Yuri Kochiyama was a Japanese-American life-long activist who fought for civil rights causes in the Black, Latino, Native American, and Asian-American communities. According to NPR, Kochiyama was born in 1921 as Mary Yuriko Nakahara in San Pedro, California, where she spent her early years of life.

In 1942, after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Kochiyama was forced to relocate along with 120,000 Japanese/Japanese-American citizens in internment camps around the states during WWII, according to the Asian American Activism blog. She spent two years at the Jerome Relocation Center in Arkansas, where she met her late husband, Bill Kochiyama, who served with other Japanese-American soldiers in the 442nd Regimental Combat Team. During her time in the internment camps, she was exposed to racism against Japanese immigrants and she described her experiences there as “the beginning of [her] political awakening."

After WWII, the couple married and moved to New York City to start their family. They lived in housing projects with Black and Puerto Rican neighbors, and living there inspired her interest in the civil rights movement. Kochiyama’s home became a place for activists to gather in weekly open houses where she collected newspaper clippings and leaflets on activism and civil rights movements.

Kochiyama met Malcom X in 1963, reported the LA Times, and her formative friendship with the civil rights leader helped to radicalize her activism. She began shifting her focus of civil rights work to black nationalism. In 1965, gunmen fired at Malcom X during his last speech in New York City. Kochiyama was with Malcom X during his final moments; cradling his head in her lap.

She began shifting toward Black Liberation, and joined the Republic of New Africa, a militant Black nationalist organization in Harlem. In the 1970s, she participated in several demonstrations, including the takeover of the Statue of Liberty to demand Puerto Rican independence, and was part of a group who successfully demanded the release of five Puerto Rican nationalists who had been held for over 20 years. She worked to free US political prisoners, such as Mumia Abu-Jamal, a former Black panther and radio journalist.

According to the Zin Education Project, she and her husband pushed for reparations and a formal government apology for Japanese-American internees through the Civil Liberties Act, which President Ronald Reagan signed into law in 1988. The Civil Liberties Act led to reparations of $20,000 paid to each of the 60,000 surviving Japanese American families who had been imprisoned.

Yuri Kochiyama supported international liberation movements such as Puerto Rican independence from the states, supported and called for the creation of ethnic studies academic programs and protested the Vietnam War. In 2005, she was nominated alongside 1,000 women who were all collectively nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, according to The Independent. 

Alexander Levi was a man of many “firsts.” In 1837, while Iowa was still part of the Wisconsin Territory, he was the first immigrant to become a naturalized citizen in the future state. He was the first sworn member of the Masonic Order of Dubuque, his adopted home. He was also the first known Jewish person in Iowa.

Levi Immigrated from France in 1832, and settled in Dubuque in 1833, where he became a community leader. He opened a grocery and had interests in mining and real estate. He organized the first synagogue in Dubuque and deeded land for a Jewish cemetery, which later became part of Linwood Cemetery, where Ralph Montgomery, subject of the first case heard by the Iowa Supreme Court, is buried. Not one to be exclusive, Levi also donated to the Presbyterian and Catholic churches which were likewise constructing houses of worship in the city. More information about Levi is available at Encyclopedia Dubuque.

In the 1830s and 1840s, Levi was followed by a wave of German and Polish peddlers who came to Dubuque and McGregor, gateways for crossing the Mississippi to travel westward. The Jewish Virtual Library reports William Krause settled in Racoon Forks with his wife in 1846 and was one of the town’s first incorporators as the City of Des Moines. Later, he was a leader in the campaign to move the state capitol there from Iowa City. Krause opened Des Moines’ first department store in 1848, helped found its first public school, and, like Alexander Levi, contributed to building Christian churches.

Moses Bloom, shown above, became the first mayor of a non-Jewish U.S. community in 1873, after serving as an alderman. Majority-Jewish towns had Jewish mayors much earlier, of course, but when Bloom arrived in Iowa City in 1857, he was the area’s first Jewish resident and there were still less than a dozen Jewish people in the city when he was elected mayor. Bloom was elected to the Iowa House in 1875, where one of his major accomplishments was securing a permanent endowment for the University of Iowa, “a thing often attempted, but failed,” according to an 1882 history of Johnson County. Bloom was also instrumental in defeating a proposed constitutional amendment to prohibit alcohol consumption in the state. In 1879, he became Iowa’s first Jewish Senator. Learn more about Bloom in the history of Johnson County, at page 786.

