Asian heritage from the transcontinental railroad to Yahoo!

American Teacher, May/Jun 2008

MOST TEACHERS KNOW that in the 1880s, Chinese-Americans provided most of the manpower to build the western half of the transcontinental railroad, blasting rock and laying ties over the high Sierras eastward. Their work made the United States the first continent with a coast-to-coast railroad.

What you may not know is that a little over a century later, an Asian-American college student named Jerry Yang and one of his classmates created the Web portal Yahoo! Born in Taiwan in 1968, Yang arrived in California at age 10 with his mom, brother and one word of English: "shoe." As an engineering student at Stanford University, Yang developed a list of links, "Jerry's Guide to the World Wide Web," which he renamed Yahoo! in 1995 and built into the most highly trafficked network in the world.

Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month celebrates these achievements and more. Begun in 1978 as a weeklong event celebrating the arrival of the first Japanese immigrants on May 7, 1843, and the completion of the transcontinental railroad on May 10, 1869, the week was expanded in 1992 to include the entire month of May.

Today, more than 13 million Asian-Americans make up 5 percent of the U.S. population. Since the 2000 Census, the Asian population has experienced the fastest growth of any racial group in the United States.

To help teachers celebrate, the AFT has developed a Web page highlighting key events, influential figures and the contributions of Asian/Pacific Americans.