Dr. Wen Yue was the kind of man who rarely showed anger. So his grown children can only imagine what it was like when Yue, as a young physician, was told that he couldn't buy a home in Plymouth because the neighbors objected to a Chinese family.
"My dad's nature was always kind of to shrug his shoulders," said Dr. Jeff Yue, his son. But not this time.
In November 1954, Yue threatened to sue the homeowner. He told a reporter for the Minneapolis Star: "We have finally decided to fight this thing as a matter of principle."
Yue won the battle -- and then the hearts and minds of most of the neighbors, who remained close friends for more than half a century. "He made so many friends while he was there," Jeff Yue said of his father, who died Oct. 19 at age 92.
The elder Yue, who was raised in Putian, China, came to Minnesota in 1948 to work as a physician at the old Glen Lake Sanitarium, a tuberculosis clinic in St. Louis Park. China was in turmoil at the time, and the young physician thought he would return when "everything calmed down," said his daughter, Rosina Yue. But when the Communists took over, "there really was no turning back." He and his fiancée, Nadine, a teacher who also was from China, married and set out to claim their share of the American dream.
"Minneapolis is now a very international city, but I don't think it always was," said Rosina, who was a toddler when her parents made a $500 down payment on the yellow brick house in Plymouth.
The day after they signed the purchase agreement, the seller tried to back out. He told the real estate agent that neighbors "had been pounding on his door until late at night, objecting to his sale of the house to a Chinese family."
Yue got a lawyer, and the dispute made front-page news. The seller relented, and the family was embraced by every neighbor but one, Rosina Yue recalled.
