Museum of Chinese in America

Virginia Kee (b. 1932) was a long-time teacher at Junior High School 65, a co-founder of the Chinatown Planning Council (CPC), and a trailblazer in Chinatown and New York Democratic politics. In this, the second of four interviews that MOCA staff conducted with Virginia Kee during the 1980s, Kee begins by discussing her early career while pursuing a bachelor and master degree at Hunter College. She then recounts her experience at her first job after graduation as the first Chinese American teacher at Junior High School 125 in Woodside Queens. This was during the time of Open Enrollment (1961-1963), when the Board of Education allowed for Black students to be bused in to majority-white schools as a means to appease parents pushing for more systematic efforts at school desegregation. Kee also describes how she later came to be permanently appointed to Junior High School 65 in Chinatown in 1965, how finding a lack of programs for the community youth led her to co-found CPC, and how constantly having to fight for funding for CPC because residents in Chinatown lacked political power led her to become involved in electoral politics. She briefly discusses other groups of which she was an active part, including United Democratic Organization, Community Board No. 3, the Council of Asian American Women, and New York State Teachers of a Second Language. The interview concludes with her reflections on childhood playtime with her siblings and the isolated life her family due to their Zhongshan roots, the changes she has noticed in Chinatown and her students over time, her first classes of students from Hong Kong and Mainland China, and the differences between these groups of students.