When Hsiu Huang Wu was a little boy in China, he and his older brother would dig holes in their backyard, trying to reach America.
He would get here, eventually, in a big way — featured in Life magazine, lauded in song by Pete Seeger. But mostly forgotten today, which is why, this being Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, I thought I would share the story.
His father, K.C. Wu, was mayor of Shanghai after World War II, where he hosted visiting Chicago Tribune’s Robert McCormick on one of his round-the-world jaunts. An improbable friendship developed between the famously xenophobic publisher and the Chinese official.
When it came time for Wu’s two daughters to go to college, McCormick suggested Northwestern, and the two teens lived with him while preparing for school. McCormick even threw Eileen Wu’s wedding at Cantigny and gave her away, standing in for the father of the bride, who had become governor of Formosa — now Taiwan.
After falling out with the nationalists, the elder Wu and his wife Edith fled to America, settling in the Georgian Hotel at Hinman and Davis in Evanston. Only his younger son, Hsiu Huang, remained behind. Gov. Wu accused Chiang Kai Shek of holding the boy hostage.
With McCormick’s help, the teen finally came here and began attending Evanston Township High School, where teachers so badly mangled pronunciation of “Hsiu Huang” that he decided to change his first name to “Sherman,” inspired by Sherman Avenue.
In the fall of 1956, Wu began his freshman year at Northwestern and went through the fraternity rush process. Two frats offered him membership, Acacia and Psi Upsilon. He accepted Psi U.
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So happiness is outliving the rotten frat that rejected you.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I think all fraternities & sororities are rotten & should be banned from all colleges & universities!
Good column.
ReplyDeleteIt seems Northwestern, as an institution, and the predominantly entitled students, have always been lagging behind in equal opportunities for all. Did you encounter any overt (or subtle) prejudice when you attended?
ReplyDeleteHonestly, I was so far from the beating heart of what was going on at Northwestern, that I rarely gave anyone the chance to shun me. I do recall noticing that the school had a kind of two-week cram course before classes formally began for Black students — from struggling urban school systems, I assumed — that had the inadvertent, or advertent, effect of bonding them together so they didn't mingle as much. Tables at the dining hall self-segregated and rarely did anyone stray to a table where they didn't usually eat. So I guess that's a "No" with an asterisk.
DeleteI believe the chapter president casually provided the explanation for your qualified "No," didn't he? "It isn’t like having a boy who’s Jewish. A lot of times you can’t tell just by looking at a boy whether he’s Jewish." Wow. Unstated, but perhaps implied: We certainly wish you could tell.
DeleteNEVER understood why anyone would join a frat.
ReplyDeleteMe, I'm a proud member of the Lambda Sigma Delta chapter of Sigma Phi Nothing.
The university I attended didn’t have a Greek system, but people tended to live in the same dorm as long as they lived in-campus, so perhaps that gave a similar feel. I can understand how a sorority or fraternity could appeal to someone on a very large campus, especially if they went there not knowing anyone.
DeleteWhere I was, in a tiny Midwestern private school, the proto-beatniks called it GDI, which stood for God Damn Independents. Hell, some of us even had Greek-letter GDI decals on the rear windows of our cars, exactly as the Greeks did. GDI was a left-over label from the Fifties, and maybe even earlier.
DeleteHell, the whole school was a Fifties time warp...I called it a high school with ashtrays.There were maybe twelve Jews...or about one percent of the total enrollment. My acceptance letter had specifically stated that poor high school grades precluded my joining a fraternity. I strongly suspect that the selection committee was totally cognizant that I would be automatically excluded from the fraternity rush process, but were hoping and praying I would attend their benighted institution anyway. They were desperate for warm bodies and tuition money. In short, they would take almost anybody in 1965. Even me.
My first-choice school had rejected me. Pomona had wait-listed me. But there was a war on, doncha know. So off I went to Happydale. The Greeks ran the one-ring circus. They were the white, wealthy, suburban children of privilege. I became a snubbed, disdained, marginalized, Jewish dorm rat.
Went on a blind date just before Christmas..We were a couple until the following summer. Then I transferred out, to a big state school where the Greek system was strong, but not predominant. That same woman reconnected with me more than a quarter-century later. We celebrated our 30th anniversary last Christmas. Had I ended up at my first-choice school, on the banks of the Ohio, I might be living in a trailer with Bessie Mae Mucho, down in West Virginia..
What astonishes me about this story is the casual openness about bigotry displayed by that frat president and others. THAT is the world that the MAGA types want to take us back to -- a time when America was great, for white people.
ReplyDeleteI Think Neil should have put a pretty big asterisk by his No as no one really knows if the black students would have been any less segregated had they not had their special program.
ReplyDeleteAt UF, I belonged to a Jewish fraternity and most Jews on campus hung out with other Jews even though we didn't have a special program before our freshman year.
The frat, albeit a nerdy one, helped me socially as well as educationally.
I don't know if NU is any different than any other university. Sherman went to the wrong frat initially. Good for him that it didn't dissuade him from trying another.