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Brown Beret Headquarters and History

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The Brown Berets are a Chicanx community organization that advocated for equal opportunity for individuals of Mexican descent in East Los Angeles. While the group still exists today, they were most active in the 1960s and '70s and eventually established chapters through the southwest and in cities with large Chicanx communities.

The Berets emphasized equal treatment from government agencies, including school boards, draft boards, health and welfare programs, and law enforcement agencies. Their actions are often described as militant and, in a time of burgeoning social protest in the United States, even revolutionary. Their shift in tactics can be attributed in many ways to the victimization of Chicanx communities at the hands of law enforcement.

The Berets' membership boasted both male and female members, including students, making it a diverse organization in its time. At their headquarters on East 4th Street, they organized various protest marches to make their presence more visible to civic and business leaders and to empower residents of the East Los Angeles barrio, a historically neglected area. Their self-published magazine La Causa achieved a significant following.

Among the Brown Beret's most pressing campaigns were the organization's protests of the deployment of Mexican American soldiers during the Vietnam War and unequal access to quality education and healthcare.

Youth participation was crucial to the success of the Brown Berets. Local high school students organized some of the earliest protests in East Los Angeles of the Chicano Movement, in a series of coordinated walkouts in 1966. As the war in Vietnam escalated, young Chicano men like Rosalio Muñoz, burned their draft cards in solidarity with the Berets.

Student members eventually assumed leadership roles that moved away from violent protest and toward an education organization. With connections throughout the southwest, student members pushed to recognize the Chicanx identity on a national level. A lasting impact of their efforts can be observed in intuitions of higher education hosting a curriculum in Chicanx Studies.

Women also played a key role in the organization. Female member oversaw a catalytic social welfare program that grew into a free clinic on Whittier Boulevard in 1969. The Berets' mission here was to overcome limited access to healthcare and health education. East Los Angeles in particular experienced high mortality rates among women and children relative to the rest of the country. This community service agency was managed by Gloria Arellanes.

In addition, Brown Berets were widely recognized throughout the Southwest for their participation in anti-war demonstration, including the December 1969 march ( Los Cinco Puntos to Obregon Park) and the 1970s Chicano Moratorium March ( Belvedere Park to Laguna/Salazar Park).

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The Brown Berets are a Chicanx community organization that advocated for equal opportunity for individuals of Mexican descent in East Los Angeles. While the group still exists today, they were most active in the 1960s and '70s and eventually established chapters through the southwest and in cities with large Chicanx communities.

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Brown Berets Prison Chapter 10-point Program

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Read the full statement at the MIM(Prisons) website:

...The BB-PC was inspired by the original Brown Berets that arose in the 1960s and led the Chicano movement in harnessing the people in the barrios with their many independent institutions from free health clinics, child care, free food programs, schools, newspapers etc. We draw from this legacy of serving the people and dig deeper in the theoretical realm.

We do not answer to any other chapter nor does any other existing chapter answer to us, we are an autonomous chapter which due to the extreme repression in Amerikkka's history operates underground within U.$. prisons. Currently we are the first and only prison chapter in Amerika but we expect many more chapters to develop in many other prisons and states as Chican@s develop politically. We do not publish the names of the BB-PC cadre; our chapter resides in Pelican Bay State Prison.

The BB-PC is the Chicano cadre in U.$. prisons that works to transform these pintas and our nation from our vantage point. We are taking the concepts of community organizing and applying them to the pinta, thus these concrete conditions we experience are very different than they are for a chapter out in society and although our efforts are mostly prison based and revolve around contradictions prisoners face on a daily basis our main thrust of course lies in the Aztlán liberation movement. Our ten point program guides us in that direction and allows us to remain in active service of Chicano independence.

We welcome all imprisoned Latinos to partake in the Chicano struggle as a liberated Aztlán will be a place where all Latinos are welcome to be free from oppression.

The following is the BB-PC Ten Point Program:

1. We are Maoists
We believe as Mao taught that class struggle continues even under socialism, as a new bourgeoisie develops as happened in the USSR after the death of Stalin in 1953 and after Mao's death in 1976. Mao advanced communism the furthest thus far in world history and it will be through a Maoist program that we liberate Aztlán.

2. We are an autonomous chapter
We are a self governing chapter that practices democratic centralism. We understand that because of state repression we are more efficient as an autonomous chapter and that as new chapters arise in other prisons across Amerika that they too will be autonomous in each individual prison.

3. We want to build public opinion in prisons
At this stage the only struggle in Amerika is in the realm of ideas, we seek to politicize the imprisoned Chicano nation through educating our gente on all aspects of la lucha.

4. We want Raza unity
As the largest Raza population in Amerikan prisons the Chicano nation understands its responsibility to maintain Pan-Latino unity and to educate all Raza on the current repression we face. In the prisons within Aztlán, Raza endure institutional oppression where Raza are overwhelmingly held in SHUs and control units far more than any other of the oppressed. This offensive is meant to neutralize us physically but particularly mentally. We will stand with imprisoned Latinos and resist the oppressor nation as we have done for 500 years and support the Boricua in their march toward independence free from neocolonialism.

5. We stand in solidarity with all oppressed and Third World prisoners.
Today's prisons are meant to dehumanize the people and break our will to resist. The internal semi-colonies that are captured and held in these concentration camps face much of the same repression from the state, we understand that to better our living conditions as prisoners it will depend on a united front of oppressed prisoners for legal battles and other effort to obtain human rights in prisons and we will cultivate this collaboration.

6. We are revolutionary nationalists
We understand that true internationalism is only possible when each nation is fully liberated. We identify oppression in Amerika revolving around nation, class and gender which enables imperialism to uphold power and we combat these forms of oppression in our long march to national liberation.

7. Close the control units
The SHUs and similar models are designed to unleash population regroupment on the imprisoned Chicano nation. It is well known that the most revolutionary elements of the Chicano prison population are plucked from general population prisons and sent to the SHU or other control units in an effort to isolate the revolutionary vanguard from the prison masses, this isolation is then used to torture Chicanosen massethrough solitary confinement and other psychological methods for years and decades. We understand that this is done primarily to prevent the captive Chicano revolutionaries from mobilizing our mass prison base. We see the control units in Amerika as modern day concentration camps as we are sent to those camps not for physical acts but for thought crimes, beliefs or supposed beliefs that oppose the state. We work to overturn the use of control units in every prison in Amerika.

8. Stop prisoner abuse.
We are against oppression in all it's forms within prisons. This includes prisoners preying on prisoners, abuse from the hands of guards, patriarchy or any abuse physically or psychologically. In Amerika prisons are tools of imperialism used to inflict terror on the internal semi-colonies out in society and stifle any resistance to their war on poor people, having experienced and identified the full onslaught of this offensive we take it head on to combat all forms of abuse from the state or otherwise and this includes combatting the state propaganda and tactics of pitting prisoner against prisoner by political education so that prisoners understand who the oppressor is.

9. Free all political prisoners.
We not only see political prisoners as those who were politically conscious out in society and came to prison for acts of the movement, we go past that in our analysis and also see SHU prisoners as overwhelmingly political prisoners who are systematically tortured for their ideas or alleged thoughts. We also see most prisoners in U.$. prisons as political prisoners because living in imperialist amerika many of the "Crimes" and criminal injustice system that we face is nothing more than national oppression that is exercised in order to uphold the capitalist relations of production and we work toward freeing the people.

10. We want a liberated socialist Aztlán.
Our aim is communism but we understand it will take many years for this to become reality. At this stage we are working for Aztlán independence which will only occur after the defeat of imperialism. We work toward a socialist Aztlán where the peoples' needs are met; things like land, bread, education, health care and many more needs will be met and peoples' power will be exercised in order to transform not just society but prisons as well, to a more vibrant and just environment where all will have an opportunity to grasp revolution and promote production. We will transform these prisons ideologically in order to prepare the ground for these developments as we serve the people.

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Brown Berets Prison Chapter 10 Point Program

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Read the full statement at the MIM(Prisons) website: ...The BB-PC was inspired by the original Brown Berets that arose in the 1960s and led the Chicano movement in harnessing the people in the barrios with their many independent institutions from free health clinics, child care, free food programs, schools, newspapers etc.

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Mapping Social Movements: Brown Berets Chapters

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In the barrios of Los Angeles, Chicano youth founded the Brown Berets in 1967, modeled after the Black Panther Party. The organization concentrated on combatting police brutality and fighting racism but some chapters also demanded education, job, and housing equality. By 1969, there were 29 chapters mostly in California but units also formed in Colorado, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, Texas, and Washington. When the Brown Berets were disbanded by Prime Minister David Sanchez in 1972, a total of 36 chapters had been established primarily near college and university campuses. Sources below. The maps are hosted by Tableau Public and may take a few seconds to respond. If slow, refresh the page.

Move between two maps below

Sources: "Brown Beret Units," La Causa. May 23, 1969. Chavez, Ernesto. Creating Aztlan: The Chicano movement in Los Angeles, 1966-1978. Doctoral Dissertation. University of California, Los Angeles, 1994. Correa, Jennifer G. Chicano Nationalism: The Brown Berets and Legal Social Control. Masters Degree. Texas A&M University, Kingsville, Texas, July 2006. Espinoza, Dionne E. Pedagogies of Nationalism and Gender: Cultural Resistance in Selected Representational Practices of Chicana/o Movement Activists, 1967-1972. Doctoral Dissertation. Cornell University, May 1996. Fox, Rona Maria F. The Brown Berets: A Participant Observation Study of Social Action in the School of Los Angeles. Doctoral Dissertation. University of Southern California, January 1970. Menchaca, Martha. The Mexican Outsiders a Community History of Marginalization and Discrimination in California. 1st ed. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1995. Montejano, David. Quixote's Soldiers. University of Texas Press, 2010.

