Want to Start a Revolution?: Radical Women in the Black Freedom Struggle

13. Grassroots Leadership and Afro-Asian Solidarities: Yuri Kochiyama’s Humanizing Radicalism

294 13 Grassroots Leadership and Afro-Asian Solidarities Yuri Kochiyama’s Humanizing Radicalism Diane C. Fujino Life magazine’s coverage of the assassination of Malcolm X bore a striking photograph of the slain Black leader lying prone, his head resting gently on the lap of a middle-aged Asian woman.1 The visibility of Malcolm’s gigantic impact juxtaposed with the invisibility of this woman is symbolic of the erasure of Asian American activism. That the woman in the photo is Yuri Kochiyama, one of the most prominent Asian American activists, though obscure to all but certain activist and Asian American circles, speaks to the continuing invisibility of Asian American struggles. Asian American participation disrupts two conventional narratives about Black nationalist movements. First, the caring pose of Kochiyama in Life is suggestive of a deeply humanizing practice, one that enabled her to disregard her own safety to rush to help others. Her practice promotes an alternative form of leadership, one that embodies nurturance and what Karen Sacks calls “centerperson” skills.2 Second, Kochiyama’s presence as an Asian American in the Black Power movement contests the common equation of nationalism with racial exclusion. To the contrary, significant portions of the Black Power movement exhibited commitments to unifying allies across racial divides, particularly deploying Third World solidarities. In this study of Kochiyama’s political ideas and practice, I seek to present a gendered analysis of leadership and to discuss the role of race, in this case of Asian Americans, in the Black Power movement, questioning the meaning of exclusion, self-determination, and autonomous organizing. In Grassroots Leadership and Afro-Asian Solidarities 295 doing so, this study offers an expanded view of the Black Power movement by contesting conventional narratives about gender, race, and leadership in the nationalist movements of the 1960s. Transforming the Political: Kochiyama’s Political Development Based on Kochiyama’s early life, one would predict a strong opposition to Black Power politics. In fact, at the moment of her introduction to Malcolm X, Kochiyama, a newly baptized civil rights activist, criticized Malcolm for his “harsh stance on integration.” Born Mary Yuri Nakahara in 1921 to middle-class Japanese immigrants, Kochiyama was well integrated into her largely working-class White community in San Pedro in South Los Angeles. While her Nisei (second-generation Japanese American) peers experienced an uneven racial reception—with some integration into schools, some interracial friendships, and some harsh discrimination— Kochiyama was unusually assimilated into American life. She became the first female student body officer at her high school, was active in a Yuri Kochiyama (right) with Muhammad Ahmad (Max Stanford, leader of the Revolutionary Action Movement) and Diane Fujino at the founding rally of the Jericho movement for political prisoners, Washington, D.C., 1998. At the rally, Kochiyama was swarmed by veteran black radicals and younger activists alike. 296 Diane C. Fujino multitude of integrated extracurricular activities, and even broke the romantic barrier of interracial dating. Kochiyama’s racial experiences contrasted sharply with those of Malcolm X, whose autobiography is filled with vivid stories of racism and the hardships of poverty. Still, both their fathers died prematurely surrounded by racialized violence. Malcolm’s father , a Garveyite organizer hounded by the Ku Klux Klan, had his body almost split in two across streetcar rails. Kochiyama’s father, like other Japanese American community leaders, was falsely imprisoned by the FBI on the day of the attack on Pearl Harbor and died six weeks later.3 Whereas Malcolm reacted with anger and hatred for his father’s White supremacist killers, Kochiyama responded rather blandly, all but dismissing any governmental culpability. This coincides with her responses to other racial encounters. When Kochiyama and other Nisei women were asked to leave an organization shortly before the bombing of Pearl Harbor, they left without incident. She recounted: “We wrote a nice letter saying we understand that our Japanese background makes us suspect. We wished all the women good luck and thanked them for our short-lived experience .”4 On the eve of Pearl Harbor, Kochiyama’s apolitical views, nonconfrontational style, and integration into mainstream activities enabled her blind spot to racism. She was awakened to racial inequality, though only gradually, through the forced removal and incarceration of 110,000 West Coast Japanese Americans during World War II. From inside the former Santa Anita racetrack , with its horse stables hastily converted into subpar housing, Kochiyama listened to other internees discuss the...