Today, approximately 5,450 Jewish people live in Iowa, which is about 0.2% of the state’s population.

Calumet Baking Powder, Winnebago campers, Eskimo Pies: how often do white people buy these products without thinking about the implications behind the names?

Less common today, but still seen, are ads using imagery associated with Native Americans. Ads and brands appropriating Native American imagery for commercial purposes communicate stereotypes, reinforce assumptions, and subliminally indoctrinate children with societal misconceptions of Native American culture, according to Project Muse.

Most advertising conflates elements of many different indigenous nations. The typical “Indian” of the advertising world may wear the feather headdress of Midwestern Plains tribes, hold a tomahawk used by Northeastern tribes such as the Iroquois, and ride a horse, introduced to millenia-old tribes of the Southwest by the Spanish within the past 500 years, according to Britannica. Therefore, advertising not only appropriates Native American culture, but obliterates it through misrepresentation.

Several threads emerge when advertising is considered collectively over time. A major theme is difference. When Native Americans are shown in ads, they are almost universally depicted in contrast to mainstream society, either as backward and uncivilized or as spiritual stewards of the environment.

Ads also falsely portray Native American culture through a fictional “Indian” language including some actual Native American words such as wampum (a complex Wampanoag word English colonists equated with “money," according to Indian Country Today) and entirely fictional words and phrases such as “heap big” and “-um” added to the end of standard English words. Phrases are kept short, and grammar is skewed. This stilted language simultaneously reinforces the aspect of otherness and signals contempt for Native American people.

Finally, ads ascribe one-dimensional character traits to Native Americans. Many older ads represent them as “wild Indians,” reference being “on the warpath,” or play on the “the Indians are coming” trope, according to Race and Ethnicity in Advertising. More recently, but just as banally, ads may focus on Native Americans’ supposed spirituality, respect for the environment, or special knowledge of natural medicine, according to Point History. For example, the cigarette brand “Natural American Spirit” may as well call itself “Native American Spirit": its logo is the profile of a man in a traditional feather headdress, holding a long, feathered pipe. It is marketed as “natural” and “organic,” using Native American images such as a thunderbird. It is owned by a subsidiary of RJ Reynolds, which also owns Camel, Pall Mall, Newport, and other tobacco brands.

Native Americans have begun to fight back. When Victoria’s Secret not only appropriated indigenous apparel for its 2012 fashion show, but also combined a Plains headdress worn only by male warriors with turquoise jewelry in faux “Navajo” style, Native American bloggers were outraged. Adrienne Keene, author of the blog Native Appropriations, wrote, “This isn’t ‘fun,’ this isn’t a ‘fantasy’ character. This is about our cultures, our bodies, and our lives. Native people demand and deserve far more respect than this.” The show outfit also included leopard-print lingerie; “why don’t we just go full-on generic ‘savage’ while we’re at it,” Keene quipped. Victoria’s Secret pulled the outfit from all media and apologized. 

For more information, explore the online exhibit “The Misappropriation of Native/Indigenous Imagery in Pharmaceutical Advertising,” by the American Institute of the History of Pharmacy.

Exactly 100 years ago, some of the same societal fears that still plague America resulted in the first law limiting the number of immigrants allowed into the country. During World War I, many more immigrants from southern and eastern Europe came to the U.S. than in previous decades. The Italian economy collapsed, Armenians were subjected to genocide by the Ottoman Empire, and the Russian Revolution occurred. In addition to the world war, according to the National Parks Service's Statue of Liberty National Monument webpage, these events contributed to masses of refugees from areas not previously large sources of immigration to the U.S. 

Many people thought immigrants from southern and eastern Europe would not “assimilate;” that their languages, customs, and religions were too different from prior northern European immigrants and they would always think of themselves as “Italian-Americans,” for example, instead of simply “Americans.” Anti-Catholic sentiment played a part in these opinions, as did the physical appearance of the new wave of Greek, Italian, Armenian and other southern-European immigrants. In addition, some people feared the sheer number of refugees, thinking they would depress wages and “take” jobs from citizens. Others feared their political opinions.