When ethnic Mexican farm workers led by Cesar Chavez joined with Filipino American workers led by Larry Itliong in 1965 to strike grape growers in Delano, California, the modern farm workers' movement was born. Here we map more than 1000 strike actions, boycotts, and other UFW related events showing the movement's support across the United States and Canada.

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Brown Berets chapters map - Mapping American Social Movements

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In the barrios of Los Angeles, Chicano youth founded the Brown Berets in 1967, modeled after the Black Panther Party. The organization concentrated on combatting police brutality and fighting racism but some chapters also demanded education, job, and housing equality.

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The History of the Young Lords

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YOUNG LORDS HISTORICAL TIME LINE ( Dates approximate to relevant time line )

1945-1950

WWII ends and and massive unemployment forces Puerto Rican Jibaros to immigrateas "Tomateros" or tomato pickers to U.S. migrant camps.

Fomento replaces sugarcane industry and other agriculture with industry and tourism in Puerto Rico.

U.S. and Mexico are in conflict with immigration concerns, related to Bracero program.

"Tomateros" continue to move from Puerto Rico, east coast cities and migrant camps: into steel mills near Chicago; factories; as downtown housing maids; and hotel jobs.

Luis Munoz Marin begins campaigning and becomes first popularly elected Puerto Rican Governor.

1950-1955

Luis Munoz Marin pushes for a neo-colonial type of Commonwealth Status, acceptable to the U.S. interests and promotes more massive immigration to the U.S. hoping to alleviate 60% unemployment in Puerto Rico.

Massive migration increases, and in Chicago, the first Puerto Rican barrios or communities: La Madison and La Clark are formed. La Madison( Halsted to Kedzie via Madison, with pockets from Roosevelt to Chicago Ave.) and La Clark (Ohio to Armitage via State, Clark, La Salle, Wells, Halsted, including pockets near and buildings within the Cabrini Green housing complexes)

1955-1960

The construction of the Carl Sandburg Village and the University of Illinois Circle Campus destroys completely the Puerto Rican communities of La Madison and La Clark, displacing tens of thousands of (census undocumented and politically powerless) Puerto Ricans and other poor.

Lincoln Park and Wicker Park now are transformed rapidly from white ethnic minority into primarily, Puerto Rican neighborhoods.

The Caballeros de San Juan and Damas de Maria form church councils or concilios, in numerous churches through out Chicago, starting at a Latino enclave in Woodlawn and including Puerto Rican enclaves in Lakeview, Uptown, La Madison, La Clark; and now within in the two main barrios of Wicker Park-West Town-Humboldt Park(La Division) and Lincoln Park (including La North Ave. and La Armitage).

1960-1965

Poverty, lack of supervised youth programs and the destabilization of Latino neighborhood support networks, via city sponsored urban renewal displacement, turns Y.M.C.A. youth athletic clubs, into hard core street gangs. White flight also uproots the ethnics from Lincoln Park and La Division and leaves behind blighted, unstable neighborhoods, ruled by absentee "politicos" and absentee landlords

1966

Right after the first Puerto Rican parade, organized first as El Dia de San Juan, by the Caballeros de San Juan and Damas de Maria at St. Michael's Church in Lincoln Park; Puerto Ricans riot over a police shooting of an unarmed youth, at Damen and Division Streets, in La Division.

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YOUNG LORDS ORIGINS

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September 23rd 1968

Reorganized by the Founder/Chairman Jose (Cha-Cha) Jimenez, the Young Lords are restructured into a human rights movement for self determination for Puerto Rico and other nations, and for neighborhood controlled development and empowerment. Young Lords take over a Community Conservation Council Meeting and completely thrash the Department of Urban Renewal Office.

Local mafia owned real estate offices on Armitage Avenue are picketed by the Young Lords, while one real estate owner points a submachine gun at protesters, and while policemen observe and make no arrests.

All windows of Anglo businesses on Armitage Ave., between Larabee and Sheffield streets are busted and boarded up, in a preplanned riot, organized by Young Lords; and including members, from all the gangs in Lincoln Park.

January,1969

Young Lords begin setting up a formal organizational structure, patterned after the Black Panther Party's ministerial structure. They conduct political education classes in homes.

Young Lords, Lado, Black Panthers, caseworkers and other activists together hold a sit in at the Wicker Park Public Aid office, to demand dignified treatment for clients; and a union for the employees.

Corky Gonzalez, Reis Lopez Tijerina, Cesar Chavez, Brown Berets, Black Berets and Black Panther films and literature are shown for the first time to the Young Lords and
the community of Lincoln Park.

200 persons picket Commander Brasch and the 18th District Police Station after the arrest of Cha-Cha Jimenez for Disorderly Conduct and Mob Action, resulting from the Urban

Renewal office destruction. He is forced to be released on his own Personal Recognizance Bond.

Young Lords take two busloads to Corky Gonzalez's Crusade for Justice Conference on Youth, in Denver, Colorado.

Demonstration at Wicker Park Welfare Office leads to the arrests of Chairman Fred Hampton, of the Black Panthers and Young Lord, Jose (Cha-Cha) Jimenez.

Cha-Cha Jimenez is indicted by Hanrahan's grand jury 18 times within a six week period. Charges range from alleged possession of marijuana, to aggravated battery against
police and numerous mob actions.

Ralph Rivera and Cha-Cha Jimenez design "Tengo Puerto Rico en mi corazon" button, which becomes symbol or logo of the Young Lords.

Young Lords take over the 18th District Chicago Avenue Police Workshop Meeting, held inside the police station. They inform a jam pack audience that the Young Lords and their programs have been instituted to protect and serve the community; and that the police have harassed and perpetrated violence against Lincoln Park residents.

Meetings begin with Armitage Avenue Methodist Church for space for more Young Lord's programs; a free daily, "Breakfast for Children" program, Emeterio Betances Free Health Clinic, Puerto Rican Cultural Center and a free Community Day Care Coop.

Young Lords march with 10,000 persons, several miles; from Halsted and Armitage through La Division and into Humboldt Park to honor Don Pedro Albizu Campos and the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party.

Cha-Cha Jimenez is in the audience at the University of Puerto Rico, that is rendering an homage to Puerto Rican singer Daniel Santos who asks him to say a few words, about the
Young Lords.

The same day the Puerto Rican students, protesting Puerto Ricans being forced to fight in Vietnam, burn down the ROTC building on campus.

Chairman Fred Hampton of the Black Panther Party asks Bill ( Preacherman) Fesperman of the Young Patriots and Jose (Cha-Cha) Jimenez of the Young Lords to join together, in forming the Rainbow Coalition. They go on a joint speaking tour to promote the coalition.

The initial organizing work predating the coalition was carried out, on behalf of the Black Panther Party, in Uptown and in Lincoln Park, Chicago by Black Panther Party members, Field Marshall Bobby Lee and his staff.

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TAKE-OVER OF INSTITUTIONS

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Young Lords and 350 primarily, Latino community residents, take over and sit-in at the McCormick Theological Seminary administration building for one full week, until their
demands are completely met:

- $650,000 to be invested in low income housing in Lincoln Park

- $25,000 to open another free clinic, to be run by Lado for La Division (Wicker Park-West Town-Humboldt Park)

- $25,000 to open up the People's Law Office in Lincoln Park

- $25,000 committed (but never received) for a Puerto Rican Cultural Center within People's Church

Mayor Daley, States Attorney Edward Hanrahan, Superintendent of Schools, James Redman, Police Superintendent, James Conlisk and Human Resource Director Defon Brooks, in a highly publicized press conference, called for a "War on Gangs." They specifically name the Black Panthers, Young Patriots and Young Lords along with some established street gangs like: Black Gangster Disciples, Latin Kings, Latin Disciples and Black Stone Rangers, as their targets.

Manuel Ramos is shot in his face, outside of Orlando Davila's (founder in 1959,with Cha-Cha and 5 others, of the Young Lords street gang) birthday party, by off duty policeman
James Lamb. Four Young Lords, the Cuatro Lords, are arrested after making a citizen's arrest for aggravated battery, against James Lamb. Charges against the Young Lords were later dropped. James Lamb was never charged nor reprimanded for shooting and killing and unarmed Latino, Manuel Ramos.

1000 community persons join the Young Lords, dressed in black with purple berets and their buttons at St. Teresa's Catholic Church, for a funeral procession for Manuel Ramos. In front of the procession are about 100 members of the Horseman Motorcycle Club; led by David Rivera, Young Lord field marshal and also the Horseman president. Prominent Puerto

Rican leaders also side with Young Lords against police abuse, related to the Manuel Ramos death.

Young Lords take-over Armitage Avenue United Methodist Church (led by Mexican-American, Luis Chavez and others)and later the congregation renames the church, People's Church.

Felicitas Nunez, also of proud Mexican heritage, paints murals of Adelita, Emiliano Zapata, Lolita Lebron, Don Pedro Albizu Campos and the National Young Lords Logo (reading,

"Tengo Puerto Rico En Mi Corazon") on the outside church walls. The Young Lords set up the Emeterio Betances Free Health Clinic, a Puerto Rican cultural center, a free
community day care coop, a free Breakfast for Children Program and their national headquarters offices.

