27-year-old Vincent Chin was beaten with a baseball bat by Ronald Ebens and his stepson, Michael Nitz, after a fight at a bar in Detroit on June 19, 1982, and died four days later. Ebens, a Chrysler plant supervisor, and Nitz, shouted \u201cIt’s because of you little m\u2014\u2014 that we’re out of work!\u201d at Chin. Chin, who had been celebrating his bachelor party at the bar, was buried on what would have been his wedding day. Ebens and Nitz did not deny what they had done but claimed that it had all been a barroom brawl. Originally charged with second degree murder, they pleaded to manslaughter and received three years’ probation and were fined $3,000.<\/p>\n
Ebens and Nitz killed Chin because they blamed him, an assimilated Chinese-American whose parents were immigrants, for the success of the Japanese auto industry and equated him with Japanese automakers.<\/p>\n
Below is the trailer for Who Killed Vincent Chin?, a 1989 documentary by Christine Choy.<\/p>\n