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This much is certain.
On 19 June 1982, on the outskirts of Detroit, Michigan, an individual named Vincent Chin - twenty-seven years old, of Chinese ancestry, an American citizen, from a working-class background, engaged to be married the following week - went out with a few friends for a bachelor party to celebrate his upcoming wedding. At a strip club, they encountered two other gentlemen, Ronald Eb ens and Michael Nitz, father and stepson, similarly out enjoying the evening.
There was an altercation at the bar, the Fancy Pants Lounge. Then time elapsed before another encounter occurred between these strangers. After the sun had set on Woodward Avenue, the major thoroughfare of the Motor City, they met once again.
And this is what happened: Ebens swung the baseball bat while Nitz held Chin down, and the bridegroom ended up with his head literally split open. Blood, spinal fluid, and cerebral matter pooled on the pavement under his body. Before collapsing into a coma, he uttered his last words, "It's not fair."
Four days later, Chin died.
In state court, Ebens and Nitz faced criminal charges. Represented by counsel, sobered up, dressed in business suits, they accepted a plea bargain.
At the hearing, the prosecutors failed to show up. The judge, Charles Kaufman, imposed on each man the sentence of three years' probation and a $3,000 fine, plus court costs.
Everything else is in doubt.
Eventually there would transpire two federal prosecutions, two civil lawsuits, a national protest movement, and more attention than had ever been paid to any single incident involving an Asian American. According to witnesses, Ebens and Nitz had used racial slurs to refer to Chin, they had offered a bystander $20 to help them find "the Chinaman," and they had said, "It's because of you little mother f****ers, we're out of work." That comment was made at a time when the nation was experiencing double -digit unemployment and equally high inflation and in place that had prospered because of "the Big Three" - Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler, the domestic automobile manufacturers - until imported cars became popular. While Japan was feared as the Land of the Rising Sun taking economic vengeance for its World War II defeat, to Eb ens and...