Image credit: BlackPast.org
Curious to know who this fierce-looking Japanese lady is? Want to know why she's sitting with two Black Panther activists?
This amazing woman is Yuri Kochiyama, a Japanese-American human rights activist who actively contributed to the Black Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and beyond. Kochiyama and her family lived in Harlem, New York in the 1960s, where they rubbed elbows with civil rights activists, including Malcolm X, with whom she shares a birthday.
Kochiyama's passion for racial justice was ignited by the imprisonment and death of her father, who was wrongly implicated - just for being Japanese - in the bombing of Pearl Harbour by the FBI. She was 20 years old at the time. After her father died, her family was sent to live at a Japanese internment camp for three years. Twenty years later, she channeled her passions into helping the Organisation of Afro-American Unity and the Black Panthers to achieve racial justice for African-Americans.
Kochiyama had a brief friendship with Malcolm X. The last time they ever saw each other was during a meeting at the Audubon Ballroom on 21 February 1965, where Malcolm X was assassinated. Kochiyama's place in this historical event was cemented by this famous photograph in Life magazine, as the bespectacled Asian woman kneeling over Malcolm X's wounded body.
Image credit: Rap Genius
Aside from the Black Civil Rights Movement, she occupied the Statue of Liberty alongside Puerto Rican activists calling for independence in 1977, mentored Asian-American anti-Vietnam War protesters and fought for reparations to Japanese-Americans interned in camps during World War II.
For her tireless efforts to achieve racial justice for black, Latino and Asian-Americans, Yuri Kochiyama was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005. She is currently 92 years old.
Image credit: Hyphen Magazine
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