05/23/2026
Harry Hom Dow was born in Hudson, Massachusetts in March of 1904, the firstborn son of Chinese immigrants. After his father died when he was only 13 years old, Harry helped his mother run their laundry business and raise his five younger siblings. He would eventually attend night classes at Suffolk University Law School where he graduated in 1929. That same year, he passed the Massachusetts Bar exam, becoming the first Chinese American person to do so.
Dow would devote much of his adult life to serving the Chinese immigrant communities in Boston and New York City. He worked for the Immigration and Naturalization Service for 20 years before opening his own private law practices, where he specialized in immigration law. After retiring from his law practice in the 1960s, he spent the rest of his life as a consultant or pro bono legal consul to numerous community organizations, many of them in the South End neighborhood of Boston. In his later years he would expand efforts into aiding the poor, the elderly, and all people of color.
Harry Hom Dow passed away in 1985 at age 81. In addition to being memorialized by a scholarship and a legal fund, his name was added to the 1965 Freedom Plaza below The Embrace on Boston Common. He is one of the dozens of civil rights and social justice leaders active in the Boston area from 1950-1975 to be represented.
Moakley Archive & Institute, Harry Hom Dow: A Chinese-American Trailblazer- https://tinyurl.com/4sfsnjkz
Suffolk University, A New Generation Embraces the Legacy of Harry Hom Dow- https://tinyurl.com/39ep9229
The Dow Fund, About Us- https://tinyurl.com/msfkj2aa
Embrace Boston, Our Heroes- https://tinyurl.com/2twrfkbr
Image Credit:
“Harry Hom Dow's graduation portrait,” Moakley Archive & Institute, accessed April 24, 2026, https://moakleyarchive.omeka.net/items/show/9321..
