Vincent Chin Baseball Bat Killing

In 1982, a Chinese American draftsman named Vincent Chin went to a Detroit strip club to celebrate his upcoming wedding. That night, a Chrysler auto plant supervisor named Ronald Ebens and his laid-off stepson Michael Nitz, who were angry over Japanese car imports and assuming Chin was Japanese, chased him down to a nearby McDonald’s parking lot. There, Nitz held Chin while Ebens beat his head with a baseball bat until his skull cracked; Chin died four days later in a Detroit hospital.

The men pleaded guilty to manslaughter and received only probation and fines, a sentence that sparked national outrage and helped galvanize Asian American civil rights activism.

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