This sign was purchased by a North Beach second-hand shop from a proprietor in the neighboring Ch
Silk Satin Dress
Grade Range: K-12
Resource Type(s): Artifacts, Primary Sources
Date Posted:
5/8/2009
Virginia Lee Mead wore this salmon-pink silk satin dress when she was a young woman living in New York City's Chinatown, where her father, Lee B. Lok, a first-generation immigrant, ran a general store. The full-length dress is a traditional style that younger second-generation Chinese women wore to formal celebrations during the 1930s. "When I was a child, I really didn't know I was American," recalls Lee. "I had no idea. I mean, we lived in a Chinese community and everybody was Chinese, so we [were] Chinese."
National Standards
United States History Standards (Grades 5-12)
Era 8: The Great Depression and World War II (1929-1945)
2: How the New Deal addressed the Great Depression, transformed American federalism, and initiated the welfare state
3: The causes and course of World War II, the character of the war at home and abroad, and its reshaping of the U.S. role in world affairs
World History Standards (Grades 5-12)
Era 8: A Half-Century of Crisis and Achievement, 1900-1945
2: The causes and global consequences of World War I
3: The search for peace and stability in the 1920s and 1930s
4: The causes and global consequences of World War II
5: Major global trends from 1900 to the end of World War II