Urban renewal land to be used for a $1000 a year tennis court club is seized to prevent its construction. This site was once, several four story structures connected together, that housed about 35 Puerto Rican families. Over four hundred persons camp out for one week in a tent city, from Armitage to Dickens on Halsted Street, until the tennis club (later constructed at Fullerton and Damen streets in Wicker Park) removed its bid. Later, the Young Lords and the community convert the land into a People's Park and playground equipment is constructed or donated by local merchants.

Young Lords donate and urge others to donate blood for a near death Puerto Rican businessman, after his family seeks help at People's church. Young Lords march to Humbolt Park with over 10,000 persons, many in purple berets and carrying Puerto Rican flags and posters of Manuel Ramos and Don Pedro Albizu Campos. An east coast regional chapter of the

Young Lords is opened up in New York City, while this People's grassroots movement, begins to sprout up on its own in various cities, nationally.

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BUILDING SOLIDARITY

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Young Lords are asked by Deputy Chairman Fred Hampton and the Illinois Black Panthers to help mobilize demonstrators to protest at the downtown Chicago federal building, during the Chicago Conspiracy Trial, in support of Chairman Bobby Seale.

Young Lords visit California and other west coast cities to hold various meetings, in order to strengthen unity with several organizations, including: the Black Panthers, S.D.S., new left groups, Crusade for Justice, Black Berets, Alurista and the Aztlan Movement and the Brown Berets.

Chapter of the Young Lords opens up in Hayward, California.

Young Lords march in solidarity with the (I.W.W) International Workers of the World in Chicago.

Several Young Lords from Chicago travel with Cha-Cha Jimenez and Manuel Robago of the Nationalist Party, to march at the annual Grito de Lares demonstration in Jayuya, Puerto Rico The Catholic Caballeros de San Juan and Damas de Maria are urged by Don Jesus Rodriguez; and they vote unanimously to volunteer and support the Young Lords and their neighborhood programs.

The Puerto Rican Catholic bishop, Antulio Parrilla travels to Chicago and visits the Young Lord's People's Church. He then celebrates a public mass for the Young Lords at a Catholic Church in West Town.

Young Lords visit Alcatraz during an Indigenous People's take over, led by Native American Richard Oakes. The Young Lords witnessed Richard Oakes' new born baby, allegedly being dropped accidentally from a ferry, and drowning in San Francisco bay.

The Emeterio Betances Free Health Clinic screens people in Lincoln Park ,door to door for lead poisoning.

Young Lords Communications Secretary Angela Adorno meets with Vietnamese Women at a Canada conference.

Young Lords organize the Lincoln Park Poor People's Coalition, hire architect Howard Allen and draw up plans for a low income housing development, at Larrabee and Armitage Streets. It is endorsed by the community, a coalition of churches, renown architect, Buckminster Fuller and the former head of the Department of Urban Renewal, Ira Bach. However, it was still rejected by Mayor Daley's housing committee of the city council. They claimed that the Lincoln Park Poor People's Coalition lacked experience in housing construction.

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REPRESSION OF PEOPLE'S MOVEMENT

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Gang Intelligence Unit and the Chicago Red Squad station a police car, parked 24 hours a day, photographing anyone entering or leaving the Young Lords People's Church ( later it was also discovered that "Cointelpro" among other acts was also involved in inciting riots at demonstrations, infiltration, door to door rumor or discreditation campaigns and creating divisions within the new left, Latino and African American movements.

Police harass visitors and attempt to incite a riot in People's Park. While attempting to calm the crowd, several Young Lords are arrested and charged with mob action.

UPTIGD (United People to Inform Good Doers) is formed by Alderman McCutheon to collect data; including going through the Young Lord's People's Church garbage cans. This information is then prepared into letters and flyers to discredit the Young Lords leadership and to remove pastor of People's Church, Rev. Bruce Johnson. The flyers are passed at suburban Methodist Churches and the letters are sent to the bishop of the United Methodists Church, asking him to remove Rev. Bruce Johnson and the Young Lords from People's Church.

Alderman McCutheon's press conference is taken over by Young Lords. The media is reminded by Young Lords that the Alderman had been arrested for soliciting prostitutes in Old Town, is harassing Young Lords with UPTIGD and is part of the old Alderman Paddy Bauer's organization, well known for their mafia ties.

Cha-Cha Jimenez and Deputy Chairman Fred Hampton are arrested together, for an alleged assault and battery on police, at the Wicker Park Welfare Office. Obed Lopez is brutally beaten up by police. Rev. Maria de Lourdes Porrata is also assaulted by a welfare caseworker.

New York Young Lords regional office informs Chicago that they would like to split and work on their own. In an effort to maintain solidarity and a united Puerto Rican Independence movement, national headquarters recognizes that some of New York's concerns, regarding discipline and lack of professionalism are truly legitimate. The original Young Lords did develop in Chicago from a street gang. There were many students and others involved but the leadership was grassroots. "Now, these high school drop outs were just beginning to transform their lives through activism. Mayor Daley was also not as liberal as Mayor Lindsey and the police repression in Chicago was ruthless, without regard to law. The leadership in New York City had originally developed from primarily student organizations and had not yet experienced the type of repression leeched out by Chicago's patronage machine. This would eventually come later for them. There was also, in Mayor Daley's Chicago, a complete blacklisting regarding funding of anything related to the Young Lords, who were constantly attacking the mayor's urban renewal plans and his leadership. Therefore, no monies, infiltration by police agents, arrests on its leadership, minimal communication, lack of professional skills in Chicago, growing pains and U.S. regional prides, contributed to. the Young Lords split. It probably also contributed to the splits within several other prominent movement groups. The Young Lords leadership, in New York and other cities nationally, is always greatly appreciated by National in Chicago. They truly are unselfish and committed role models. The times and conditions are just different in both cities but both cities and memberships are needed to go forward in a true People's led movement, for Puerto Rican self determination and community empowerment. Both cities together represent the diasporas and over half of the Puerto Rican population in the world. The Young Lords representatives who attended the meeting embraced and all agreed to work together, as revolutionary companeros. The rest is a combined Young Lord and Latino history.

Jose (Pancho Lind ) is killed with baseball bats by an all white street gang. One of the killers is the brother of one of the first policemen at the scene. Important evidence is compromised and no one is ever convicted, even though there are court filled rooms and plenty of protest marches outside the court house.

Deputy Chairman Fred Hampton is set up and drugged by police informant William O'Neal and murdered in a predawn raid organized by State's Attorney Edward Hanrahan, and a special police team.

Pastor of Young Lords People's Church, the Methodist Rev. Bruce Johnson is found by a postal worker, stabbed 17 times and his wife, Eugenia stabbed 9 times. The Young Lords opened up the Church and cooperated but the case has never been solved, nor investigated fully by the police.

After pleading guilty to a misdemeanor and receiving a one year sentence for the infamous $23 lumber case, Cha-Cha Jimenez requests personal time from the court, prior to being jailed, and goes underground. An underground training school is set up to train Young Lords leadership, to take over the organization.

Two and a half years after the Young Lords go underground as a group, Cha-Cha Jimenez agrees to turn himself in to begin serving the one year sentence and fight the ten remaining felony charges.

Young Lords and 500 supporters greet Cha-Cha Jimenez, exactly three years after the murder of Fred Hampton, on December 4th 1972, in front of the Town Hall District police station.

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PROTRACTED STRUGGLE

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The Young Lords, led now by Angie (Navedo) Adorno( because Cha-Cha Jimenez was incarcerated) posted a $75,000 cash bond for the ten remaining felony charges and Cha-Cha Jimenez was released. Soon after his release, the Intercommunal Survival Front led by Walter (Slim ) Coleman, the local United Farm Workers led by Marcos Munoz, American Indian Movement and some remaining members of the Black Panthers (others were disbanded or in Oakland for concentration and training and/or to work on Bobby Seale's mayoral campaign) joined the Young Lords, for a press conference announcing the Jose (Cha-Cha) Jimenez bid for 46th ward alderman.

The Young Lords came in second and garnered 39% of the votes, in an area now being gentrified, with only 1000 Latino registered voters.

Right after the Aldermanic Campaign, the Puerto Rican FALN group is arrested in Evanston, IL. The same week Cha-Cha Jimenez is also arrested and charged with an alleged kidnapping of a United States Census supervisor, in support of the arrested FALN freedom fighters. He demands trial, since there was no kidnapping; and constitutionally anyone has a right to support any cause within the United States. After misplaced records and after nine months in Cook County Jail, awaiting trial; Cha-Cha Jimenez is released, when time expires on the four month speedy trial law. There are no witnesses or accusers voluntarily brought into court, by the State's Attorneys Office.

Young Lords, including a new generation of Young Lords (to avoid being labeled as a gang) work under the name of the Puerto Rican Diaspora Coalition, and become the first Latino
group to hold a public rally, for the mayoral campaign of Harold Washington.

Right after the victorious election of Harold Washington, the Young Lords organize together with the Puerto Rican Parade Committee of Chicago and the new mayor's Office of special Events and Cha-Cha Jimenez introduces Harold Washington, before a crowd of 100,000 Puerto Ricans in Humboldt Park.

