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Yuri kochiyama11/18/2023 "But the more I see them all so happily shaking his hands and Malcolm so happy, I said, 'Gosh, darn it! I'm going to try to meet him somehow.' “ Eventually, Kochiyama called out to Malcolm X, "Can I shake your hand?" When he asked why, she replied, “To congratulate you for giving direction to your people.” “Malcolm X smiled and extended his hand,” wrote Wang. “Eventually, Yuri gained the courage to approach Malcolm.” Kochiyama described the scene in a Democracy Now! interview in 2008, according to NPR: "I felt so bad that I wasn't Black, that this should be just a Black thing," she recalled. Kochiyama at first “was hesitant to approach him, unsure how he would respond to an Asian-American woman,” according to Arora. By that time, Malcolm X was already a household name in the civil rights movement. On October 16, 1963, at a worker’s rally, Malcolm and Yuri’s paths would cross. She and her husband even used a summer vacation in 1963 to visit Birmingham, Alabama “to see charred houses and storefronts left behind by racial protests,” as well as the 16th Street Baptist Church weeks before a bombing there killed four black girls, according to writer Hansi Lo Wang. Known as “Sister Yuri” in a wide circle of African American activists, which included poet Amiri Baraka and activist Angela Davis, Kochiyama continued to speak out even more against racism, according to Woo. They “lodged advocates who needed a safe place to sleep,” and their apartment in Harlem was soon dubbed ‘the grand central station’ by local activists, according to Ishak. The family “shared a community with renowned black activists such as Sonia Sanchez, Bill Epton, and Paul Robeson,” according to Ishak. “There, the Kochiyama family spent time at the Harlem Freedom School (part of a grassroots organization advocating for safer streets and integrated education, which Kochiyama took part in) learning about Black history and listening to Black speakers, writers, and activists.” She and her husband “moved to a low-income housing project in Harlem, New York,” according to Brown University. “By the 1960s, Yuri Kochiyama actively advocated for civil rights causes like Black integration, the anti-war movement, and reparations for Japanese Americans from the government,” according to writer Natasha Ishak. “She wrote a sports column for the San Pedro News-Pilot and was a Sunday school teacher at the local Presbyterian church.” However, after she and her family were sent to an internment camp and her father died shortly after being taken into custody, she began to have a different view of the world after the war. Before the war, she “was a model of assimilation,” according to the Washington Post. “The daughter of immigrants, Kochiyama experienced the hardships of a World War II internment camp after public hysteria surrounding Japanese Americans erupted in the wake of the Pearl Harbor attack,” according to journalist Elaine Woo. “But while you probably learned about Malcolm X’s lasting legacy in school, Kochiyama remains one of American history’s unsung heroes.” “Malcolm X and Yuri Kochiyama are both American civil rights icons,” according to writer Sushmita Arora.
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