F I R S TP R E V907NEXTLAST

Walter U. Lum Place, Chinatown
The west side of Portsmouth Square is bounded by Walter U. Lum Place, the first street in America named for a Chinese person. Lum was an early civil rights leader, fighting for the rights of Chinese-Americans. In 1904 he founded the Native Sons of the Golden State (later the Chinese-American Citizens Alliance) and for 35 years was the managing editor for the organization's newspaper, Chinese Times. That paper is the oldest Chinese-language daily in the U.S. Walter Lum died in 1961 and today the street that bears his name is home to another civil rights organization, Chinese for Affirmative Action. The CAA is housed in a building that was once the communications center for Sun Yat-sen and the Chinese Revolutionaries of 1910.
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