The Story of Joe Jung
by Bill Sanders
Ju Jung was born in 1873 in the Canton region of China. In 1885, at age 12, he immigrated to the United States, and adopted the Anglicized name, Joe Jung. He settled in Elberton, Georgia, where he ran a laundry and became president of the Chinese Merchant’s Association of America. He later relocated to Atlanta, where he married Atlanta native Leila Colson. Together, they raised three children, Ollie, Jessie Ruth, and Mary Elizabeth. In Atlanta, Jung became a respected businessman, operating two popular Chinese restaurants, Joe Jung’s Chop Suey Restaurant and The Oriental Café.
Our Church records note that Joe and Leila Jung joined St. Mark in 1910.
In an Atlanta newspaper, Jung was described as “An upright Christian who had long since shorn his queue and thoughts of pagan gods and tong wars” and adopted an American way of life. Another news story quoted a St. Mark member as stating that their three children attended Sunday School regularly and were well behaved children.
While the Jung family was accepted and welcomed at St. Mark, in the Jim Crow South, Chinese faced race barriers, including denying their children admission to white schools.
News stories at the time account how Mr. Jung, “with the aid of a local church pastor where the Jungs worshipped (Rev. Dr. Samuel Belk) contested the denial of admission of two of his children to local white schools in Atlanta.” They prepared a lawsuit and then negotiated for two years with the city, which permitted Ollie and Ruth to be admitted to the 4th and 5th grades of a white school without recourse to any court proceedings. A third child, Mary Elizabeth, then age 6, was admitted to the first grade the next year.
In addition to his two downtown restaurants, Jung was also a seasonal food vendor at Atlanta’s Southeastern Fair. Unfortunately, Jung was murdered in 1917 during an argument with James MacDonald, the fair’s concessions manager. In 1919, MacDonald was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to prison for 20 years. After an appeal, the case was remanded for a new trial, which resulted in a mistrial. In 1922 a third trial was held, and the charge was reduced to a misdemeanor with a fine of $500.
In an on line blog titled “A Minor American Hero” Jessie Ruth Jung’s grand son James Allen, MD, a Professor Emeritus of Internal Medicine at the Ohio State University and former Medical Director of Ohio State University East Hospital, tells the story of how they did not know their family’s history or their Asian heritage until much later in time, and how Joe Jung’s story faded from memory.
After his death, Jung’s children all changed their last name from Jung to Young. They disavowed their Chinese ancestry to escape the prejudice and discrimination that they experienced as children and still as young adults. The Chinese heritage of the family was hidden and never again mentioned.
After all the Young brothers and sisters died, at the funeral of the last surviving spouse, of one of the Young siblings told the secret story that she had sworn to her husband to never tell. To their generation, their Chinese ancestry was a terrible secret that they were ashamed of. It had only brought them the pain and scorn of being considered second class people.
In his blog, after discovering his Chinese ancestry, Dr. Allen concludes: “A hundred years later, my family celebrates and takes pride in the fact that we have such a rich racial and cultural heritage."
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