Each morning, Lloyd Dong Sr. would take the ferry from San Diego to Coronado, the place he labored as a gardener for rich owners. And each night time, he would retreat again residence throughout the bay, barred by racially restrictive housing practices within the early 1900s from renting or shopping for his personal home within the city.
Gus and Emma Thompson — a Black couple who had managed to safe possession of Coronado property earlier than restrictions took maintain — boldly rented a home they owned to the Dong household, whose Chinese language heritage blocked them from residing locally. The intersection of those two households amid the embedded racism of the time would many years later change into a narrative of gratitude, made potential by the very residence that when belonged to the Thompsons.
Some 85 years because the Dongs moved to Coronado, Lloyd Sr.’s sons, Ron Dong and Lloyd Dong Jr., are donating $5 million from their portion of the sale of the home they finally got here to personal to San Diego State College’s Black Useful resource Heart.
The reward will broaden scholarships for Black college students and fund future renovations on the middle, its director, Brandon Gamble, stated.
The Dongs’ household home in Coronado, initially the house of the Thompsons.
(Courtesy of Janice Dong)
“I don’t know find out how to describe the sensation in my chest, however there’s a sense that racism provides that people are accustomed to; it’s possible you’ll not be capable of describe it on a regular basis,” Gamble stated. “That is the exact opposite, and we don’t get to entry it sufficient.”
Ron Dong, 86, the eldest son, stated his father “tried and tried [to live in Coronado] and the one factor that got here up was Gus Thompson keen to lease his home that he had obtainable…. That was the large plus for our household, as a result of it has made all of the distinction for us.”
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Gus Thompson was born into slavery in Kentucky in 1859, two years earlier than the Civil Conflict broke out. He moved to Coronado in his 20s searching for work and a brand new life after listening to that industrialist tycoon Elisha Spurr Babcock was corralling cash to start out a brand new resort in California, based on Coronado historian Kevin Ashley. Resort del Coronado opened in 1888 as the biggest resort on the planet on the time.
Gus Thompson in 1947.
(Norman Baynard Assortment / San Diego Historical past Heart)
He grew to become the Babcock household’s coachman and rapidly gained respect within the Better San Diego space, founding a Prince Corridor Freemasonry lodge in San Diego for Black middle-class males to congregate and focus on civil rights. In 1893 Gus married Emma, who ran a espresso tent in Coronado’s Tent Metropolis, the place locals and guests would flock to eat, store and keep, a extra inexpensive various to the luxurious resort.
Emma was additionally a frontrunner of the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, the primary Black church in San Diego and a vocal advocate for the 1922 Dyer Anti-Lynching Invoice, which might have labeled lynching as a federal felony if not blocked by Southern Democrats within the Senate. It will take Congress 100 years to move a federal anti-lynching invoice, in 2022.
The Thompsons purchased a number of properties in Coronado round 1900 earlier than the Nationwide Assn. of Actual Property Boards formally adopted racially restrictive practices within the Nineteen Twenties, making them one of many few Black households to personal a house in Coronado.
Jobs for Black folks had been restricted and primarily included work as maids or drivers, Ashley stated. On the newly fashionable and lavish Resort del Coronado, minstrel reveals featured white performers in blackface.
As leaders of Better San Diego’s Black neighborhood, the Thompsons used their standing to increase assist to Asian People in Coronado, who had been additionally subjected to racist practices of the occasions.
“It’s simply one thing you do, as a result of there was a number of oppression so that you assist those that had been below menace as nicely,” stated the Thompsons’ great-grandson, Ballinger Gardner Kemp, 76, who lives within the Bay Space. “To me, the attractive half is that it wasn’t thought-about that huge of a factor.”
The Resort del Coronado, a Victorian-style seashore resort outdoors San Diego, and a tent metropolis on the seashore, 1908.
(Smith Assortment / Gado / Getty Pictures)
His great-grandparents rented their home on C Avenue to a Japanese household within the Nineteen Twenties — after which to Lloyd Sr. and his spouse in 1939 below a rent-to-own settlement. The couple additionally rented a room in one other one in all their properties, simply blocks away, to Lloyd Sr.’s youthful brother, George Dong, after he got here again from serving in World Conflict II.
