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."


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