Chinatown activist Frank Chin dies

10/11/23 by Parker Garlough 

Frank Chin, who spearheaded Asian-American voter drives in Boston since the 1970s, has died at 91. His son Mark Chin told WCVB that he died peacefully in his Chinatown home on Monday night. 

Chin’s activist initiatives included playing a role in Mayor Wu’s election as the first Asian-American mayor of Boston in 2021, working to increase the number of Asian-American police officers, and helping create an elderly center for the Chinese community. 

He was born in Boston’s Chinatown, moved to China at a young age, and returned to Boston as an adolescent. He was known and loved by many in Chinatown, and came to be known as “Uncle Frank.” This nickname is memorialized in the Chinatown section of the Rose Kennedy Greenway, which was named “Auntie Kay and Uncle Frank Chin Park” in 2019 after Chin and his wife. 

“He had a big umbrella for not just his own family, but for everyone in his community, and he always wanted to help,” Mark Chin said of his father.