In the fall of 1995,Young Lords' Tony Baez from Milwaukee, Omar Lopez, Carlos Flores, Angel Del Rivero and Angie Adorno are brought together by Cha-Cha Jimenez, to form the Lincoln Park Project, which will begin to archive and document Young Lord history and the history of the complete displacement of Puerto Ricans, Latinos and the poor of Lincoln Park. They approach DePaul University and begin working closely with Dr. Felix Masud Piloto and the Center for Latino Research. A collection is being housed at DePaul's Richardson's Library.

The Young Lords show support for the protesters at Vieques, Puerto Rico and also to continue the fight for stable neighborhoods and to end Latino and poor People displacement, by celebrating Puerto Rican Independence Day or El Grito de Lares, with the opening of Lincoln Park Camp, near Grand Rapids, MI. This becomes an annual event for supporters.

April 2007, DePaul University's Center for Latino Research organizes an International Conference, and Jacqui Lazu premiere's her play: The Block-El Bloque, A Young Lords Story.

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YOUNG LORDS HISTORICAL TIME LINE ( Dates approximate to relevant time line ) 1945-1950 WWII ends and and massive unemployment forces Puerto Rican Jibaros to immigrateas "Tomateros" or tomato pickers to U.S. migrant camps. Fomento replaces sugarcane industry and other agriculture with industry and tourism in Puerto Rico. U.S.

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Introduction

Welcome to the Black and Brown Power Movement. This exhibit directly compares the Black Nationalism/Power Movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s with the Chicano Movement of the 1970s. After World War II, racial strains increased for a number of reasons, above them increasing immigration and migration. The result was the emergence of a multi-decade, multi-racial civil rights movement which then spawned the Black nationalism and Chicano movements. We chose six characteristics of each movement which has direct parallels with the other. Those categories, laid out below in the table of contents, are origins, ideology, cultural nationalism, women in the movement, and literature and art of the movement. Both movements share a history of legal and societal oppression, economic and cultural exclusion from "mainstream" American society, police brutality, and above all, a mission of pushing back against white supremacy. Furthermore, both movements were more radical departures from the moderate movements which came before them.

For the project, Janay Alexander and Katy Mayfield focused on researching the Black nationalism movement, while Eriq Colon specialized in the Chicano movement. Julia Connell took on the responsibility of putting together the group's research on Omeka, and both Julia and Katy contributed to the Chicano research.

Conclusions

Black Nationalism and the Chicano Movement are ongoing movements that continues to shape how black and Chicano people understand their status in society. Although it has been confronted with much opposition, these movements gave people hope. It revitalized their spirits in moments when it seemed as if equality was unattainable. It forced the nation to confront the many underlying issues of racism and systematic oppression. It showed society that black people would no longer tolerate oppression, poor living conditions, anti-blackness, and a segregated racial order.

As Black Nationalism spread, the nation bore witness to black people no longer being afraid to fight back. Black power was more than just a rallying cry, it proclaimed pride in blackness, when black people were constantly being told that blackness was subordinate to whiteness. Although shaped as so by the media, Black Nationalism was not a movement to overthrow the government. It was a push to improve the government and enforce due process that all people should be protected equally under the law. Equality and freedom is not progressive nor will it be granted with time. The only way to strive toward a more egalitarian society is to fight for it. When the nation fought for freedom against the British government, it was called an American Revolution. When black people dared to speak for equality, it was called terrorism. The issue that most white people had with Black Nationalism was that for the first time, they would no longer be involved in the future outcome of the status of black people. Black people demanded their right to control their own lives, and the fear of having no power of Black Americans was too much to bear.

The Chicano Movement showed that people of Mexican descent were not going to put up with racial injustice any longer. Although chicanos provided the backbone of American agriculture, they were treated as second-class citizen, facing police brutality, sub-par and segregated educational systems, and other injustices. The Chicano Movement was about standing up for Meixcan-American rights and reclaiming their ethnic background as one of beautiful and rich history. Interweaving identity with other political struggles, the Chicano Movement fought for both a better political future and for the right to claim a past.

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Welcome to the Black and Brown Power Movement. This exhibit directly compares the Black Nationalism/Power Movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s with the Chicano Movement of the 1970s. After World War II, racial strains increased for a number of reasons, above them increasing immigration and migration.

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The Brown Power movement was a revolutionary movement that took place in the 1960s and 1970s that focused on Mexican-American rights, immigration, Puerto-Rican self-determination,

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Young Lords 13-Point Program

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This text, made available by the Sixties Project, is copyright (c) 1993 by the Author or by Viet Nam Generation, Inc., all rights reserved. This text may be used, printed, and archived in accordance with the Fair Use provisions of U.S. Copyright law. This text may not be archived, printed, or redistributed in any form for a fee, without the consent of the copyright holder. This notice must accompany any redistribution of the text. The Sixties Project, sponsored by Viet Nam Generation Inc. and the Institute of Advanced Technology in the Humanities at the University of Virginia at Charlottesville, is a collective of humanities scholars working together on the Internet to use electronic resources to provide routes of collaboration and make available primary and secondary sources for researchers, students, teachers, writers and librarians interested in the 1960s.

Young Lords Party
13-Point Program and Platform

The Young Lords Party is a Revolutionary Political Party Fighting for the Liberation of All Oppressed People

1. We want self-determination for Puerto Ricans--Liberation of the Island and inside the United States.

For 500 years, first spain and then united states have colonized our country. Billions of dollars in profits leave our country for the united states every year. In every way we are slaves of the gringo. We want liberation and the Power in the hands of the People, not Puerto Rican exploiters.

Que Viva Puerto Rico Libre!

2. We want self-determination for all Latinos.

Our Latin Brothers and Sisters, inside and outside the united states, are oppressed by amerikkkan business. The Chicano people built the Southwest, and we support their right to control their lives and their land. The people of Santo Domingo continue to fight against gringo domination and its puppet generals. The armed liberation struggles in Latin America are part of the war of Latinos against imperialism.

Que Viva La Raza!

3. We want liberation of all third world people.

Just as Latins first slaved under spain and the yanquis, Black people, Indians, and Asians slaved to build the wealth of this country. For 400 years they have fought for freedom and dignity against racist Babylon (decadent empire). Third World people have led the fight for freedom. All the colored and oppressed peoples of the world are one nation under oppression.

No Puerto Rican Is Free Until All People Are Free!

4. We are revolutionary nationalists and oppose racism.

The Latin, Black, Indian and Asian people inside the u.s. are colonies fighting for liberation. We know that washington, wall street and city hall will try to make our nationalism into racism; but Puerto Ricans are of all colors and we resist racism. Millions of poor white people are rising up to demand freedom and we support them. These are the ones in the u.s. that are stepped on by the rules and the government. We each organize our people, but our fights are against the same oppression and we will defeat it together.

Power To All Oppressed People!

5. We want community control of our institutions and land.

We want control of our communities by our people and programs to guarantee that all institutions serve the needs of our people. People's control of police, health services, churches, schools, housing, transportation and welfare are needed. We want an end to attacks on our land by urban removal, highway destruction, universities and corporations.

Land Belongs To All The People!

6. We want a true education of our Creole culture and Spanish language.

We must learn our history of fighting against cultural, as well as economic genocide by the yanqui. Revolutionary culture, culture of our people, is the only true teaching.

7. We oppose capitalists and alliances with traitors.

Puerto Rican rulers, or puppets of the oppressor, do not help our people. They are paid by the system to lead our people down blind alleys, just like the thousands of poverty pimps who keep our communities peaceful for business, or the street workers who keep gangs divided and blowing each other away. We want a society where the people socialistically control their labor.

Venceremos!

8. We oppose the Amerikkkan military.

We demand immediate withdrawal of u.s. military forces and bases from Puerto Rico, Vietnam and all oppressed communities inside and outside the u.s. No Puerto Rican should serve in the u.s. army against his Brothers and Sisters, for the only true army of oppressed people is the people's army to fight all rulers.

U.S. Out Of Vietnam, Free Puerto Rico!

9. We want freedom for all political prisoners.

We want all Puerto Ricans freed because they have been tried by the racist courts of the colonizers, and not by their own people and peers. We want all freedom fighters released from jail.

Free All Political Prisoners!

10. We want equality for women. Machismo must be revolutionary... not oppressive.

Under capitalism, our women have been oppressed by both the society and our own men. The doctrine of machismo has been used by our men to take out their frustrations against their wives, sisters, mothers, and children. Our men must support their women in their fight for economic and social equality, and must recognize that our women are equals in every way within the revolutionary ranks.

Forward, Sisters, In The Struggle!

11. We fight anti-communism with international unity.

Anyone who resists injustice is called a communist by "the man" and condemned. Our people are brainwashed by television, radio, newspapers, schools, and books to oppose people in other countries fighting for their freedom. No longer will our people believe attacks and slanders, because they have learned who the real enemy is and who their real friends are. We will defend our Brothers and Sisters around the world who fight for justice against the rich rulers of this country.

Viva Che!

12. We believe armed self-defense and armed struggle are the only means to liberation.

We are opposed to violence--the violence of hungry children, illiterate adults, diseased old people, and the violence of poverty and profit. We have asked, petitioned, gone to courts, demonstrated peacefully, and voted for politicians full of empty promises. But we still ain't free. The time has come to defend the lives of our people against repression and for revolutionary war against the businessman, politician, and police. When a government oppresses our people, we have the right to abolish it and create a new one.

Boricua Is Awake! All Pigs Beware!

