What’s Missing From The Picture?
May 9, 2019, 7:08 PM | Updated: 7:13 pm
SALT LAKE CITY, Utah — When Max Chang was in the seventh grade, he got a history lesson about the transcontinental railroad and saw A.J. Russell’s famous “champagne” photograph marking the driving of the “last spike.”
He knew then the history lesson and the photo were missing something – the Chinese workers who built the railroad.
“It wasn’t really part of the narrative,” he says.
AJ Russell’s famous “champagne” photo
He vowed then not to visit Promontory Summit until history was fixed.
“It was my own personal boycott,” he says.
Years later he was appointed to the board overseeing the celebration of the Golden Spike anniversary and he got an opportunity to correct the story – one classroom at a time.
Chang, who works in real estate, volunteered to tell the story of the Chinese railroad workers to a fourth grade class at Oakridge Elementary School so the students could produce a graphic novel about the story.
A scene from the graphic novel created by Carrie Wetzel’s 4th Grade Class
He told them how no one bothered to call the Chinese by their names, how the Chinese workers slept in tents instead of train cars available to other workers, and how they endured bitter cold, avalanches and rock slides.
“More and more schools started hearing about it (his presentation). And so I started going to more schools,” he says.
At last count, Chang has told the story of the Chinese workers to 750 children. He has also made curriculum materials available online.
Last year, on the 149th anniversary of the completion of the railroad, Chang ended his boycott of Promontory Summit.
Max Chang at Promontory Summit
“It was emotional” he says. “I think that you see on the one side of really celebratory section about the two trains coming together, the beautiful two trains and all the excitement related to the golden spike. And on the other hand, you see…Chinese rail workers’ descendants are there. They’re honoring their ancestors. So in many ways, it’s like a memorial at the same time.”
“You think that that the struggle of the Chinese railroad workers is not just laying ten miles of track in one day but it’s also …the Asian-American experience of being seen as strangers, as foreigners.”
That’s an experience Chang, himself, contends with today.
Max Change teaching a history lesson
“We’ve always stood out, the Asians always stood out,” he says. “And we’re always looked upon as foreigners. Even though I was born in Salt Lake…people always ask me, ‘Oh, where did you come from?’”
That’s why Max Chang, a businessman, is teaching history – to show that even though the Chinese weren’t always in the photographs, they helped build this country and really are part of the picture.
