PBS News Hour

JOHN YANG: Now the next installment of our Hidden History series for Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, we spotlight a political trailblazer for Asian Americans.

DALIP SINGH SAUND, Former U.S. Representative: This is your Congressman Dalip Singh Saund, reporting from the nation's capital.

JOHN YANG: He gave a voice to Asian Americans who had no one to represent them.

Dalip Singh Saund was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1956 from California's Imperial Valley.

He was the first Indian American and the first person of any Asian descent in Congress.

He broke barriers at the height of the Cold War at a time of American racial and societal upheaval.

MAN: Picketing the school they clashed with the police.

JOHN YANG: Saund was born in 1899 in the north Indian province of Punjab at the time under British rule, inspired by two pillars in the struggle for freedom and equality, Mahatma Gandhi and Abraham Lincoln.

Saund came to the United States to study at the University of California Berkeley, where he earned a masters and a PhD in mathematics.

He wanted to be a teacher but couldn't find a job because he wasn't a naturalized U.S. citizen, a status federal law reserved only for white immigrants.

Instead, he became a farmer in Southern California.

His campaign for an end to the restrictions on citizenship led to President Harry Truman signing a 1946 law that allowed Indian and Filipino immigrants to become Americans.

DALIP SINGH SAUND: We worked hard at it.

Sometimes people said one time a man told me he said, Doc, you're crazy.

How can you expect a bill like that to be passed for the benefit of $2,000 poor Hindus?

I said, I have faith in the American sense of justice and fair play and I'm going to work and it paid off.

JOHN YANG: All the years sawn farmed, he maintained his keen interest in U.S. politics.

After gaining U.S. citizenship in 1949, he realized his ambition of running for office and was elected in 1950 to be a local justice of the peace.

A Democrat, he was elected to Congress in 1956, defeating primary and general election opponents who both made an issue of his foreign born status.

He built a record of championing the farmers of Southern California and immigrant's rights.

As a first term member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Saund returned to India after nearly four decades away.

He fostered stronger relations between India the world's largest democracy, and the United States.

The world's oldest.

While running for a fourth term in 1962, Saund suffered a massive stroke.

He stayed in the race even winning the Democratic primary but lost the general election.

He died in 1973 after a second stroke.

His legacy is summed up by the words beneath his portrait hanging in the Capitol.

There is no room in the United States of America for second class citizenship.