The Story Behind Asian Pacific American Heritage Month | #AsianPacificAmericanHeritageMonth

For a fuller understanding on how this month long celebration came to be, check out this piece from Time.

One persistent voice expressing frustration toward the status quo can change the way history is remembered. Case in point: Asian Pacific American Heritage Month. The observance now takes place every May in the U.S. and is marked by communities within the country’s 22.2 million Asians and 1.6 million Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islanders. And yet, despite that scale, the seeds for the commemorative month originated from one woman.

During the Congressional hearing in 1992 in which then New York Congressman Frank Horton introduced the bill that called for May to get that designation, he made a point of singling out that woman: Jeanie Jew, a former Capitol Hill staffer who had first approached Horton about the idea in the mid-1970s — more than 15 years earlier.

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