The Dillingham Commission was formed in 1907 and named for Representative William Dillingham of Vermont, according to Immigration History. The commission used beliefs in racial hierarchy and studies that purported to demonstrate the inferiority of modern immigrants as opposed to the English, French, and Germans associated with earlier immigration waves to make a case for limiting immigration. It recommended literacy tests as a means to turn away those who were unwanted. Using the Commission’s findings, Congress first barred immigration from Asia in 1917.

In 1921, the Emergency Immigration Act was passed, limiting the number of immigrants from each foreign country to 3% of the number who had lived in the U.S. according to the 1910 census and requiring literacy of anyone over 16, according to the State Department. That year was chosen because it predated the rise in immigration caused by the war and other global events such as the Armenian genocide and the Russian Revolution. Therefore, the numbers of immigrants from each country upon which the percentages were based were smaller.

In 1924, the percentage was lowered to 2% of the immigrants from each country counted in the 1890 census, and the visa system still used today was implemented. In the 1940s, this system prevented many World War II refugees from settling in the U.S. The percentage system was not replaced until 1965, when the Immigration and Nationality Act eliminated national origin, race, and ancestry as considerations and instituted a seven-category preference system. 

The internment of Japanese Americans in the 1940’s is one of the most heinous crimes against a group of American citizens by its own government. The incarceration and imprisonment of over 120,000 innocent Japanese Americans following the bombing of Pearl Harbor, according to the History channel, is a subject that is often overlooked.

On December 7th, 1941, the Japanese military attack on Pearl Harbor provoked the U.S. to enter WWII. After the attack, the U.S. War Department suspected that Japanese Americans might act as saboteurs, despite the lack of hard evidence to support that claim, according to USHistory.org. However, the suspicion of Japanese Americans began long before the attack on Pearl Harbor. Negative stereotypes and distrust of Asians in the U.S. can be traced to the federal government’s long history of racist and discriminatory treatment of Asian immigrants and their descendants that had begun with restrictive immigration policies in the late 1800s.

On March 18th, 1942, the federal War Relocation Authority was established, according to Britannica. Its mission was to “take all people of Japanese descent into custody, surround them with troops, prevent them from buying land, and return them to their former homes at the close of the war.” Copies of the evacuation notice were posted on telephone poles and storefronts. The evacuation notice gave Japanese Americans little time to gather their belongings and many were forced to sell some or all of their property, including businesses. Most of the 120,000 internees were children, youth, and the elderly. Most of those interned were American citizens.

The internment camps were placed in Wyoming, Idaho, Colorado, Utah, California, Arkansas and Arizona. Families were given small spaces with sparse healthcare, resources, and supplies. Some internees died in the camps due to the lack of proper care, and some at the hands of military guards. The camps were surrounded by barbed-wire fences patrolled by armed guards who had instructions to shoot those who tried to escape. Although there are some incidents of internees being shot and killed, as well as preventable suffering of those interned, the camps were run humanely.

On December 18, 1944, the government announced that all relocation centers would be closed by the end of 1945. In March 1946, the last camp to close was at Tule Lake, California, according to the National Parks Service, which operates multiple historic sites and monuments dedicated preserving the sites and educating people about the internment. It was not until almost 40 years later that the government acknowledged its failure of political leadership. In 1988, the U.S Congress passed the Civil Liberties Act, which issued more than 80,000 Japanese Americans $20,000 each in reparations and an apology from Congress.

Over a span of 40 years, three landmark U.S. Supreme Court cases were decided in May.

The first was Shelley v. Kraemer, decided in 1948. In Shelley, a Black family bought a house in St. Louis, shown to the left, which was subject to a racially-restrictive covenant on the deed. A restrictive covenant is a provision limiting use of property in some way. There are legitimate reasons for restrictive covenants, such as mandating that buried public utility lines not be disturbed or a scenic view not be obstructed. In the early 20 century, however, covenants were imposed to enforce racial segregation. The Shelley family’s deed stated the property could not be sold to “people of the Negro or Mongolian Race.”

