Alice Fong Yu

At the San Francisco Jazz Festival in October 2007, composer and jazz pianist Jon Jang performed the world premiere of "Unbound Chinatown: A Musical Tribute to Alice Fong Yu.” Jang called the piece a "musical portrait" of Yu's experience as an activist in the late-1930s.

In 1996 San Francisco's Chinese immersion school was named Alice Fong Yu Alternative School in Yu's honor.

These conferences would become annual events in the Chinese American community that would meet through the 1960s, and then continue on as a family conference into the early 2000s. Tahoe conference participants, or "Tahoeites", would go on create several offshoot organizations and events inspired by their experiences at the conferences. One of these offshoot organizations was an East Coast variation on the Tahoe Conferences held at the Silver Bay Conference Grounds at Lake George, New York. These conferences were organized by "Tahoeites" George Kan, Eddie Leong Way, and Paul Louie, and were held from the early 1940s to the 1960s. Fong Yu also created her own offshoot organization called "The Chinese Young People's Forum". This interdenominational organization met at the Donalinda Cameron House to discuss issues affecting the San Francisco Chinatown community.

Alice Fong Yu's youngest son, Joal, was born with cerebral palsy due to complications in childbirth. Seeking to help her son face the challenges of his condition, Fong Yu enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley, and took courses in speech therapy. She received her certification in 1957 and was then commissioned to teach speech therapy in schools throughout the San Francisco area. Until her retirement in 1970, Fong Yu served as the speech correction teacher-at large for many San Francisco schools. Fong Yu recalled that she "'was sent to different schools, on a different route every day, five days a week'" as her "'special assignment up to [her] retirement'".

Fong Yu continued to experience discrimination throughout her time at Commodore Stockton. While she was hired as a schoolteacher, she was often required to serve in many different administrative and non-classroom roles. Her ability to speak Chinese, unlike the rest of the school staff, led her to be asked to fulfill almost all the duties that are required to run school, including those of an assistant principal, a translator, councilor, a nurse and a social worker. Despite 31 years of teaching experience, Fong Yu was never promoted and only received the salary of a normal teacher. Fong Yu was offered the position of principal in the 1950s near the end of her career at Commodore Stockton, but she turned the position down in order to care for her child and her husband who were experiencing health difficulties.

On December 22, 1940, in Tucson, Arizona, Alice Fong Yu married Jon Yong Chang Yu, a writer and journalist who wrote editorials for the Young China newspaper. The couple met through the Chinese War Relief Association, where Fong Yu served as the Square and Circle Club's representative and Yu served as the organization's secretary and news release writer. They had two sons, Alon and Joal. Jon Yong Chang Yu died of a sudden illness in 1966, while the couple was on a trip to Asia to visit members of Jon's family that he had not been able to see in decades.

Alice Fong Yu was a prolific journalist, writing many opinion and lifestyle articles that spoke on many political, social, and day-to-day issues of her time. Some of her earlier writing was published in the Chinese Christian Student, which was the official newspaper of the Chinese Christian Student Organization (CSCA). However, it wasn't until 1937 that she began writing her own regular column for the Chinese Digest aimed at Chinese American women entitled the "Jade Box”. For this column, she wrote under the pen name “Lady P’ing” and later “Lady P’ing Yu” after her marriage. This was a reference to her Chinese name, Fong Yu P’ing, though she used different Chinese characters in her pen name. Through the “Jade Box”, Fong Yu offered advice on fashion, recipes, men, and marriage alongside political and social commentary regarding issues of race, women's issues and American life.

In addition to her work in the San Francisco public school system, Alice Fong Yu was a noted community leader and activist. She was involved with many Chinatown organizations including the Square and Circle Club, Chinese Needlework Guild, the YWCA, and the Lake Tahoe Christian Conference. She also contributed to the Chinese Digest, a progressive Chinese language newspaper founded in 1935.

In 1932, inspired by their experiences at YMCA and YWCA conferences, Alice Fong Yu joined with two other politically active Chinese American Christians, Fong Yu's future brother-in-law Ira Lee and the future Chinese Methodist minister Edwar Lee, to organize a liberal Christian conference for Chinese American youth. These plans would come to fruition in 1933, when the trio was able to organize what would become the first annual Lake Tahoe Chinese Young People's Christian Conference, known colloquially as simply the "Tahoe Conferences". Although the Tahoe Conferences had their origins in Church organizations and discussed Christian issues, non-Christians were encouraged to attend and the conferences were not meant to proselytize. Instead, the Tahoe Conferences provided a space for second generation Chinese Americans to meet, socialize, and discuss social and political issues as a larger community outside of their local Chinatowns.

During her time at Commodore Stockton, Fong Yu worked to help her students navigate the bi-cultural experience of being Chinese American as her family had done for her. In a 1926 article by the San Francisco Examiner, Fong Yu explained that she believed that "'the Chinese boy or girl who wants to make a good American citizen cannot be one unless he retains the fineness and restraint of his own race," something that she "'[tried] to make plain to all the girls and boys I teach". To that end, she "'sought to show her students how to manage a dual culture, [not only appreciating] their ancient Chinese culture but also learning how to be modern and progressive.'”

In 1924, Alice Fong Yu and six other young women who were members of the Chinese Congregational Church founded the Square and Circle Club, the oldest Chinese women's service organization in the United States. Fong Yu served as the club's first president.

After graduating from high school in 1923, Alice Fong Yu moved to San Francisco to attend the San Francisco State Teachers College. When she had applied in 1922, she was personally introduced the president of the college, Dr. Frederic Lister Burke. This introduction was made by the head of the local Red Cross, whom she had worked with and impressed with her fundraising work for the YWCA Girls Reserve. She was initially denied admission to the college, being told by Dr. Burke that she would not be hired for a teaching job anywhere in the country because she was Chinese. Fong Yu, frustrated because “”[She'd] faced so much discrimination’”, told Dr. Burke that she has no intention of staying in the US, and was instead planning on moving to China to “’teach my people’”. This convinced Dr. Burke to admit Fong Yu to the program, and she graduated in 1926.

Alice Fong Yu (Chinese: 尤方玉屏; 2 March 1905 - 19 December 2000) was an American schoolteacher and community organizer. The first Chinese American to teach at a public school, she was a founding member and first president of the Square and Circle Club (方圓社), and was a prominent leader in the San Francisco Chinatown community.

Alice Fong Yu was born Alice Fong in the small gold-mining town of Washington in Nevada County, California. Her Chinese name was Fong Yu P'ing, a variation of which she used as a pen name later in life. She was born on March 2, 1905, to Lonnie Tom and Fong Chow (Suey Chang). While in Washington, Fong Chow was superintendent of a leased gold mine and also ran a general store for Chinese miners.