Legacy and Destiny
October 1999
The stories they told were compelling. Emotional too, no matter how objectively the panel of storytellers tried to relate their own individual experiences.
The symposium was called “Legacy and Destiny,” organized by the Filipino American National Historical Society-Los Angeles Chapter (FANHS-LA), to celebrate Filipino American History Month in Los Angeles. Three Filipino Americans were describing what it was like to “grow up brown in Los Angeles.”
One story stands out in particular.
Darline Ventura was born in Los Angeles on October 30,1934. Her father was of Filipino descent and her mother, of Mexican descent. She remembers being picked up by the schoolbus every morning, which she would ride to school along with her cousins. Being among the first to be picked up by the bus, Darline and her cousins would sit at the front, until the white kids would come on board. Every morning, she said, a white kid would tap her on the shoulder and motion for her and her cousins to move to the back of the bus. And everyday, as she and her cousins did so, Darline said she wondered why they had to do that. Until one fateful morning, Darline stopped wondering and did something about it.
That morning, when the white kid tapped her shoulder as the customary signal for her to move to the back of the bus, Darline stood her ground and refused to budge. The white kid complained to the driver, who also told Darline and her cousins to move to the back so as to make room for the white kids at the front. With a conviction uncommon to little girls her age (but totally in keeping with her character, it seems), Darline said she went up to the driver and lunged into an impassioned explanation as to why she and her cousins had every right to sit at the front, or for that matter, anywhere they wished. Even as a little girl, she knew the color of her skin didn’t make her any less American, any less a human being, than the white kid who insisted she belonged at the back of the bus. The driver relented, in fact, finally agreed with her. From that day on, Darline and her cousins were never bothered again.
In no small measure, Darline Ventura did for her fellow Filipinos what Rosa Parks did for African Americans. The only difference is that the young Darline’s actuations that day never made it to primetime news.
First and second generation Filipino Americans have many, many similar stories to tell. Most of their stories are often tucked away in obscurity, but they are no less heroic, nor any less significant than the efforts of other trailblazers from other ethnic minorities. Most of us -- especially new immigrants and the younger generation -- live relatively easier lives now in America because they paved the way for us. We would probably have to read volumes and volumes of historical data and literature in order to really know and fully comprehend the extent of their trials and tribulations as immigrants in America. But we owe it to them, as well as to ourselves and the next generation, to learn the lessons of their struggle vis-a-vis our progress.
The efforts of FAHNS-LA to chronicle Filipino-American history, and more so, to make such information readily accessible to the community, is truly commendable. One can only hope that the leaders and members of the Fil-Am community will continue appreciating the value of FAHNS-LA’s efforts, and support the organization accordingly.
We in the Filipino-American media try to do our part. However, between scrounging for “news” here and downloading news from the “homeland,” there is much to be desired by way of covering stories that deal with our Filipino-American legacy. Which is sad, because in the general scheme of things, we are what we are as immigrants, precisely because of that legacy we inherited from first and second-wave Filipino immigrants. However one looks at it, our progress is founded on their struggle, and it behooves us to know every single lesson we can learn from it -- to make our lives better, and to enrich that legacy for future generations of Filipino immigrants.
On that note, and as the Philippine Post goes into its 7th year of existence, we would like to pay tribute to Filipino American trailblazers. One of our most prized possessions, displayed with deference at our work station, is a yellowed copy of a 1963 edition of the “Associated Filipino Press,” a newspaper published in Los Angeles, published and edited by a certain John Lopez Jr. It was a copy given by World War II veteran Joe Palicte to Philippine Post Managing Editor Pia Abelgas when she interviewed him for an article some issues ago. There are now more than a dozen Filipino newspapers in L.A. County alone. And if we thrive, we thrive because sometime back, one Filipino had the courage to start it all.
Another object of deference in our editorial office (given by FAHNS-LA secretary Allan Aquino who is also a contributing writer for Philippine Post) is a framed and autographed reproduction of Fred Cordova’s “Welcome to America” -- a soul-stirring photograph, circa 1930, of a doorway of an apartment building in Stockton with a sign that reads: “Positively No Filipinos Allowed.”
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