6 Instances Of Asian-Black Solidarity For Black History Month

In May 1999, 10 student protesters were arrested after a five-hour sit-in supporting the creation of an Asian American studies program at the University of Texas in Austin. Students had been going back and forth with the university since 1995 trying to institute an Asian American studies program, culminating in the arrests.

Among the protesters arrested was student Shomial Ahmad, who stood in solidarity with the multicultural group — which became known on campus as the UT 10. Similar stories played out at UC Berkeley and UCLA in the ‘60s and ‘70s, as other Black academics and protesters supported the creation of sister ethnic studies programs.

Activist and philosopher Grace Lee Boggs spent more than 70 years supporting the Black freedom movement. She was best known for her political collaboration with renowned activists C.L.R. James and Raya Dunayevskaya in the 1940s and 1950s. Boggs and her husband James Earl Boggs devoted themselves to rebuilding Detroit until her death in 2015.

Boggs embraced the central philosophy that positive social change happens by working together in small groups, where people “emancipate themselves,” rather than in large revolutions where power is simply transferred Animal Farm–style to the group that comes out on top.

Before Kamala Harris became the first South Asian woman elected to the US Senate and later the position of VP, there was another famous Kamala: anti-colonial activist and feminist Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay. (Fun fact: Did you know our VP’s middle name is also Devi?) Kamaladevi spread Gandhi’s message of nonviolent protest among prominent Southern Black civil rights activists like Martin Luther King Jr. and Booker T. Washington.

When Kamaladevi was asked to leave a “whites-only” train car in 1941, she refused. “I am a colored woman obviously and it is unnecessary for you to disturb me for I have no intention of moving from here,” she said when questioned about her race.

In 1982, Vincent Chin was celebrating his bachelor party at a Detroit strip club with his friends. Everybody was drunk and in a good mood; their best buddy was getting married in eight days! Recently laid off from their jobs at the Chrysler factory, Ronald Ebens and Michael Nitz were bubbling with resentment at Japanese people allegedly coming to take their jobs. Following some rude comments questioning Asian masculinity, a bar fight ensued and escalated. Chin had his skull caved in with a baseball and died four days later. The killers walked free with a $3,000 fine and no jail time.

Black community leaders rallied behind the Asian American community, most notably Reverend Jesse Jackson (who, like the late, great Shirley Chisolm, tried to be the first Black president of the United States).

“You really gain character when you fight. If I was just fighting for Vincent Chin, that’s one thing. But this is another dimension. We must have the capacity to fight for others than ourselves. That’s where our strength really is,” said Rev Jackson in an interview with veteran Asian activists May Louie, Mike Murase, Cindy Ng, Mabel Teng, and Butch Wing.

In 1985, three seminal American authors boarded a plane to China. Sponsored by the Chinese Writers Association and the University of California, Los Angeles, Toni Morrison, Maxine Hong Kingston, and Leslie Marmon Silko, among other celebrated writers, went up the Li River in a boat.

Morrison and Kingston recreated ghost worlds in their writing, blurring the lines of time and reality to seize power and identity. During a reunion at the 92nd Street YMCA in 2012, Morrison and Kingston discussed shared struggles as POC women and the inspiration they found in China.