13. We want a socialist society.

We want liberation, clothing, free food, education, health care, transportation, utilities, and employment for all. We want a society where the needs of our people come first, and where we give solidarity and aid to the peoples of the world, not oppression and racism.

Hasta La Victoria Siempre!

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13 Point Program and Platform of the Young Lords Party

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This text, made available by the Sixties Project, is copyright (c) 1993 by the Author or by Viet Nam Generation, Inc., all rights reserved. This text may be used, printed, and archived in accordance with the Fair Use provisions of U.S. Copyright law.

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A Brief History of the Young Patriots, 1970

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The Original Rainbow Coalition, formed in Chicago in the late 1960’s, was the alliance between the Chicago Black Panther Party, Puerto Rican Young Lords, and Poor White Young Patriots Organization.

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The Young Patriots 11-Point Program

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Marxist History: USA: Black Panther Party

1. We Want Freedom. We Want Power To Determine
The Destiny Of Our Black Community.
We believe that Black people will not be free until we are able to determine our destiny.

2. We Want Full Employment For Our People.
We believe that the federal government is responsible and obligated to give every man employment or a guaranteed income. We believe that if the White American businessmen will not give full employment, then the means of production should be taken from the businessmen and placed in the community so that the people of the community can organize and employ all of its people and give a high standard of living.

3. We Want An End To The Robbery
By The Capitalists Of Our Black Community.
We believe that this racist government has robbed us, and now we are demanding the overdue debt of forty acres and two mules. Forty acres and two mules were promised 100 years ago as restitution for slave labor and mass murder of Black people. We will accept the payment in currency which will be distributed to our many communities. The Germans are now aiding the Jews in Israel for the genocide of the Jewish people. The Germans murdered six million Jews. The American racist has taken part in the slaughter of over fifty million Black people; therefore, we feel that this is a modest demand that we make.

4. We Want Decent Housing Fit For The Shelter Of Human Beings.
We believe that if the White Landlords will not give decent housing to our Black community, then the housing and the land should be made into cooperatives so that our community, with government aid, can build and make decent housing for its people.

5. We Want Education For Our People That Exposes
The True Nature Of This Decadent American Society.
We Want Education That Teaches Us Our True History
And Our Role In The Present-Day Society.
We believe in an educational system that will give to our people a knowledge of self. If a man does not have knowledge of himself and his position in society and the world, then he has little chance to relate to anything else.

6. We Want All Black Men To Be Exempt From Military Service.
We believe that Black people should not be forced to fight in the military service to defend a racist government that does not protect us. We will not fight and kill other people of color in the world who, like Black people, are being victimized by the White racist government of America. We will protect ourselves from the force and violence of the racist police and the racist military, by whatever means necessary.

7. We Want An Immediate End To
Police Brutality And Murder Of Black People.
We believe we can end police brutality in our Black community by organizing Black self-defense groups that are dedicated to defending our Black community from racist police oppression and brutality. The Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States gives a right to bear arms. We therefore believe that all Black people should arm themselves for self- defense.

8. We Want Freedom For All Black Men
Held In Federal, State, County And City Prisons And Jails.
We believe that all Black people should be released from the many jails and prisons because they have not received a fair and impartial trial.

9. We Want All Black People When Brought To Trial To Be Tried In
Court By A Jury Of Their Peer Group Or People From Their Black
Communities, As Defined By The Constitution Of The United States.
We believe that the courts should follow the United States Constitution so that Black people will receive fair trials. The Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution gives a man a right to be tried by his peer group. A peer is a person from a similar economic, social, religious, geographical, environmental, historical and racial background. To do this the court will be forced to select a jury from the Black community from which the Black defendant came. We have been, and are being, tried by all-White juries that have no understanding of the "average reasoning man" of the Black community.

10. We Want Land, Bread, Housing, Education,
Clothing, Justice And Peace.
When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and nature's God entitle them, a decent respect of the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and, accordingly, all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.

Written: October 15, 1966
Source: War Against the Panthers, by Huey P. Newton, 1980
Transcription/Markup & corrections: MIM/Brian Baggins
Online Version: Marxist History Archive (marxists.org) 2001

Note: Corrections to the MIM transcription have been made in this version. The MIM version had some errors, most notably point ten contained a fabrication of unknown origin, describing the parties "Major Political Objective, A United Nations Supervised Plebiscite". This has been removed. The present version is checked word for word according to the version found in War Against the Panthers, by Huey P. Newton, 1980.

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Marxist History: USA: Black Panther Party

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Black Power was a revolutionary movement that occurred in the 1960s and 1970s. It emphasized racial pride, economic empowerment, and the creation of political and cultural institutions.

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"Yellow power is a call for all Asian Americans to end the silence that has condemned us to suffer in this racist society and to unite with our black, brown and red brothers of the Third World for survival, self-determination and the creation of a more humanistic society" (Kubota, 1969)

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The Chicano Moratorium: Why 30,000 People Marched Through East LA in 1970

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The Chicano Moratorium: Why 30,000 People Marched Through East LA in 1970

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Grace Lee Boggs and Angela Davis in Conversation @ UC Berkeley 2014

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On Revolution: Excerpts of a conversation between Grace Lee Boggs and Angela Davis at University of California, Berkeley in 2012.

Aired: 06/29/14

Rating: NR

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Please continue to enjoy extra(s) from this episode. The full episode is still available for purchase through the "Buy Now" links.

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POV | American Revolutionary: On Revolution at Berkeley | Season 27 | Episode 2

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On Revolution: Excerpts of a conversation between Grace Lee Boggs and Angela Davis at University of California, Berkeley in 2012. Aired: 06/29/14 Rating: NR The full episode is no longer available for online streaming. Why? Please continue to enjoy extra(s) from this episode. The full episode is still available for purchase through the "Buy Now" links.

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Organizing a Rainbow Coalition of Revolutionary Solidarity

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How Asian-American Radicals Brought "Yellow Power" to Chinatown by Eveline Chow, 2016

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In October 1966-50 years ago-Chinese leader Mao Zedong appeared on Tiananmen Square in Beijing to address an audience of 1.5 million Red Guards, the paramilitary youth he had called upon to tear down the Communist Party hierarchy. "Long live the Red Guards!" he shouted, to roars of approval. "Long live the great Cultural Revolution!"

That spring, Mao first called for a " Cultural Revolution," urging the working class to "struggle against and crush those persons in authority who are taking the capitalist road" and "criticize and repudiate...the ideology of the bourgeoisie and all other exploiting classes."

Tens of millions of Red Guards took up his call. By the revolution's end in 1976, millions of people-especially intellectuals and those with ties to the previous, Nationalist government or the West-had been denounced, tortured, or murdered. Many fled to Hong Kong, and from there to the United States and elsewhere. To this day, the period remains one of the most painful traumas in China's collective memory.

Outside China, the full extent of what happened during the Cultural Revolution remained largely unknown until the late 1970s. What came through were mostly propaganda messages about class struggle, economic empowerment and educational access for the poor-messages that resonated with radical leftists in the United States who were fighting for civil rights and protesting the Vietnam War.

"A lot of us radicals at that time didn't know exactly what was going on. But [ideas like] reforming education were quite relevant to us," said Peter Kwong, a historian at Hunter College who during the late '60s was at Columbia University writing his master's thesis about the Red Guards. "The Chinese, through propaganda, were able to have a significant impact on the way young people were thinking."

People of color were particularly inspired by Mao's call to "serve the people," seeing in it a message that was relevant to poor, marginalized communities. The Black Panther Party formed just five months after the Cultural Revolution began, and it soon became commonplace to see black radicals selling copies of Mao's " Little Red Book" on street corners. The Puerto Rican nationalist Young Lords were also inspired by Maoism.

Less attention has been given to the Asian-American leftist groups that formed, including the Red Guard Party and Kalayaan in San Francisco, and East Wind Collective in Los Angeles. Here in New York, in 1969, a dozen or so young Asian-Americans formed I Wor Kuen [IWK], Cantonese for "Righteous and Harmonious Fists." The name came from a group that tried to expel Westerners from China during the Boxer Rebellion of 1900.

Virgo Lee of IWK with a member of the Young Lords. (Corky Lee)
"We believed U.S. imperialism was a criminal system that conducted a genocidal war in Vietnam and maintained an oppressive racial caste system at home. We believed it was irredeemable and the 'system' had to be overthrown," said former IWK leader Gordon H. Chang, who is now a history professor at Stanford University.

That year, IWK members pooled their money and rented a cheap corner storefront at 24 Market Street in Chinatown, under the Manhattan Bridge, where they resolved to live collectively and "serve the people." Some dropped out of college. Four of the members held jobs, enabling the other eight to be full-time activists. Inspired by the Panthers, they adopted a uniform of berets and sunglasses.

IWK protested poor housing conditions in Chinatown, organized child-care programs and bilingual education and conducted door-to-door testing for tuberculosis, which was endemic in the overcrowded neighborhood. They also organized Chinatowners to join other Lower East Side residents in a fight for a new hospital nearby, then demanded the hospital hire more Chinese speakers.

The group led a successful protest against a Bell Telephone Company plan to tear down a block of housing for a switching station. They also protested the war in Vietnam, and taught young people ways to avoid the draft. Later, IWK would help defend small grocery owners who had been shut down by the Health Department for selling roast ducks and other traditional Chinese food items, eventually leading the agency to change its ordinances.

