Panel: The Struggle for Chinese American Language Rights in San Francisco

This panel brings together Chinese American educators, activists and students who were instrumental in the development and implementation of language programming in Cantonese bilingual education in collaboration with San Francisco schools and the greater Chinese and Chinese American community.

The seminal Supreme Court language rights case, Lau v. Nichols (1974) found that the San Francisco Unified School District’s failed to provide adequate and appropriate instructional programming to 1,800 students of Chinese ancestry who did not speak English, which denied them a meaningful opportunity to participate in a public education. In the fields of bilingual education and language policy, Lau is regarded as the national case that changed the legal landscape for bilingual education as an allowable provision in schools for multiple ethnolinguistic groups. 

Trish Morita-Mullaney is an Associate Professor in Language and Literacy at Purdue University and holds a courtesy appointment in Asian American Studies. Her research focuses on the intersections between language learning, gender and race and how this informs the identity acts of educators of multilingual communities. Guided by critical and feminist thought, she examines how these overlapping identities inform the logics of educational decision making for multilingual families. She has studied the Lau case and how it was developed, experienced, and implemented by the Chinese American community of San Francisco, representing the original history and voice of Lau. Her book, Lau v. Nichols and Chinese American Language Rights: The Sunrise and Sunset of Bilingual Education was published in 2024 chronicling this story of language rights. The book is available at the San Francisco Library.

Lucinda is widely recognized as a leader in the field of education. In 2018, she concluded a 14-year tenure as the Head of School of Marin Country Day School (California). Prior to MCDS, she worked with Mayor Daley in Chicago as the Chief Education Officer and served as Head of School and Principal of the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools from 1986 to 2002. Lucinda has also served as a professor and lecturer at Erikson Institute, University of Illinois, and the University of Chicago for 25 years, completing research and developing resources in mathematics teaching and learning, curriculum development, and family and cultural studies. Lucinda began her career with the National Teacher Corps Program working with low-income schools in San Francisco. She taught in the San Francisco Public Schools as the first Chinese bilingual bicultural program from 1968 to 1972 and was Kinney Lau’s first teacher; the lead plaintiff in the Lau v. Nichols case. Lucinda would go on to found of the Chinatown Community Children's Center, a bilingual bicultural day care center that celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2023.

Medora Payne Sobottka is a Transitional Kindergarten teacher at the Fred T. Korematsu Elementary School in Davis, California. She has taught in the CA public schools for 32 years. Her school’s ideals are grounded in a paradigm of social justice where students engage in equity-oriented projects that honor the legacy of its namesake and to “speak up” when inequities are observed. Medora’s commitment to the beliefs of this school is founded in her early education in San Francisco Unified Schools, where she was in the first racially integrated class at Commodore Stockton’s Elementary School where she also received a bilingual Cantonese English education with co-panelist, Dr. Lucinda Lee Katz, who was her Second-grade teacher. Raised by liberal parents, as a youth, she did volunteer work for the Walter Mondale Presidential campaign, the United Farm Workers, and for several campaigns for Harvey Milk. Although she only remembers a tiny bit of Cantonese, she is grateful that she had the opportunity to learn about another culture while she was learning in both English and Cantonese. Medora received her degree in Human Development from UC Davis and her Elementary Education Teaching Credential from Sacramento State University.