Asian Pacific American Heritage Month

At Texas A&M University - Texarkana, we celebrate Asian Pacific American Heritage Month during the month of April each year. This month--which is observed nation-wide in May--officially became a recurring annual affair in 1992, having started in the 1970s as a single week acknowledging and celebrating the accomplishments and contributions of Asian and Pacific Islander Americans in the United States.

A rather broad term, Asian/Pacific encompasses all of the Asian continent and the Pacific islands of Melanesia (New Guinea, New Caledonia, Vanuatu, Fiji and the Solomon Islands), Micronesia (Marianas, Guam, Wake Island, Palau, Marshall Islands, Kiribati, Nauru and the Federated States of Micronesia) and Polynesia (New Zealand, Hawaiian Islands, Rotuma, Midway Islands, Samoa, American Samoa, Tonga, Tuvalu, Cook Islands, French Polynesia and Easter Island).

The month of May was chosen to commemorate the immigration of the first Japanese to the United States on May 7, 1843, and to mark the anniversary of the completion of the transcontinental railroad on May 10, 1869. The majority of the workers who laid the tracks were Chinese immigrants.

From asianpacificheritage.gov.

This guide is intended as a non-exhaustive resource on contemporary and historic Asian and Pacific American works and accomplishments.