Chong worked, as well, and sometimes took on two jobs so they could give their growing boys what they needed for school and sports. Michael has worked at the Dayton Housing Authority for years. "If you need to be somewhere, be somewhere on time. "She always told them to do things right the first time," Michael said. "It was a good neighborhood."Ĭhong knew little English but set about raising the children with strict discipline and strong family values. "Everyone was held to the same standard," he said. The Freemans settled in Huber Heights, a bedroom community near Dayton, and Michael Freeman said it was an ideal place to raise an interracial family because there were many military families and all sorts of diversity. He's kind of ashamed I married a black man." He put it in a drawer and never showed nobody. Though she keeps in touch with her brother, she said she once sent him a photo of her family, "and he never put it up. Koreans do not look kindly on interracial relationships, and Michael and Chong moved to the United States in 1979. The two were married the following year, in 1977.
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She was working at a movie theater in Taegu City, South Korea, when she met Michael Freeman, who was stationed there in the U.S. "I was hungry, and we never had enough money."
"I did not have a good childhood," she said. She was raised primarily by her older brother, Chong Su Na, and the memories are not good. Her fear of discrimination is understandable, considering the culture in which she grew up.Ĭhong was born in 1952, during the Korean War, a conflict that directly or indirectly claimed the lives of her mother, father and sister. "I used to ask my kids, 'Are you ashamed to have Mommy come and see you at school?'." Chong said, "And they'd say, 'No, Mommy, we love for you to come to school.' To this day, his mother, Chong, said she doesn't remember a time when her children (Marcus, 22, and Michael Jr., 24) expressed anything of the sort to her. "I would be like, 'Hey Dad, will you come with me here instead of Mom?'." he recalled.īut he hid those thoughts well. Then there were the times when he found it easier to avoid embarrassment or confrontation. "As a kid, you don't want to be different."
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That's the first thing you know how to do," said Freeman, now an Ohio State senior linebacker. "Somebody says, 'Shut up, you're Korean,' and you want to fight. There were times, in those awkward adolescent years, when having an African-American father and a Korean mother was difficult for Marcus Freeman.Īs a middle-school student, he recalled kids teasing him, and his fists would fly.
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