Heartbeat of Struggle: The Revolutionary Life of Yuri Kochiyama-from the chapter 5: Meeting Malcolm X

From Heartbeat of Struggle: The Revolutionary Life of Yuri Kochiyama






from the chapter 5: Meeting Malcolm X 
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Yuri gained a significant lesson from Malcolm, one that she recites repeatedly: One of the greatest lessons Malcolm taught people was to learn their own history. Know your history. Know the world. Be proud of who you are. He would say, "If you don't know who you are and where you came from, how can you know what direction to go in the future?" Through the process of discovering our own histories, many peoples—Africans, Asians, Puerto Ricans living in the United States—learned to throw off our internalized racism and develop pride in our heritage. But don't stop there. Learn about the histories of other people. And learn about the history of social movements because this is how you learn to create social change. Yuri took this lesson to heart, studying history at alternative liberation schools and reading whatever she could get her hands on—mainstream newspapers, books, Movement publications. In time, through study and practice, Yuri came to agree with the need for self-determination, self-defense, armed struggle, socialism, and an autonomous Black nation. While she may still cringe when someone makes a harsh remark, a person's approach or style is secondary to his or her overall political practice and ideology. The ultimate trajectory of Malcolm's ideology will never be known. His life and rapidly evolving politics were cut short by the assassins' bullets. Having been in the audience to hear Malcolm speak at the Audubon Ballroom, Yuri is often asked to recount the events of that day: Now, as I recall that date, February twenty-first, 1965, I was sitting in the same booth as Herman Ferguson, which was, I think about the seventh or eighth row. I was with my sixteen-year-old son, Billy. I was taking notes of Brother Benjamin's [Karim's] message. He had just finished saying, just before introducing him, "Malcolm is a kind of man who would die for you." The distraction, a man yelling, "Get your hand out of my pocket," took place across from where we were sitting. All eyes were turned to the distraction. Malcolm tried to calm the people, saying, "Cool it, brothers, cool it." Then shots rang out from the front. Malcolm fell straight backward, and it was right then, all hell broke loose. Chairs crashing to the floor. People hitting the floor. People chasing the killers. A few more gunshots, and something like a smoke bomb was thrown. It was utter chaos. In the midst of frenzy and hysteria, with bullets flying and people diving for cover, Yuri was one of the few who put Malcolm's safety above her own. She ran onstage to see if she could help: "It was then that a young brother . . . ran past where I was sitting. He was heading for the stage, so I followed him and went right to Malcolm. He was having difficulty breathing, so I put his head on my lap. Others came and opened his shirt. He was shot many times in the chest. And by his jawbone and his finger. I hoped he would say something, but he never said a word." Life magazine captured Yuri's action in a photograph showing an Asian woman wearing cat's-eye glasses cradling Malcolm's head. Most Nisei women would not have considered running onstage to help the dying Black leader. They would have been self-conscious about drawing attention to themselves or presuming their self-importance. Likewise, they would have felt uncomfortable delivering public speeches, writing articles for newspapers, and writing letters to strangers. As we have seen, however, even as a youth Yuri exhibited a certain boldness, asking to write for the community newspaper, becoming the first female student body officer at her high school, and initiating a letter-writing campaign to Nisei soldiers. Her actions become more remarkable when we consider the racial and gender constraints prevalent in 1930s America. Perhaps Yuri's parents' liberal child-rearing practices or their economic status offset some of the limitations imposed on Nisei women of that time. Perhaps as one of the few Asians in a predominantly White neighborhood, Yuri had the self-confidence that she could accomplish the same things as her White peers. While these might be contributing factors, they fail to fully explain the fearlessness Yuri has displayed throughout her life. Wherever her audacity comes from, it has propelled Yuri to act according to her moral convictions. It was from this motivation that she ran onstage to assist the fallen Malcolm. And it was from this motivation that, after Malcolm's assassination, she wrote a letter to the editor of the Japanese American weekly, the New York Nichibei, voicing her support for Malcolm X, a highly controversial figure of that time. In the short sixteen months between their meeting and his death, Malcolm X provided the greatest influence on Yuri's political life. After his death, she fostered a relationship with Malcolm's family, particularly his oldest daughter, Attallah, who to this day refers to Yuri as an aunt, through regular letters, occasional visits at the Kochi-yamas' home, and sporadic phone calls, including when Attallah was in New York in 1997 to attend her mother's funeral. Wherever Yuri goes, in speeches and informal conversations, she eagerly highlights Malcolm's international significance, in contrast to mainstream America's harsh condemnation: "At least three countries have his picture on their postage stamp. . . . Books about his life have been written or translated into Italian, Spanish, German, French, Japanese, and probably a few others. . . . In the late 1960s, Palestinian activists who came to the U.S. told us that names like Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture), and the Black Panthers were used as code names among their guerrilla fighters. In the same period, Vietnamese antiwar spokespersons in the U.S. revealed to us that Malcolm X's name was known in radical circles in their own country." A vigilant observer of Asian-African interactions, Yuri noted that Malcolm's influence also reached Japan: "In the audience at the Audubon Ballroom the day Malcolm was assassinated sat a Japanese socialist journalist who used the pen name Ei Nagata. He was probably the first Japanese writer to bring the story and significance of Malcolm X's life to Japan. It was Ei Nagata who wrote the first book on Malcolm in Japan." Perhaps because of Yuri's dedication to Malcolm's vision, her stead-fast writing, or her attention to human relations, she is regarded as a close associate of his, much closer than their few direct interactions would suggest. This is not simply a case of mythologizing their relationship, as has certainly been done by Yuri's admirers today. But Malcolm's most trusted comrades also consider Yuri to be a close colleague. When Herman Ferguson, an OAAU leader, started the Malcolm X Commemoration Committee in the early 1990s, he listed Yuri Kochiyama on the letterhead as an OAAU founding member. Certainly, he would have known that Yuri was merely a beginning student of radical politics at the time. It appears that the consistency of her political work and her personal connectedness, through thick and thin, have earned her a reputation as a close associate of Malcolm's. The year Malcolm died, Yuri started a second family newsletter, the North Star, its title drawn from W. E. B. Du Bois's newspaper, but so named as a tribute to Yuri's most significant political mentor. In echoing her praise to Malcolm at the Brooklyn courthouse, Yuri extolled him as a guiding light who gives "direction to his people," as indicated in the language, if a bit flowery, of this North Star front-page article: "His life is a simile that can only be correlated with the most brilliant of all the stars in the Heavens, the North Star, for the North Star is the one star that does not change position or lose its bright intensity. It is the star that set the course for mariners; that gave direction, from time immemorial, to slaves escaping bondage; and communicated men's hope by allusion. It is, thus, obvious and apropos that we dedicate this first issue of the North Star to him whom we feel, most aptly personifies the significance of this title. Triumphantly illuminating today's stark atmosphere, giving light and direction, invincible and inextinguishable, Malcolm is that North Star shining."