejection in 1890 stood for over 125 years. It wasn’t until 2015 that California apologized for their discrimination and granted him a posthumous law license. They only did so because of a group of Asian American law students at U.C. Davis organized and demanded it in 2011. After 4 years of hard work, in 2015, the California Supreme Court reversed its earlier decision. As more evidence of history’s progress, the members of the court include multiple Asian American justices as well as a Mexican American one.
After California rejected his application, Chang worked for the Chinese consulate in and for a Japanese bank, both in San Francisco. He returned to China and taught at a university teaching both law and banking. He returned to diplomacy, working at the Chinese embassy in Washington D.C., and later the Chinese consulate in Vancouver. In all of these diplomatic posts, his work both strengthened ties between the United State and China and also improved the rights and status of Chinese living in the United States. He retired in Berkeley in 1920, and died there in 1926.
In 2020, Columbia’s Law Center for Chinese Legal Studies was named after Chang, in recognition of his work. The $5 million endowment builds upon Columbia’s existing history of programs studying Chinese law. It is a fitting legacy that the university from which Chang graduated has named a department in his honor for the work that he did.