Celebrating Asian American, Native Hawai'ian, Pacific Islander Heritage Month: Kinjiro Matsudaira, first Asian American elected mayor in US

Kinjiro Matsudaira, born September 13, 1885 in Pennsylvania, was an American inventor and politician in Maryland.  He was the son of a Japanese father and an American mother.  In May 1912, he filed for a patent concerning the functions of a thermometric fire-detector and was granted the patent in September 1914. 

He entered politics and, in 1927, was elected as mayor of Edmonston, Maryland, a small community just outside of Washington, DC.  He is the first Asian American to be elected mayor in the US.  He was re-elected as mayor in 1943.

He passed away in October 1963 at the age of 78. 

Celebrating Native American Heritage Month: William Paul, first Native legislator in Alaska

William Paul, born May 7, 1885 in Tongass Village, Alaska, was a member of the Raven (Tlingit) moiety.  He and his brothers attended Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and William received his Bachelor of Arts from Whitworth University in Spokane, Washington. 

He and his brother Louis founded the Alaska Native Brotherhood (ANB), which pressed for voting rights, desegregation, social services, and advancing land claims for Tlingit in Alaska.  He was the first Alaska Native to become an attorney, the first to be elected to the Alaska Territorial House of Representative, and the first to serve as an officer in the Bureau of Indian Affairs. 

He was a major player in the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, signed by President Nixon in December 1971.  The law established Alaska Native claims to land by transferring titles to twelve Alaska Native regional corporations and two hundred village corporations.

Paul died in Seattle, Washington in March 1977.