Black Power, Yellow Power: Radical Afro-Asian Organizing in California and New York, 1960-1980

Science Center A154

This research, thus far, has been shaped by an investigation of racial formation, specifically the theory of “racial triangulation” by Claire Jean Kim. This theory has contextualized an understanding of Afro-Asian political organizational alliances in California and New York during the 1960s and 70s. Currently, this project examines individuals who were ultimately the reason for the existence of multi-racial coalitions. I argue that many Asian American women activists were at the forefront of multi-racial political organizing from 1960-1980. However, those women have remain unnamed in the histories of more well-known organizations. Through close readings of the biographies of Grace Lee Boggs, Yuri Kochiyama, and other Asian American women—and extensive archival research in community centers such as the Chinese American Citizens Alliance, Center for Asian Pacific American Women, Advancing Justice, Manilatown Heritage Foundation, and Oakland Asian Cultural Center in California—I argue that these radical Asian American women were motivated to dedicate their lives to social, economic, and racial justice due to striking similarities of inequalities that are chronic in poor Black and Asian urban communities.