He was expelled from Vietnam. A year later, Martin Luther King, Jr. nominated Thich Nhat Hanh for the Nobel Peace Prize.

The gritty writer of gritty stories Elmore Leonard was born on this day. Say what you want about him and his writing, but the man had rules:

“I spent most of my dough on booze, broads and boats and the rest I wasted.” -American writer Elmore Leonard, born on this day in 1925 His fictional stories were often thrillers that revolved around crime. Many have been adapted into movies, like "Get Shorty" and television shows like "Justified."

Families and romantic partners saw the names of the dead and added names of those they loved. The quilt now weighs an estimated 54 tons and is considered the largest piece of folk art in the world.

The AIDS Memorial Quilt was a way to remember people who had AIDS and to celebrate their lives. It patched together the families of those who died. The quilt traveled to cities across the U.S. and around the world.

The virus spread quickly through the LGBTQ+ community and some religious leaders called it a plague sent by god to punish homosexuals. In addition to that, many funeral homes refused to even handle an HIV-positive body.

The AIDS acronym means acquired immune deficiency syndrome. AIDS was the end result of HIV or human immunodeficiency virus. It weakened the immune system and allowed development of lethal infections and cancers. These were painful ways to die. The stigma was a whole other level of suffering.

The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 abolished the quota system and prohibited discrimination based on race, sex, nationality, or place of birth. Disinformation from agenda-driven, rightwing media helped fuel the recent resurgence of xenophobia and intolerance toward recent US immigrants.

Chinese exclusion ended, in a way, nearly 20 years later. China had become an ally in WWII. So, the U.S. once again allowed immigrants from China, but only 105 people per year.

They started calling themselves the Asian Exclusion League and focused on preventing immigration from Japan, Korea, China, and India. In 1924, the U.S. Congress passed its Immigration Act, which set quotas on European immigration and prohibited all immigrants from Asia.

The rioting ended with what came to be known as the Gentlemen’s Agreement: Japanese American students could return to San Francisco public schools but Japan could no longer allow its citizens to come to the U.S. By the end of that year, the anti-immigrant group had grown in membership and scope.

Just a month later, on January 3rd, 1907, Roosevelt tried to reduce tensions by hosting a White House gathering of officials from Japan and San Francisco. On May 20th, 1907, members of the Japan and Korea Exclusion League and others started a racist attack targeting Japanese Americans.

Just a year before, Roosevelt had helped negotiate an end to the Japan-Russia War and he noticed that Japan had quickly become a world power – one that he did not want to provoke. In Roosevelt’s state of the union address of December 1906, he criticized the persecution of Japanese immigrants.

Japanese-American families protested the school board’s decision, but, seeing no changes, explained the situation to Japanese government officials, who made it an international issue. U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt got involved and publicly opposed the San Francisco school board’s decision.

It was a group of business and labor leaders who wanted to end immigration from Japan and Korea. A reporter at their first meeting in 1905 wrote that laborers in attendance were “angrily ranting against the foreign men who were preventing them from owning homes and achieving a middle class life.”

October 11, 1906, the San Francisco Board of Education told its nearly 100 Japanese students that they could no longer attend public schools. Instead, they had to go to the segregated Chinese school. The board members were responding to the Japanese and Korean Exclusion League.