Former IWK member Karen Low was just 14 when she joined the group. Her mother worked at a garment factory in Chinatown; after school, Low and her siblings helped her do piecework. Poor people in the community, Low recalled, faced "miseducation and ignorance and racism." Moreover, they were often unaware of the many social services they qualified for. "So when IWK came along, it was an opportunity to say, 'Yes, it's about time somebody is speaking for us, somebody's trying to do something for us,'" she said.

Sometimes, the group joined with the Panthers, the Young Lords and other radical groups to protest larger issues, or attend political conventions. The Panthers' Ten Point Program inspired IWK to draw up a Twelve Point Program that called for "an end to racism," better housing and health care, and "community control of our institutions and land." The group even published a bilingual community newspaper called "Getting Together."

"Chinatown is a ghetto to Chinese people like ghettoes are to Black, Spanish and other non-white peoples," IWK wrote in the inaugural issue. "We Asians (Chinese) in Chinatown are living in a colony controlled by foreigners (the rich, outside whites). In fact, Chinatown is not only a ghetto, but a colony of sorts. What we have to do is begin to gain power to run our own community." The article ended with a call to "Yellow Power."

The paper helped publicize the group's work outside of Chinatown, and in 1971 IWK merged with San Francisco's Red Guards to form a national IWK.

Alongside IWK, numerous fellow travelers in Chinatown took up Mao's call. One was Corky Lee, a photographer who in those days had portraits of Mao and Ho Chi Minh on his wall. Inspired by the Young Lords' "liberation" of an X-ray truck to offer free tuberculosis testing in Spanish Harlem, Lee proposed running a free health fair in Chinatown.

He worked with IWK members, social workers and several community groups to organize the fair, which was held in August 1971. For 10 days, a fleet of doctors, nurses and technicians set up shop along Mott Street, and locals could come by to get tested for TB, lead poisoning, diabetes, venereal diseases and other conditions, with assistance from volunteer translators. The event was so popular-2,500 people came-that the organizers decided to rent a garage on Baxter Street and turn it into a full-time clinic staffed by volunteers. They called it the Chinatown Health Clinic.

Despite their good works, these young leftists were viewed with suspicion by much of the community. In those days, Chinatown was a stronghold of sympathizers for the anti-communist Nationalist Party, or Kuomintang [KMT], which ruled China until the communist takeover in 1949. The KMT, which governed the island nation of Taiwan, also known as the Republic of China, viewed New York as an important base for lobbying the international community and influencing media coverage of China. It poured resources into local institutions like the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association, which for decades served as the unofficial government of Chinatown. Only the Nationalist flag flew on Mott Street. The neighborhood celebrated the founding date of the Republic of China, October 10, also known as "Double Ten Day." Public support for communist China was not tolerated.

"I was called a Red Guard," said Lee. "Because we were giving out medical care for free. Some of the more conservative people in Chinatown felt this was the Cultural Revolution coming to Chinatown."

Gordon Chang recalled that political differences sometimes became violent. "We had fistfights; the storefront was damaged. I was stabbed by gang youth who worked with the 'reactionaries,'" he said.

Like many radical groups of that era, IWK was also dogged by the police. "The Fifth Precinct was always on top of us, the Seventh Precinct was always on top of us, we were trailed and followed by the FBI," said Low. "I mean things like that happened. In those times it was pretty much a given." The organization also clashed with other leftists, including former members who formed splinter groups.

Caught in the middle of all these politics were ordinary people in Chinatown who were growing weary of the decades-long diplomatic freeze between the U.S. and the People's Republic of China and longed to reconnect with friends and family in the mainland.

IWK tapped into these sentiments through public screenings of propaganda films, which showcased development projects like dam construction, as well as revolutionary operas like "The White-Haired Girl" and "The Red Detachment of Women." Low recalled people angrily pouring down buckets of water and throwing things from neighboring rooftops. And yet, thousands of people attended these screenings.

"A lot of them were older people, so they hadn't seen their homeland in 20 or 30 years. The only information they were getting was what organizations like IWK distributed," said Charlotte Brooks, a historian at Baruch College and author of Between Mao and McCarthy: Chinese American Politics in the Cold War Years. "They were hungry for those details."

As the '70s wound on, America's stance towards the People's Republic of China began to shift. In October 1971, the United Nations voted to expel Taiwan and admit the PRC as the acknowledged representative of China. IWK cheered the news and organized a demonstration outside the UN to welcome the arrival of PRC representatives, while conservative Chinatown leaders hung banners on Mott and Pell Streets that read, "Mao's regime does not represent the Chinese people" and "We demand bloodthirsty Mao be punished."

In the Chinese-American community, too, openness toward the People's Republic of China became mainstream. When the U.S. recognized the PRC in 1978, Nationalist sympathizers were bitterly disappointed, but in the broader community, there was largely a sense of relief.

The IWK logo invokes the clenched fist of "Yellow Power," as well as the "Harmonious Fist" in the group's name.
That same year, IWK merged with several other radical groups to become the League of Revolutionary Struggle. But by that point, the revolutionary spirit of the '60s and '70s was fading. The League formally dissolved in 1990.

With time, former radicals became business owners or professionals. They settled down and had families.
Eveline Chao is a freelance writer based in Brooklyn. She is the author of Editor's note: After the publication of this story, Regina Lee, chief development officer at the Charles B. Wang Community Health Center, wrote in to Gothamist to express concern about our description of the origins of the Health Center. Her letter, along with a response from the author, follows: NIUBI!: The Real Chinese You Were Never Taught in School, a guide to Chinese slang. Chao is currently working on an oral history project about Manhattan Chinatown.
Today, some remain active in progressive politics, but "in different form," as Low puts it. She's spent her career as an educator and organizer. Corky Lee worked on a successful campaign to get formal recognition from the U.S. Department of Labor for the key role played by Chinese laborers in building America's railroads.

In Chinatown, the legacy of IWK is still visible. On Canal, Walker and Centre Streets, there stand branches of the Charles B. Wang Community Health Center, a nonprofit that caters to medically underserved New Yorkers, particularly Asian-Americans. There are two more locations in Flushing. The Center grew out of the Chinatown Health Clinic, which in turn grew out of the 1971 health fair organized by IWK, Corky Lee, and many other idealistic young Asian-Americans. Each year, nearly 50,000 patients visit the Charles B. Wang facilities. The mission of those young radicals-to serve the people-lives on.

As a volunteer in the 1971 Chinatown Health Fair and co-founder of the Charles B. Wang Community Health Center, I am writing to correct and clarify some significant misstatements and erroneous conclusions in your article "How Asian American Radicals Brought Yellow Power to Chinatown."

The person responsible for the 1971 Chinatown Health Fair was Thomas Tam. At that time, Tom was an organizer with the Lower East Side Neighborhood Health Council. The Lower East Side, which had a very successful history of community mobilization to make health services more accountable, was the target area for one of the first neighborhood health service programs funded by the national Office of Economic Development. The Health Council served as the community council for this program, which was based at Gouverneur Hospital and sought to make services more accountable to the community and strengthen resident participation in policy making. It was Tom, Marie Lam (social worker at Chinatown Planning Council), and Kai Liu (staff at Two Bridges Neighborhood Health Council) who led the successful campaign to get the NYC Health and Hospitals Corporation to hire more bilingual workers at Gouverneur.

Following the tremendous community response to the health fair, Tom and the health fair organizers worked together to establish a free clinic to meet the ongoing health care needs of Chinatown residents. The Church of Our Savior on Henry Street donated free space, and we recruited volunteer doctors, nurses and students to offer 10 hours of basic health care services free of charge to all community members. We also launched patient navigator and health education programs to supplement these basic services. The volunteers who maintained the health center during those early years were mostly college students. Several years ago, the corner of Canal Street and Cortland Alley in Chinatown was named Honorable Thomas Tam Way to honor Tom's role in initiating the health fair and the clinic.

IWK did not play any meaningful role in either the health fair or the health clinic. For those of us who were involved, we found inspiration from the social activism that was occurring in the US during the '60s and early '70s, such as the free clinic movement, which started in Haight Ashbury and Berkeley, and the Johnson Administration's Great Society programs that gave us Medicaid and Medicare. Our vision for a community-based health clinic was not shaped by the ideology of the Red Guards, but by Dr. Jack Geiger, who founded the first community health centers in the U.S. at Columbia Point in Boston and Mound Bayou in Mississippi.

During the early '70s, several Marxist Leninist groups such as IWK, October League and the Communist Party USA had a small presence in Chinatown. I remember that many people in the community were wary about these groups because of the sharp divisions in Chinatown over US-China relations. The divisions were frequently along generational lines. The health clinic leadership was very careful to steer clear of any organizational relationships/affiliation with IWK and other radical groups out of concern that volunteers and patients would be turned off.

To suggest that the Charles B. Wang Community Health Center is a legacy of IWK is an absurd conclusion. The Health Center published a 308-page history book, From Street Fair to Medical Home, in 2011 to commemorate our 40th anniversary. The book is based on oral histories conducted with Health Center founders and volunteers, as well as our archival records. The book makes no references to IWK as an initiator/influencer in the health fair or the health clinic. No founders or volunteers who participated in the interviews even mentioned IWK.

Thanks to Regina Lee for the important supplementary information. I would like to reassure her and all the other admirable people who helped bring about the Chinatown Health Clinic and the later Charles B. Wang Community Health Center that at no point during our interviews did any former IWK members ever take credit for creating either entity. What they discussed was helping with the Chinatown Health Fair, the one-off event that preceded those entities. That involvement is corroborated in published accounts of the fair and also came up in conversations with historians, leaving me no reason to doubt the claims. I agree that IWK was not involved in the fair's later transformation into a full-time clinic; for that reason they are not mentioned in the sentence describing the founding of the Chinatown Health Clinic.