“I feel there was undoubtedly a degree of ally-ship happening,” Ashley stated.
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Lloyd Sr. was born of Chinese language heritage in 1905 in Bakersfield, the place most Asian People labored in agriculture. However as California tightened its Alien Land Legal guidelines barring Asian immigrants and finally American-born kids of Asian immigrants from proudly owning or leasing land, life in Bakersfield grew to become too troublesome for Lloyd Sr., Ashley stated.
He moved to San Diego, the place he labored a number of jobs — at a Chinese language division retailer and as a painter at an auto restore store for greater than a decade earlier than discovering work in Coronado as a gardener. Lloyd Sr. ferried backwards and forwards day-after-day for his gardening work till he got here throughout the Thompsons and their beneficiant provide in 1939 to lease their home so he might stay nearer to work.
Gus died in 1947, and eight years later, Emma offered two properties to Lloyd Sr. and one property to George Dong, making the Dongs one of many solely — if not the one — Asian owners in Coronado, Ashley stated.
The Resort del Coronado, San Diego, 1930.
(Smith Assortment / Gado / Getty Pictures)
The property offered to George Dong was the Thompsons’ authentic residence inbuilt 1895, alongside F Avenue the place George rented a room. The properties offered to Lloyd Sr. included the home they had been renting, constructed round 1900, in addition to a livery secure inbuilt 1902. The second flooring of the livery secure was used as a boarding home for Black folks.
“African People who had been in Coronado for work, possibly as a driver for a rich individual staying on the resort, would lease a room within the livery secure proper subsequent to the Dongs’ home,” Ashley stated. “That was a vital place for a lot of African People to have that livery secure as a spot” to remain.
Lloyd Sr. turned the livery secure into an house constructing in 1957, which, along with the home, is estimated to be value greater than $7 million at present, Ron Dong stated.
Though the Dong kids had been too younger to recollect the Thompsons, they recalled a hodgepodge of recollections rising up in Coronado, from water snowboarding with associates in San Diego Bay to dealing with discrimination as a result of they had been among the many few Asian American youngsters on the town.
Lloyd Jr., 81, stated he remembered how his mom tried to maintain him busy when she discovered he was the one scholar not invited to a party in second grade. Ron Dong recalled how he and the opposite nonwhite college students would get collectively the night time white youths gathered for cotillion as a result of they by no means obtained invitations. And earlier than he went off to school, he remembered the day his highschool girlfriend’s father came visiting to the home to persuade Lloyd Sr. to finish their biracial relationship.
“[My father] stood up for me,” Ron Dong stated. “He advised him that was our enterprise, not theirs.”
The Dong kids — Lloyd Jr., Jackie, Jeanette and Ron — in entrance of their Coronado residence in 1959.
(Courtesy of Janice Dong)
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Ron Dong and his spouse, Janice Dong, are each retired academics in San Jose and have beforehand donated to the United Negro Faculty Fund with a number of charitable the rest trusts at different universities. Lloyd Jr. is a retired tax preparer and auditor in Anaheim. Neither brothers have kids.
When Ashley reached out to the Dongs in 2022 after discovering the Thompsons’ connection to their household, the Dong brothers knew they wished to provide their portion of the property sale again to the neighborhood.
“We now have different belongings and my nieces and nephews are established, so I simply thought I’ll give it to somebody who may gain advantage from it,” Lloyd Jr. stated.
The Thompsons’ great-granddaughter, 65-year-old Lauren Few, praised the Dongs for desirous to return her great-grandparents’ generosity practically a century later.
“We want extra of that on the planet at present,” stated Few, who lives in Colorado Springs.
Kemp, Lauren’s brother, comes from a household of academics and is a retired lawyer who represented academics for 35 years. He stated the Dongs’ thought to place the cash towards training was excellent.
“There’s no extra necessary job than being a instructor, since you’re the one individual outdoors of somebody’s household that has a shot at actually altering a life,” Kemp stated.
