The Black Resource Centre at San Diego State University will be renamed after a man who was born into slavery in Kentucky but became an entrepreneur after moving to California in 1886. He is being honoured because of his generosity to others – specifically a Chinese-American family who could not find anywhere else to live on Coronado island in 1939 due to racial restrictions.
Gus Thompson, who was born in Kentucky about 1859 or 1860, came to California to work as a coachman for Elisha Spurr Babcock, carrying the first guests to the Hotel Del Coronado. He married Emma Gardner in San Diego in 1892, and they raised three remarkable children in Coronado.
Brothers Lloyd Dong Jr. and Ron Dong will be making a $5 million donation in honour of Gus and Emma. Ron was only two years old when his parents moved to Coronado in 1939 from San Diego. Lloyd Dong Sr. worked six days a week as a gardener for wealthy Coronado residents, and the family wanted to live on the island to shorten his commute.
Gus Thompson had built a livery stable next to their house with an upstairs boardinghouse for Black people who needed a place to sleep in Coronado, such as laborers and chauffeurs who had driven their clients to the island. When no one else would rent to the Dongs, the Thompsons did, and eventually allowed them to buy the property in 1955.
The Dongs replaced the stable with an eight-bedroom apartment complex. Now the house and apartment complex are for sale because the brothers eventually moved away to other parts of California.
The brothers decided to donate their share to the university’s Black Resource Center after learning more about the Thompsons, thanks to the work of local amateur historian Kevin Ashley. “Because of Gus Thompson and his allowing my father to live and work in a place where he would not otherwise have been able to, this is a payback,” said Ron.
Ron Dong worked as a high school math and science teacher before he retired and Janice Dong was a special-education teacher at a middle school. Janice said the couple considered funding scholarships but, learning that college students from under-represented groups often need support beyond financial aid, chose to direct the funds to the Black Resource Center.
Gus and Emma Thompson’s great-grandson, Ballinger Kemp III, 76, called the donation “a beautiful thing.” His great-grandparents’ decision to help the Dongs fit in with the family ethos of doing good deeds without making a fuss, he said.
“Given what I know of my great-grandparents through my grandmother, I don’t think that it was something that they thought a whole lot about,” he said. “It was just the right thing to do.”
The Dongs’ donation is special for Mr. Kemp because he comes from a family of educators, including his wife, mother and many aunts. For decades, he represented teachers in private practice and as a staff attorney for a teachers’ union. His grandmother and Gus and Emma’s daughter, Edyth, also put three girls through school in Los Angeles, he said.
“We could use more of that — the spirit of the Thompsons and the Dongs — right now,” he said.
Sources:
Chinese American family repays decades-old favor with $5M donation to SDSU Black students NBC San Diego, Mar. 12, 2024
SDSU to Rename its Black Resource Center to Honor Former Coronado Resident Gus Thompson City News Service, Feb. 26, 2024
They Helped a Family Facing Discrimination 80 Years Ago. Now They’re Being Celebrated. New York Times, Mar. 14, 2024