Profile · Eau Claire, Wisconsin
Joua Bee “Joe Bee” Xiong
First Hmong American elected to U.S. municipal office; Eau Claire city council member and qeej master
$3,000
Joua Bee "Joe Bee" Xiong was the Eau Claire civic leader who became the first Hmong American elected to municipal government in the United States. He was born on August 10, 1961, in Muong Cha, Laos, served as a child soldier in the CIA-backed Secret War, crossed the Mekong, lived in a Thai refugee camp, and arrived in Eau Claire in 1980 with no English. He entered Memorial High School as a teenager who spoke none of the language and graduated at twenty-one. He studied computer science at Chippewa Valley Technical College and criminal justice at Mount Senario, later earning a master's degree. He worked as a reserve police officer, a county social worker, and director of the Eau Claire Hmong Mutual Assistance Association, and he was a clan leader. He was also a qeej master who played funerals and ceremonies and took the bamboo pipes to the 1998 Smithsonian Folklife Festival. In 1996 he won a seat on the Eau Claire City Council, the first Hmong American elected to municipal office in the country, and served two terms. A 2004 run for the Wisconsin Assembly fell short. He died of heart complications on March 31, 2007, while visiting Laos. Thousands attended a three-day traditional funeral. The legislature passed a joint resolution in his honor, and Eau Claire renamed the street he had lived on Xiong Boulevard.