Canadian city commemorates historic protest against segregated 'Chinese-only' schools

A century later, residents of Victoria, British Columbia, are commemorating the Chinese community’s 1922 successful protest against the city’s school segregation.

Locals paid tribute this week to the Sept. 5 boycott, in which some 200 Chinese students walked out and refused to attend the “Chinese-only” schools that were designated for them by the board amid rampant anti-Chinese sentiment at the time.

The yearlong boycott eventually forced the board to reverse its decision. On the 100th anniversary marked on Monday, community members retraced the steps of the protesters, honoring their fight against racism.

“What we’ve experienced in the past, especially with Covid and the anti Asian sentiment, brings back some of the discrimination that our forefathers and ancestors had to endure,” Alan Lowe, chair of the Victoria Chinatown Museum Society, which spearheaded the event, told NBC News. “The Chinese population … has overcome a lot of barriers in order to be able to work in professions and to be elected politicians and to reach the highest goals that many of the Chinese population reached.”