I also agree that there was not a large Marxist-Leninist presence in Chinatown; as mentioned in the piece, IWK had just 12 members. As for the concluding paragraph, because the group volunteered at the fair, which became the clinic then center, I consider it fair to paint a symbolic link between the Charles B. Wang Community Health Center and the former "mission" of the group, and to portray their histories as having intersected.

The story of how the Charles B. Wang Community Health Center came to be is a rich and commendable chapter in this city's history, but was not the subject of this piece. For that reason, I did not get into the important work of Thomas Tam, Regina Lee herself, and the many other people, of all political stripes, who brought about the clinic and the center.

My aim in telling the story of one small group of people is certainly not to diminish the achievements of others not mentioned, and I welcome the addition of more voices and more context to this story.

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How Asian-American Radicals Brought 'Yellow Power' To Chinatown

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In October 1966-50 years ago-Chinese leader Mao Zedong appeared on Tiananmen Square in Beijing to address an audience of 1.5 million Red Guards, the paramilitary youth he had called upon to tear down the Communist Party hierarchy. "Long live the Red Guards!" he shouted, to roars of approval.

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I Wor Kuen's (IWK) 12-Point Platform, 1969

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I Wor Kuen's 12 Point Program and Platform

I Wor Kuen was a revolutionary organization that emerged in from the New Left among Asian nationalities in the U.S.; it began in 1969 and ended in September, 1978 when it merged with the August 29th Movement, another revolutionary organization with roots in the Chicano liberation struggle. (adapted from "Fists For Revolution" by Fred Ho, published in the excellent Legacy to Liberation: Politics and Culture of Revolutionary Asian Pacific America, which Ho edited.)

Asian people in Amerika have been continually oppressed by the greedy, traitorous gangsters of our own communities and by the wider racist exploitative Amerikan society. We have been bombarded by the media (newpapers, T.V., radio, and schools) with false ideas about how we should accept our position in this society. They have tried to brainwash us and have even coerced us into going overseas and fighting against our own people in S.E. Asia.

But, Asian Amerikans have been fighting back against the oppression of this country ever since we first tasted the bitterness of Amerika's racism and exploitation. The long and heroic history of the Asian Amerikan struggle inspired and strengthened us in our purpose. No longer can we endure these oppressive conditions. We cannot let our ancestors' struggles go down in vain. We know who are our real enemies and friends and we have new strength for we are joining our sisters and brothers within this country and around the world to fight for freedom and justice against the rulers of this country.

We have tried the peaceful means of petition, courts, voting and even demonstrations. But our situation remained the same. We are not free.

We want to improve the living conditions of our people and are preparing to defend our communities against oppression and for revolutionary armed war against the gangsters, businessmen, politicians, and police. When a government oppresses the people and no longer serves the needs of the people, we have the right to abolish it and create a new one.

We are working for a world of peace, where the needs of the people come first, which is without class distinctions and is based upon the love and unity of all people.

The following 12 points are what we are fighting for:

1. WE WANT SELF-DETERMINATION FOR ALL ASIAN AMERIKANS.

The masses of Asian people in Amerika live in ghettoes which are like small colonies. The Amerikan capitalists continually try to make profit off us by trying to alter our entire way of life for their own benefit. We want liberation from this enslavement so we can determine our own destinies.

2. WE WANT SELF-DETERMINATION FOR ALL ASIANS.

Western imperialists have been invading and colonizing countries in Asia for the past 500 years. Amerikan imperialism, concentrating in Asia is now engaged in the most sadistic and genocidal war of aggression the world has ever seen. We want an immediate end to Amerikan imperialism.

3. WE WANT LIBERATION OF ALL THIRD WORLD PEOPLES AND OTHER OPPRESSED PEOPLES.

People of color, Asian, Black, Brown, Red are all fighting for liberation from Amerika's racist oppression. Millions and millions of white people are also rising up to fight our common oppressor. We recognize that only when the oppression of all people is ended can we all really be free.

4. WE WANT AN END TO MALE CHAUVINISM AND SEXUAL EXPLOITATION.

The thousands of years of oppression under feudalism and capitalism have created institutions and myths of male supremacy over women. Man must fight along with sisters in the struggle for economic and social equality and must recognize that sisters make up over half of the revolutionary army. Sisters and brothers are equals fighting for our people.

5. WE WANT COMMUNITY CONTROL OF OUR INSTITUTIONS AND LAND.

These institutions in our communities such as the police, schools, health, housing, transportation, sanitation, anti-pollution, and welfare must be controlled by and serve the needs of the people and not be geared to the making of money. We want an end to our community being used to make profit for outsiders, such as slumlords and tourist agencies.

6. WE WANT AN EDUCATION THAT EXPOSES THE TRUE HISTORY OF WESTERN IMPERIALISM IN ASIA AND AROUND THE WORLD: WHICH TEACHES US THE HARDSHIPS AND STRUGGLES OF OUR ANCESTORS IN THIS LAND AND WHICH REVEALS THE TRULY DECADENT EXPLOITATIVE NATURE OF AMERIKAN SOCIETY.

The Amerikan imperialists have tried to justify their world empire by covering up the inhuman deeds they perpetrated in Asia and to the rest of the Third World. They also try to brainwash us in school with racist history which does not tell of the degradation, oppression and humiliation Asians and other Third World People have been forced to suffer in Amerika. We want to learn of the heroic and inspiring struggles Asian people have conducted throughout the world as well as in Amerika.

7. WE WANT DECENT HOUSING AND HEALTH AND CHILD CARE

The institutions of housing, health, and child care are set up only to make money for landlords, doctors, hospitals and drug companies. We want housing, health, and child care that gives us life and not slow death.

8. WE WANT FREEDOM FOR ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS AND ALL ASIANS.

Our Asian brothers and sisters in Amerika's racist jails should be set free for they were not tried by their peers (other Asian brothers and sisters). Political prisoners are jailed because they fought for their freedom and basic rights as human beings. They all must be set free.

9. WE WANT AN END TO THE AMERIKAN MILITARY.

The Amerikan military machine is butchering people throughout the world, especially in Asia. The end of the Amerikan military will be one of the greatest events in the history of the liberation of mankind. We want all Asian Amerikans exempt from military servitude.

10. WE WANT AN END TO RACISM.

White racism has been oppressing Third World People for the past 500 years. Although we recognize and firmly support the progressive white people in the anti-imperialist struggle, we should continue to struggle against white racism on all levels. The racism towards Third World People toward each other is being broken down and a new unity is being created in our struggle against our common enemy.

11. WE WANT AN END TO THE GEOGRAPHIC BOUNDARIES OF AMERIKA.

From its beginning, Amerika has been a robber country. It stole land by the use of armed force from native Amerikans, Chicanos and Latinos, and other peoples. Amerika can now only maintain its present boundaries both internally and externally by the threat and use of violence. We want free passage of all people to and from Amerika. The people of the world have built Amerika, and they must now determine its destiny. Amerika has also tried to blind those who live here as to the realities of socialism by restricting information from and travel to the People's Republic of China, Cuba, Albania, North Korea, and North Vietnam. We want open boundaries and an end to immigration and emigration harassment.

12. WE WANT A SOCIALIST SOCIETY.

What exists in Amerika today is a society where one man in order to survive must exploit his fellow man. We want a society that works for the fulfillment of human needs. We want decent housing, health, child care, employment, sanitation, and old age care. We want a society where no man or woman will die due to lack of food, medical care or housing, where each gives according to his ability and takes according to his need.

Back To History Is A Weapon's Front Page

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I Wor Kuen's 12 Point Program and Platform

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I Wor Kuen's 12 Point Program and Platform I Wor Kuen was a revolutionary organization that emerged in from the New Left among Asian nationalities in the U.S.; it began in 1969 and ended in September, 1978 when it merged with the August 29th Movement, another revolutionary organization with roots in the Chicano liberation struggle.

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The Emergence of Yellow Power by Amy Uyematsu, October 1969

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If we Called Ourselves Yellow by Kate Chow, 2018

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I'm on the phone with an associate history professor at Indiana University, Bloomington, named Ellen Wu. We're talking about skin color, identity and how people like us - Americans of East Asian descent - can describe ourselves.

Wu and I agree that there are many words we could use: Asian American, East Asian, East Asian American. People with roots from South Asia or Southeast Asia sometimes refer to themselves as brown, which seems like a useful shorthand. But for a bunch of reasons, brown doesn't work for East Asians. I'm wondering if there's a parallel word for us.

I pose this question, a little hesitantly: What about yellow?

Wu sucks in a breath. Her gut reaction is No! The word, she says, is too fraught. Using it would be like painting our skin with a sickly, mustard sheen or writing a nasty word on our foreheads. "Yellow" has long been considered noxious. To some, it's on par with Chink, gook, nip or Chinaman.

And yet. And yet. I sort of love yellow. The idea of calling myself yellow stirs in the pit of my stomach, the same place where bellyaches and excitement form. It feels at once radical and specific. Though it's a slur - in fact, because it's a slur - it's the type of word that could force people to face its long, storied history of racism and resistance directly, every time they hear it.

So, what about yellow?

