Justice for Long Guang Huang

By Kye Leung and Duke Rhoden
Special thanks to Helen Liu and the Asian American Resource Workshop for giving us permission to reproduce the video, "Road to Justice: The Long Guang Huang Campaign, 1987" and all the courageous people who participated in the campaign.

PART1 INCIDENT 2.1MB

PART 2 PROTEST 2.4MB

PART 3 VERDICT 2.5MB

To view the movies, you will need Quicktime plugin.

The Incident

In 1986, an elderly Chinese man Long Guang Huang was walking the streets of Boston Chinatown and solicited a prostitute. He was confronted by a plainclothes police officer Francis Kelly. Officer Kelly said something to Huang, pushed him against the wall and started hitting him in the face. Afterwards, Huang was charged with assault and battery on a police officer.

That was the police's version of the story.

But the Boston Chinese community didn't think the facts matched the police description. Witnesses at the scene described Officer Kelly as the assailant and aggressor in the beating of Huang. To the community, this was clearly a case of police brutality.

Wrongly Accused?

Huang was a recent immigrant from Toishan, China. He was 60 years old at the time of the incident. Huang spoke no English and was illiterate. He measured about 5 feet tall. Officer Kelly on the other hand was 6 feet tall and twice the size of Huang. Kelly was working undercover that day in 1986 and was not in police uniform, which would have made it more difficult to know he was a cop. What didn't make sense to the Chinese community was 1) If Huang didn' speak English, how was he able to solicit the woman who was a caucasian American? 2) Why would a 60 year-old elderly man assault Officer Kelly who was twice his size? 3) How does one explain the bruises and cuts on Huang's face?

Boston Chinatown and Combat Zone

As ethnic enclaves within the larger U.S. society, early Chinatowns were self-contained communities that provided jobs, homes and social functions. Due to segregation and discrimination, Chinatowns had to be self-sufficient in order to survive. Chinese who went beyond the borders of Chinatown were attacked, beaten and some even killed. Boston Chinatown, like other Chinatowns in the U.S. developed under these conditions. In the 1920s, Chinese workers that were brought in from the west coast to break a shoe factory strike in western Massachusetts, settled in what later became Boston Chinatown. They worked for the telephone company and lived among a community of Syrian and Irish immigrants. Over the years while other immigrant groups moved out of the area, the Chinese stayed and started businesses and built homes.

In the ‘70s, city government decided to designate Boston Chinatown as an adult entertainment district. The adult entertainment district was infamously known as the Combat Zone. Originally the Combat Zone was located in Boston's Scollay Square. The Mayor had an ambitious plan to update Boston to the twentieth century by building a modern City Hall in Scollay Square, the place where the Combat Zone was. To avoid the embarassment of having adult businesses next to City Hall, the city decided to move it to Chinatown. Strip clubs, theaters, bars, and adult stores lined the streets next to Chinatown businesses. Along with the Combat Zone it brought pimps, prostitutes, johns, drugs, pollution and violence. Chinese women and girls walking to school or to their jobs were harassed or seen as hookers.

Huang was walking to go to work as usual the day he was beaten by Kelly. He was working for a restaurant which involved having to go to Chinatown for his job. While walking there he saw a hooker who said something he did not understand because he didn't know English and had arrived to the U.S. recently. The next thing that happened according to Huang's story was a White man (Kelly) confronted him, said something he couldn't comprehend, pushed him against the wall of a building and started hitting him.

Justice for Long Guang Huang Campaign

As so often is the case, police brutality goes unreported and usually the victims of police brutality are charged with assault and battery to justify the use of physical force by the police. The Boston Chinatown community organized a grassroots campaign and protested to the city of Boston of what was evidently a case of police brutality on an elderyly immigrant man. Community members came and helped Huang on his assault and battery case. They also provided legal representation and translation, organized community meetings with city officials, and led a protest in front of City Hall. Due to overwhelming community support and publicity, all charges of assault and battery against Huang were dropped and Huang was found innocent. As the verdict was read that absolved Huang of all guilt, tears and emotions bursted from his eyes while the media and crowd surrounded to applaud.

Huang later received $80,000 as compensation for his medical bills. The pressure generated by Chinatown activists forced the police department to suspend Officer Kelly temporarily. Some time later after the whole incident, Kelly filed a lawsuit to appeal his suspension and received $200,000 in lost wages, twice the amount the victim received.

Remaining Legacy

The Long Guang Huang case was important in that it 1) Organized various different forces in Boston Chinatown which had a history of antagonism but all came together for the campaign against police brutality; 2) Demonstrated that the Chinatown community if organized through a mass movement had political power; 3) Involved everyday people in making it a grassroots campaign rather than the traditional method of having Chinatown leaders negotiate with the governement for the people; 4) Highlighted the negative impact the of Combat Zone and that Chinese Americans were also victims of institutional racism.

Today police brutality is still a problem, especially for many communities of color. A few years after the Long Guang Huang case, the Rodney King beating exploded through the country. More recently, an unarmed Black man Amadou Diallo was shot 41 times and killed by four White police officers while outside his home in New York. In Boston, another Black man Ricky Bowden, was shot in the back of the head by a municipal police officer.

But as time passed by and memories started to fade, those who were around still talk about Long Guang Huang as a defining moment for the Boston Chinatown community.