Chinatown mural honors Wong Kim Ark and birthright citizenship

A new mural at Sacramento Street and Grant Avenue has turned a Chinatown wall into a political statement about who gets to be American. The portrait of Wong Kim Ark, framed by the words “I am an American” in English and Chinese, lands just steps from the neighborhood where he was born and from the legal history that made his name central to birthright citizenship.

The site carries unusual weight in San Francisco. The Museum of Chinese in America says Wong Kim Ark was born on October 1, 1870, in an apartment above his father’s grocery store at 751 Sacramento Street. More than a century later, the same neighborhood corner now points visitors back to United States v. Wong Kim Ark, the 1898 Supreme Court case that helped cement the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

The mural was painted by Norman Chuck, known as Vogue, alongside Elaine Chu and Marina Perez-Wong of Twin Walls Mural Company. The artists spent about a month on the project and worked with the Chinese Historical Society of America Museum, community members and family members. A bronze plaque sits with the mural to encourage people to stop, learn and reflect on the case and the man behind it.

That educational mission matters because birthright citizenship is once again at the center of national legal debate. Wong Kim Ark’s own case began after he was denied reentry to the United States following a trip to China under the Chinese Exclusion Act. San Francisco District Attorney Henry Foote pushed the test case that became United States v. Wong Kim Ark, and a federal court in the Northern District of California ruled for him on January 3, 1896 before the Supreme Court affirmed his citizenship two years later.

Local remembrance has been building around the same corner. KQED reported that organizers, lawmakers and historians gathered there in March 2025 to mark the 127th anniversary of the decision, and Norman Wong, Wong Kim Ark’s great-grandson, has spoken publicly about how the fight over birthright citizenship resonates inside the family. The mural now gives that memory a permanent public face in the heart of Chinatown, where history, politics and identity still meet on the same block.