Search the Media Repository
Discover the curated images, videos, and primary sources featured throughout Foundations and Futures
History is more than just text on a page; it is the photographs, voices, and artifacts of the people who lived it. The images and recordings featured across Foundations and Futures are part of a meticulously curated media repository. Whether you are building a lesson plan or investigating an artifact, you can use this database to trace the provenance of our media: discover who created an asset, the historical context behind it, and how it can be used to bring Asian American and Pacific Islander experiences into your classroom.
Multimedia
Chapters
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2025 Momo Crawl Flyer
A flyer for the 13th annual Momo Crawl in 2025. Hosted in Queens, NYC, attendees ate from and supported over twenty local Tibetan, Nepalese, and South Asian restaurants.
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Diversity Plaza in Jackson Heights
Scenes from Jackson Heights’s Diversity Plaza, a vital public square for many community gatherings and actions that is known as “ground zero for new immigrants.”
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Chef Trong Nguyen
Chef/Owner Trong Nguyen of Crawfish & Noodles is considered a pioneer of Viet-Cajun cuisine in Houston, Texas. A self-taught chef, Nguyen was a James Beard Award finalist for Best Chef: Texas in 2020, reflecting the cuisine’s important impact on the region.
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Tension Between Vietnamese Refugee Fishermen and White Fishmeren
A New York Times story covers the tensions between Vietnamese refugee fishermen and white fishermen in Seadrift, Texas. While the City Council unanimously voted to condemn a planned Ku Klux Klan rally in the town, some community members welcomed their presence.
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“Viet Only” Sign in Port Arthur, Texas
A fishing boat pier in Port Arthur, Texas is designated as ‘Viet Only’ c. 1980.
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Hiep-Thai Plaza
Hiep-Thai Plaza in Garland, Texas is a bustling shopping center for the Vietnamese community of Dallas.
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Houston Vietnam War Memorial
The Vietnam War Memorial in Houston features a twenty seven-foot copper statue of two soldiers—one Vietnamese, one American—standing side by side, symbolizing their joint fight for South Vietnam’s freedom.
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Houston’s Little Saigon
Houston’s first Little Saigon was located in the downtown area. The flag of South Vietnam—yellow with three red stripes—is often depicted throughout the area.
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Whiz Kids
Perpetuated by media, such as in this 1987 cover of Time magazine, students of Asian descent are often subjected to the “model minority myth,” which includes the generalization that all Asian and Asian American students are academically gifted.
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First Planeload of Arrivals, Harrisburg Pa. Airport
Vietnamese refugees disembarking from an airplane at a resettlement camp in Fort Indiantown Gap, Pennsylvania, after the end of the Vietnam War in 1975.
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Life Behind the Lobby
In an interview with NPR, Pawan Dhingra, author of Life Behind the Lobby: Indian American Motel Owners and the American Dream, details the circumstances of how immigrant Gujarati farmers aspiring for autonomous professions fell into the US motel industry.
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“Ouster Of All Japs In California Near!”
This 1942 San Francisco Examiner headline, “OUSTER OF ALL JAPS IN CALIFORNIA NEAR!,” signaled the beginning of the forced incarceration of Japanese Americans, including Kay Keiichi Sugahara and his family.
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Keiichi Sugahara and Family
Japanese American industrialist Kay Keiichi Sugahara with his wife and grandchildren on the lawn of his estate in Pelham Manor, a suburb of New York City, in 1972.
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Ben, The Luggage Boy by Horatio Alger Jr.
American author Horatio Alger (1832–1899) wrote over one hundred books regaling “rags to riches” tales of self-made men. His writings promoted the “American Dream” and popularized the idea of the US as a meritocracy during the early years of the twentieth century.
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Meet the ʻUlu Farmers
Hawaiʻi ʻUlu Cooperative farmers harvest ʻulu (breadfruit) while upholding the values of mutual aid and care for the common good.
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Pounding Poi
A Native Hawaiian man pounding taro into a paste for poi in 1902. Still prevalent in Native Hawaiian cuisine today, taro has a spiritual and storied meaning that connects the Hawaiian people to the land.
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Taro Patch
A taro field, or loʻi kalo in Hawaiʻi, 1902. The taro root farmed from these lands is made into poi, a staple in Native Hawaiian cuisine, which is prepared by mashing cooked taro into a paste and consumed fresh immediately or fermented over time.
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The Original Patel Brothers
The original Patel Brothers location on Devon Avenue in Chicago, Illinois, 1984, has since grown into the largest Indian grocery chain in the United States.
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Joyce Chen Sampling Her Dishes
Joyce Chen sampling her dishes in 1967. Through her restaurant in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and her educational TV cooking show, Joyce Chen Cooks, Chen was deeply influential in the expansion of Chinese cuisine in the US.
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Chun King Inn
Children looking at the menu of the Chun King Inn, an American-style Chinese restaurant that opened as part of the 1964–1965 New York World’s Fair.
