In honor of Black History Month, here are a few Asian activists that support and fight alongside Black Americans to reform the systemic oppression in the United States and for BIPOC’s rights.
Richard Aoki
Richard Aoki is a native Californian who lived through the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII. After the war, Aoki lived in West Oakland, a predominantly black area. Dishonorably discharged by the US army, Aoki decided to attend Merritt College in Oakland, where he befriended the founders of the Black Panther Party, Bobby Seale and Huey Newton. After persistent persuasion from both founders, Aoki finally joined the Black Panthers in 1967. Not only was Aoki the minister of education for the Black Panther's Berkeley branch, but he also supplied the Panthers with their first firearms to defend against police brutality in Oakland. Aoki was a committed activist against anti-war crimes, for which he worked alongside the Vietnam Day Committee and Oakland-Berkeley branch of the Socialist Workers Party. The historical 1969 Third World Liberation Front Strike at the University of California, Berkeley, was also led with the help of Aoki. Since then Aoki continued his career as an educator, before committing suicide in 2009.
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Grace Lee Boggs
Grace Boggs is the daughter of Chinese immigrants, and her main focus was to reduce poverty within poor and black communities, with her black activist husband, James Boggs. Extremely passionate about community revolution, it was reported that Boggs would extend a place to stay to Malcolm X whenever he visited Detroit. With the philosophical belief that small teams can create positive social change without dominance, Boggs and her husband founded the Detroit Summers in 1992. Its purpose was to bring people of all races, ages, and cultures together to rebuild the city of Detroit. Boggs had also collaborated with socialist theorist, C.L.R. James, and helped organize the 1963 Detroit “Walk to Freedom,” headlined by Martin Luther King, Jr. At the age of 100, Boggs passed away of old age in 2015.
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Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay
As an Indian-born social reformer, Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay saw the correlations between the colonial rule of Great Britain (at the time) and the racism and oppression that theblack community faced. During WWII, she paid a visit to the U.S. and met with various political activists, who were mostly black. Chattopadhyay even shared with the activists a nonviolent approach to the freedom struggle that was previously utilized in India. During her stay in the U.S., Chattopadhyay also identified as a “colored person”, and refused to stay with nonblack families in order to show her allyship to the black community. After hearing about Chattopadhyay’s adventure, the British banned her from ever returning to India. Unbordered, Chattopadhyay continued to travel all over the world; she dedicated her life to feminism and sovereignty to all nations that had been colonized. Before her passing at the age of 85 in 1988, Chattopadhyay published approximately 20 books about social justice, India’s independence, and feminism.
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Yuri Kochiyama
Yuri Kochiyama was an activist during the Civil Rights Movement and was well known as the woman who cupped Malcolm X’s head after his assassination. Known as the “Red Chinese” by the FBI, Kochiyama was passionate about Black nationalism after having met Malcolm X in the 1960s. She was anti-war and a supporter of many social justice movements. Kochiyama was also a survivor from the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII, which led her to fight for the passing of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 — which gives $20,000 to Japanese-Americans — as compensation for wrongful internment. After the 9/11 incident, Kochiyama also fought against the racial profiling of Muslims, Arabs, and South Asians. She delivered a speech to unify Japanese Americans to fight against the racism that Muslims, Arabs, and South Asians faced, which were similar to what Japanese-Americans experienced after Pearl Harbour. After her death in 2014, Kochiyama left behind a timeless message: “build bridges, not walls”.
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Sources:
https://www.complex.com/life/2016/03/asian-americans-activists/iqbal-ahmad
https://www.npr.org/2012/10/03/161408561/did-man-who-armed-black-panthers-lead-two-lives
https://www.americanswhotellthetruth.org/portraits/grace-lee-boggs
https://www.deccanherald.com/opinion/in-perspective/kamaladevi-how-could-we-forget-908413.html
https://blogs.brown.edu/ethn-1890v-s01-fall-2016/historical-figures-and-organizations/yuri-kochiyama/
https://www.npr.org/2012/10/03/161408561/did-man-who-armed-black-panthers-lead-two-lives
https://www.americanswhotellthetruth.org/portraits/grace-lee-boggs
https://www.deccanherald.com/opinion/in-perspective/kamaladevi-how-could-we-forget-908413.html
https://blogs.brown.edu/ethn-1890v-s01-fall-2016/historical-figures-and-organizations/yuri-kochiyama/