It's too bad we still need organizations like Justice for New Americans.

But we do.

All too often the color of your skin still colors the type of justice you receive.

That's where Cecilia Lee Chang and her newly founded Justice for New Americans comes in.

The Fremont human relations commissioner is taking her experience fighting for the rights of Wen Ho Lee, the wrongly accused, government-abused scientist, to the people.

Education and the law

The newly formed organization is part education, part legal battle.

The group plans to educate the public about how and why new Americans can easily be targeted as scapegoats under the guise of national security.

And it plans to take some cases to court.

It's what Chang helped do in the Wen Ho Lee case -- call news conferences, hold workshops, stage demonstrations and go to court.

In the end, a federal judge apologized to Lee, who was accused of spying. Today, he is a free man.

This struggle for equal justice is a battle that Chinese-Americans have fought since the 19th century.

Chang is the modern-day personification of the spirit of earlier Asian-Americans who struggled with American justice a century and a half ago.

In earlier times, discrimination against Chinese-Americans was direct and ugly. They could not own land. They could not attend public schools. They could not testify against whites in court. They could not run for public office.

They fought back.

The documentary ``Ancestors in the Americas,'' by independent filmmaker Loni Ding, tells the story of the early Chinese-Americans' legal struggles.

``It was natural for them to ante up a portion of their earnings to fight these discriminatory laws,'' the documentary says. ``They hired seasoned lawyers and challenged almost every law or court case enacted against them, sometimes with great success.

``The hundreds of cases they brought in the 19th and early 20th centuries helped establish legal precedents across life's broad spectrum, from livelihood and education to immigrant rights and citizenship.''

In other words, it was the Chinese-Americans who cleared the way for the waves of European immigrants who were to come to America later.

Said Berkeley law history Professor Charles McClain: ``It's hard to think of a single law perceived by the Chinese as discriminatory that they did not challenge in court.''

Such cases, he said, ``did profoundly affect the course of American jurisprudence, contributing in a significant way to the molding of the 14th Amendment due process and equal protection.''

Equal protection

And that's what Chang and her new group are seeking -- equal protection.

Like the Chinese of earlier times, Justice for New Americans will use the courts as a last resort.

The early Chinese-Americans would try to win new friends by hosting lavish dinners for their European-American neighbors.

If they had a problem, the elders of the community sought meetings with the local mayor or sheriff to try to solve the problem.

Only when that failed did they go to court.

More than 170 of those cases reached the U.S. Supreme Court.

Chang said education will be a central theme for Justice for New Americans.

She said the group will organize a speakers bureau in public schools and on college campuses. The group will work with students and teachers to make the Wen Ho Lee story part of the curriculum.

Although she didn't mention it, let me suggest that the history of the Asian-American contribution to law, agriculture, the railroads, science, commerce, education, medicine and Silicon Valley be included as part of her plan.

Let's do justice to history, too.