In 1939, the Dong family faced housing discrimination in Coronado, California, amid racially restrictive laws. Unable to secure a rental, they found refuge in the home of Gus Thompson and his wife, Emma, who welcomed them with open arms.
Over the years, the Dong family expanded their property holdings in Coronado, including the ownership of an apartment on F Avenue. Today, their combined real estate assets are valued at approximately $8 million.
Lloyd Dong Jr., 81, and his brother, Ron Dong, 86, have pledged $5 million from the proceeds of their property sale to support Black students at San Diego State University (SDSU). The donation will be directed to the university’s Black Resource Center, with plans underway to rename the center in honor of Emma and Gus Thompson.
Moving down south
According to Lloyd Jr, his father Lloyd grew up on a farm in Bakersfield, California, and moved to San Diego in his early teens. He had a fifth-grade education and took on various jobs after moving south, one of which was in a wholesale fresh market, Quan Main.
Lloyd learned how to read Chinese numerals when working at the market to understand the pricing of the plants.
Lloyd Jr. said his father moved from San Diego to Coronado because the “ferry transportation was eating up his time, going back and forth.”
“He didn’t know all the flowers but he knew how to grow things,” Lloyd Jr. said. “So when he became a gardener, he bought one book, ‘Sunsets Garden Handbook,’ and that book became his Bible. He learned the scientific names of plants. If you heard other gardeners talking, none of them were doing this. He said this was a way to impress people, which seemed to have worked.”
Lloyd did more than just garden — he sharpened scissors at Coronado High School and set and maintained sprinkler systems in the neighborhood, among other odd jobs.
“He was always working,” said Janice Dong, 86, Ron’s wife. “He worked six days a week as a gardener and then on the seventh day, he did sprinkler systems and all the other things that were extra from the gardening.”
Lloyd’s wife, Margaret, was born in California and lived in China from 3 to 16 years old. After her mother passed away, “one of her relatives pulled her aside and said, ‘It’s time you go home. One, you’re running low on funds, but mainly, you have something that makes it dangerous for you to be here: a U.S. passport,’” Ron said.
Margaret came to Angel Island, California, alone, then met Lloyd. Together, they raised four children: Ron, Jeanette, Jackie and Lloyd Jr.
Discrimination faced in Coronado
Enacted in 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act barred Chinese immigration to the United States, despite widespread illegal entry. Repealed in 1943, it was succeeded by a quota system, allowing approximately 105 visas annually. This, along with other legislation, institutionalized anti-Asian American discrimination.
Racism also permeated housing policy, with racially restrictive covenants commonplace in home deeds during the early 1900s. These clauses prohibited certain races and religious groups from purchasing or residing in specific neighborhoods. Though banned by the Fair Housing Act in 1968, traces of these discriminatory practices endure on many property documents.
In Coronado, Gus Thompson’s boarding house, situated in the upper level of his barn on C Ave., served as the refuge for minorities and immigrants at the time. Thompson, having migrated from Kentucky to work at the Hotel del Coronado, constructed the house and barn in 1895, thereby evading the city’s racial housing covenants and enabling him to offer accommodations to marginalized individuals.
On top of the Dong family’s home on 832 C Ave., which they purchased from the Thompson family in 1955, they also own 535 F Ave., an eight-unit apartment complex Lloyd built in 1957.
Ron said that their father was very careful and quiet with his spending.
“He kind of chuckled a couple of times about having overheard some people locally say, ‘Whoa, he’s not supposed to have enough money to build apartments. He drives the old rattletrap truck, he’s a gardener, he can’t do that,’” Janice said.
Janice knew Lloyd for 60 years and said that “he was raised in a very racist era and was very conscious of not appearing above his status.”
Lloyd Jr., who was born in 1942, said that when he was growing up, “there were less overt segregations with the Chinese and people of different dissents because the country had come to a point of view that it’s not where you came from, it was the teaching of the country that they vilified or they have the fight against, like the communists … you can’t judge a person by what they look like, you have to know what their beliefs are.”
Ron, who was born in 1937, said during WWII when the Japanese were relocated to concentration camps, “There was a period of time when we were mistaken for Japanese, putting us all in the same basket.”
“There was a bit of discrimination that was bothersome to me,” Ron said. “People changed their attitudes really quickly. It became of knowing if you were non-white and non-black, you must be either Japanese or some other Asian. Therefore, they’d just call you ‘all.’”
Lloyd Jr. said he remembered a picture in one of his history books of a Chinese man carrying a sign, stating “I’m Chinese.”
People would sell buttons and signs, which the Dong brothers recollect their father collecting.
“It was a way of distinguishing him from some of the others that he would be grouped with,” Ron said.
Lloyd Jr. remembered his mother telling him that when he was around five years old, one of his classmates had a birthday party; everyone was invited except him. Ron recalled that it was challenging to date girls when he was in high school and had teachers tell him that “it wasn’t acceptable, particularly for naval officers, to have their daughters go to a prom with me versus someone else.”
During that time, the Dong family was the only Chinese family going through Coronado High School (Ron, ‘55; Lloyd Jr., ‘60). Jeanette, the eldest sister, was a valedictorian, and the four Dong children got good grades.
“You don’t run into the mass issues as long as there’s one,” Janice said. “It’s when [there is] more and more of a minority [present], that the majority becomes threatened.”
A donation for future generations
The Dong brothers share the property with their late sister Jeannette’s two sons. Ron and Janice currently live in San Jose and Lloyd Jr. and his wife, Girina, live in Anaheim.
Ron would occasionally come down to Coronado for class reunions and to take care of the house. After Jeannette passed away a year and a half ago, the brothers felt it was the right time to sell the property.
The decision to donate to SDSU’s Black Resource Center stemmed from the Dong brothers’ desire to support the educational needs of underrepresented minorities.
The resource center provides support, resources and advocacy for Black students, faculty and staff.
Ron and Janice are also retired educators who hold firm to the belief in education’s transformative power.
“If you take young people from families that haven’t gone to college, specifically minorities, and plop them into college, often they can’t finish,” Janice said. “It’s like being brought to the banquet table, but not being given any of the utensils. That’s what is so wonderful about the Black Resource Center; it gives them the utensils. They will even go through grad school to support these kids.”
Ron and Lloyd Jr. said that their parents were big advocates for higher education. Jeanette is an alum of the University of California, Los Angeles; Jackie, Woodbury University; Ron, University of Redlands and Lloyd Jr., Long Beach State University.
