Guiyu Feng, 76, and Yuexin Huang, 80, were dancing on the grass in Flushing Meadow Park. Their audience were immigrants of different races. At the other end of the grass, Oliver and Oscar Ni, three-year-old twins, were sitting in a stroller with a slogan board larger than their bodies. It said: “Justice for all.”

These were among the more than 2,000 Chinese immigrants who came from all five boroughs of New York to meet the freedom riders in Queens, and to support the demand for civil rights.

The large turnout of Chinese participants even surprised the organizers.

“Chinese people like to keep silence traditionally. Plus the weather is good. I was worried that nobody was going to show up,” said May Chen, the vice president of Local 23-25 of UNITE, the garment workers union, and the Asian liaison for the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride. “But so many Chinese people have shown up. I am so excited.”

“This is the best attended civil rights event outside of Chinatown,” said Margaret Chin, deputy director of the Asian Americans for Equality. “This is different from the traditional image of Chinese immigrants in the more than hundred years of the history of the community.”

Zuhua Zhu, former president of the Chinatown Senior Center, vividly remembers the deep silence the Chinese community maintained in the 60s when he was a new immigrant. He still feels the pain and frustration, recalling his helplessness during his daughter’s mortifying experience in school. He said that when his daughter was beaten up in her school, he did not have the courage to talk to her teacher. This was a typical situation for many Chinese immigrants in those days. “We always thought retaliating would lead to more trouble. But looking back, I see that we were wrong about our silence.” Zhu brought fifty seniors from his center to the Flushing Meadow Park.

“The community is getting mature,” said Allen Yang, of Councilman John Liu’s office. “Not only do people participate more, they have more awareness of the purposes of participating.” Yang has been promoting democracy and civil rights in the community for more than 20 years. Yang recalled that at the beginning they had to attract the community with free gifts and food. “People knew and we knew that they came only for the freebies,” said Yang, with a smile.

Yang doesn’t need to worry about that any more. When asked if he came to express his disappointment at the policies of this administration towards seniors, the 76-year-old Feng said: “I think the government treats our seniors fine. I just want them to treat the new immigrants in the same way.”

Yongfang Ma, a 54-year-old grandma who worked in a Chinatown garment factory for nine years before she retired in 1999 due to her deteriorating health, condition, said, “Chinese immigrants also love America. We also work hard for this country. We should be treated fairly.”

Many attribute the awakening of the Chinese community to civil right issues to the persistent education by the Chinese media and community organizations. The promotion of the Freedom Ride, for instance, started two months ago in the community. There was at least one story a week in the papers. The flux of new immigrants also helped. “When the community is getting larger, the voice is getting louder,” said Chin of the AAFE.

Chin said that the failure of the protest against the construction of a prison in Chinatown twenty years ago taught the community a big lesson. “We had 10,000 people who protested but we only paraded in Chinatown.”

“Now we realize that sometimes our own effort is not enough. We need to unite. That’s why we are here,” said Chin.

Asked what was most memorable in the 13 days and 20,000 miles trip of the Freedom Ride, Twei-Peing Kan from Los Angeles spoke about the bus ride between Texas and New Mexico. “The bus was stopped by the police and we were detained for four hours. I was fearful at first. Then people started to hold hands and sing together. At that moment I really felt the warmth and power of all of us,” said Kan, with tears in her eyes.

Brain McLaughlin, the chair of New York Freedom Ride Committee, led the crowd to chant: “We immigrants, united, can never be defeated.” On the grass, Feng and Huang’s dance got applause.

This article was written as part of the Ethnic Press Fellowship of the Independent Press Association-New York.