1 L.A. PUB. INT. L.J. 319

Table of Contents

Download PDF

LETTER TO A YOUNG PUBLIC INTEREST ATTORNEY*
Betty Hung

          Growing up in a working and middle class suburb of Los Angeles, the daughter of immigrant parents from Taiwan, I was fascinated with the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Thurgood Marshall and Martin Luther King, Jr. were my heroes. A voracious reader, I devoured every biography of them I could find at the local library. When other children taunted my siblings and me for speaking Taiwanese, or local politicians called for the passage of English-only ordinances, I drew on the history of African Americans and their courage and perseverance in the struggle against slavery and discrimination. Given the absence of Asian Americans in history books, television, and media, I looked instead to King and other civil rights icons for role models of what people of color can overcome and achieve in the United States. I longed to be part of a community and movement for equal rights and justice and, inspired by such examples, decided that I wanted to be a civil rights lawyer.

* For complete letter, please download the PDF.