Kraemer, a resident of the neighborhood, sued to enforce the covenant, and the Missouri Supreme Court upheld it on the theory that it “ran with the land.” In other words, the covenant was an agreement between the original parties that attached to the land, and was enforceable against third parties, in this case the Shelleys.

Another case involving the same scenario, McGhee v. Sipes, concurrently arose in Detroit. The Michigan Supreme Court also decided the covenant on the McGhee property was enforceable. The U.S. Supreme Court consolidated the two cases with two more from the D.C. Circuit. Future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall served as one of the attorneys representing the McGhees. Three Justices had to recuse themselves from the decision because they owned property subject to racially-restrictive covenants.

The Court engaged in legal legerdemain in support of civil rights: while upholding the legality of restrictive covenants per se, the court held they could not be enforced without violating the Equal Protection clause of the 14 Amendment. The Court held:

[t]he undisputed facts disclose that petitioners were willing purchasers of properties upon which they desired to establish homes. The owners of the properties were willing sellers, and contracts of sale were accordingly consummated. It is clear that, but for the active intervention of the state courts, supported by the full panoply of state power, petitioners would have been free to occupy the properties in question without restraint. … The difference between judicial enforcement and nonenforcement of the restrictive covenants is the difference to petitioners between being denied rights of property available to other members of the community and being accorded full enjoyment of those rights on an equal footing.

334 U.S. 1, 19 (1948). In this way, the Court avoided the trap of property law precedent, which had defeated three lower appellate courts and led to upholding racist covenants. By framing the question as one of equal protection, the Court could enjoin the discriminatory governmental action of enforcement, making legality of the covenants themselves irrelevant.

The final case concerns discrimination on the basis of sex. Ann Hopkins, shown left, was a management consultant at Price Waterhouse Coopers (now PwC), and had brought the firm more business than any other candidate when she was denied a partnership in 1982.

The next year, she was denied again. When she asked a male partner who had recommended her for promotion for advice, he responded she needed to “walk more femininely, talk more femininely, dress more femininely, wear makeup, have her hair styled, and wear jewelry.” Other reasons given for denying her partnership were that she was “too macho,” “pushy,” and needed “a course in charm school.” She smoked, drank beer, and did not use her husband’s last name. Hopkins quit and filed suit.

The case made its way to the Supreme Court. In the 1989 majority opinion, Justice Wiliam Brennan wrote “in forbidding employers to discriminate against individuals because of their sex, Congress intended to strike at the entire spectrum of disparate treatment of men and women resulting from sex stereotypes. An employer who objects to aggressiveness in women but whose positions require this trait places women in an intolerable and impermissible Catch-22: out of a job if they behave aggressively and out of a job if they don’t.”

Price Waterhouse was ordered to pay Hopkins $370,000 in lost wages (worth about $730,000 today) and offer her a partnership. Surprisingly, she accepted, saying she wanted to work at a top-level firm and many of the people who had opposed her prior to the case were now gone. Ms. Hopkins worked at Price Waterhouse until her retirement in 2002. Hopkins’ case was the first to recognize sex-stereotyping as a form of sex discrimination. It has been cited in approximately 6,000 cases since and has recently been used to defend the rights of transgender and gender-nonconforming people.

Commission member Mark Pries lives committed to the human rights of all people. He has served for 46 years as a pastor with congregations during stressful times related to race, poverty, military transitions, rural crises, and abundance.  While serving with the Dubuque Human Rights Commission, Mark was mentored by Ruby Sutton and Rev. Dr. C.T. Vivian toward “dealing one-on-one with people” to bring understanding and change.

Prior to his retirement from Zion Lutheran Church of Iowa City, he served on the Boards of Directors of Shelter House and Oaknoll, and was active with the Consultation of Religious Communities of Johnson County. Having "failed" retirement, Mark is currently serving part time with the people of Trinity Lutheran Church in Tipton as a transition pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

For detailed information on current trainings, initiatives, or programs, visit icgov.org/SJREinitiatives, and scroll to Social Justice and Racial Equity Quarterly Updates.

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