One of my most vivid childhood memories is of watching Mighty Morphin Power Rangers after school with my two older sisters. I'd nestle into the couch beside them as they started on their homework, watching the Rangers shapeshift into things more powerful than their human selves.

Even at a young age, I understood the Rangers' color-coded suits. Pink equaled female (white female, of course). Black was black.

And the yellow Ranger? She was played by Thuy Trang, an actress of Vietnamese descent. And though I loved her, her costume confused me. My skin wasn't yellow. I didn't know anyone who did have yellow skin.

In recent years, former Power Rangers cast members and producers have said that race had nothing to do with their costumes. Yet, as a child, it seemed clear to me that by the calculus of race in America, yellow meant Asian.

So how did yellow come to signify East Asian? How did the color morph into something that could inspire fear, outrage and even empowerment?

And given all the word's baggage, why am I so intrigued by the idea of reclaiming it?

When and why yellow was first applied to people of East Asian descent is rather murky. The process occurred over hundreds of years. As some scholars have noted, it's not as if there were people with yellow skin. The whole "yellow equals Asian" thing had to be invented. And in fact, there was a time when there was no such thing as "Asian" - even that had to be invented.

Enter Carl Linnaeus, an influential Swedish physician and botanist now known as the "father of modern taxonomy." In 1735, Linnaeus separated humans into four groups, including Homo Asiaticus - Asian Man. The other three categories, European, African and American, already had established - albeit arbitrary - colors: white, black and red. Linnaeus, searching for a distinguishing color for his Asian Man, eventually declared Asians the color "luridus," meaning "lurid," "sallow," or "pale yellow."

I get this bit of history from Michael Keevak, a professor at National Taiwan University, who writes in his book Becoming Yellow: A Short History of Racial Thinking that" Luridus also appeared in several of Linnaeus's botanical publications to characterize unhealthy and toxic plants."

Keevak argues that these early European anthropologists used "yellow" to refer to Asian people because "Asia was seductive, mysterious, full of pleasures and spices and perfumes and fantastic wealth." Yellow had multiple connotations, which included both "serene" and "happy," as well as "toxic" and "impure."

He tells me that there was "something dangerous, exotic and threatening about Asia that 'yellow' ... helped reinforce."

Which might explain why the fear that East Asian countries would take over the West became known as yellow peril.

One of the first references to "yellow peril" can be traced to a dream that the German Emperor Wilhelm II - best known for his bombastic political maneuvering in the years before, and during, World War I - had in 1895. In the dream, the emperor saw a Buddha on the back of a dragon, storming Europe. He commissioned an illustration of the dream, which he shared with leaders of Europe and the United States. The work, by the artist Hermann Knackfuss, depicted an archangel trying to persuade various European nations to band together to defend a womanly figure from the so-called yellow forces of Asia. It was titled "Peoples of Europe, Defend Your Holiest Possessions," and it appeared in 1898 in Harper's Weekly, which had hundreds of thousands of readers in the U.S. The image was widely referred to as "THE YELLOW PERIL."

Not surprisingly, anxiety about Asia made its way into pop culture, too. In 1913, the British author Sax Rohmer created a fictional villain, Dr. Fu Manchu. The doctor - with his long, scraggly mustache and jaundiced-looking skin - became an unofficial template for portraying Chinese men as lecherous and maniacal. Fu Manchu made his onscreen debut in 1923 in The Mystery of Dr. Fu Manchu, and he stuck around well into the 21st century. I've heard his name used countless times in the manner of nonsensical - but racist - playground taunts. So it wasn't terribly surprising when, in 2013, General Motors pulled an ad that featured women who say "ching-ching, chop suey" and referred to China as "the land of Fu Manchu."

In 1956, Marvel's short-lived Yellow Claw comic featured a villain of the title's name. He was drawn with a bald head, long scraggly beard, slanted eyes and, yes, fingers that resembled claws. True to the name, his skin had a distinct yellow hue.

That was all make-believe. The real-life consequence of vilifying a race included things like the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which banned Chinese immigration to the United States until 1943; the violence against hundreds of Filipino farmworkers in Exeter and Watsonville, Calif., who were mobbed and driven out of their homes by white Americans in 1929 and 1930; and the incarceration of more than 100,000 Japanese Americans during World War II.

For as long as Asians have lived in the United States, white people have been trying to label us: who we are, what we look like and how we should be described. It was also white people who defined our terminology - for many decades, " Orientals" was the moniker of choice. (And when people hurled slurs at us, we've been called Chinamen, Japs, gooks, Asiatics, Mongols and Chinks.)

That started to shift in the 1960s.

That's when the term "Asian American" was born. At the time, it was linked to political advocacy. Yuji Ichioka, then a graduate student and activist at the University of California, Berkeley, who would later become a leading historian and scholar, is widely credited with coining the term.

This period, often referred to as the Yellow Power Movement, was one of the first times these disparate people - Korean Americans, Vietnamese Americans, Japanese Americans, Indian Americans, Laotian Americans, Cambodian Americans, to name only some - grouped themselves under one pan-ethnic identity.

There was power in numbers, which Ichioka knew as founder of the Asian American Political Alliance. In a letter and questionnaire to new members, AAPA made clear that its organization was not just advocating for the creation of Asian American studies courses, but for broader social causes. That included adopting socialist policies and supporting the Black Liberation Movement, the Women's Liberation Movement, and anti-Vietnam and anti-imperialist efforts.

Spurred in part by the activism of the times, the term "Asian American" rose to popularity. It also helped that the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 was passed, allowing an influx of Asian immigrants to the U.S.

But over the years, the term Asian American revealed itself to be a complicated solution to the problem of identity.

For one thing, most people who technically fit into the "Asian American" category refer to themselves based on their ethnic group or country of origin, according to the National Asian American Survey (NAAS).

Karthick Ramakrishnan, a professor at the University of California, Riverside, and the leader of NAAS, says he and his colleagues found that most Americans think of "Asian Americans" as East Asians.

Karen Ishizuka, who wrote Serve the People: Making Asian America in the Long Sixties, says that "Asian American" is still an important identifier because of the political power it has carried for decades. But it's crucial for people to be educated about what it once meant, she says, because the term has become "more like an adjective now, rather than a political identity."

Ramakrishnan and Ishizuka seem to reinforce why I've been searching for a term like yellow. In all my conversations about this issue, I've found myself remarking how the question of "What about yellow?" feels so hair-pullingly existential. Maybe it's because Asian American seems like it has been watered down from activism to adjective. I find myself wanting a label that cuts a little deeper.

In 1969, a Japanese American activist named Larry Kubota wrote a manifesto called "Yellow Power!" that was published in Gidra, a radical magazine created by Asian American activists at the University of California, Los Angeles.

His words were a rallying cry. "Yellow power is a call for all Asian Americans to end the silence that has condemned us to suffer in this racist society and to unite with our black, brown and red brothers of the Third World for survival, self-determination and the creation of a more humanistic society," he wrote.

Kubota wasn't the only one using yellow in a new and different way.

Ishizuka tells me about a bunch of different groups in the 1960s and 1970s: Yellow Seeds was a radical organization in Philadelphia that published a bilingual English-Chinese newspaper of the same name. The Yellow Identity Symposium was a conference at Berkeley that helped ignite the Third World Liberation strikes. The Yellow Brotherhood was an Asian group made up mostly of former gang members in Los Angeles that tried to disband gangs and curb drug addiction. Yellow Pearl, a play on "yellow peril," was a music project started by an activist group in New York's Chinatown.

I call up Russell Leong. He is a professor emeritus at UCLA and was the longtime editor of the radical Amerasia journal. As a kid, he used to make Yellow Power posters in San Francisco's Chinatown.

"Do you call yourself yellow?" I ask him.

"That's an interesting question," Leong says. "If I'm with a group of yellow people like my close friends, I'll call myself a Chink, a Chinaman, a yellow. But in public, I'm not gonna call anyone else that .... it depends what I'm comfortable with. It's the same with my English or Chinese name. Sometimes I'll use my American name. Sometimes I'll use my Chinese name."

Whatever the word, he adds, "I think it's better that we have more words to describe ourselves."

I get it. Despite the incompleteness of any one term, together theycan become a powerful tool.

Still, if there were no term like "Asian American" - if it didn't exist, if we gave up on it entirely - then what could we have to anchor ourselves? After all, it's not just about a word; it's about an entire identity.

Ellen Wu, the historian from Indiana, digs into that point: "To circle back to this question of, do we use something like yellow or brown? ... Why do we even feel like we have to?"

Wu acknowledges that we're always craving words that might come closer to encapsulating who we are.

"I think that invisibility - that feeling that we don't matter, that worse, we're statistically insignificant - in some ways really fuels that desire to have a really concise and meaningful way of talking about ourselves," she says.

I pose all of this to Jenn Fang, an activist and writer who runs the appropriately-named blog Reappropriate.

She's not so convinced that yellow would resolve the issues that plague Asian American. It might be a useful identifier if yellow was used very intentionally and people knew its history, she says. But it could also fall into the same traps as Asian American. With ubiquity, it could eventually lose its power.

Fang also thinks that if people were to identify as yellow, there would be more people staying in their own lanes, so to speak - that, say, East Asians who call themselves yellow might not advocate on behalf of Asians who call themselves brown.

"Are you reclaiming the slur, or reclaiming our history?" Fang asks me. "The thing I'm concerned about is - is [yellow] a truly reflective way of talking about the East Asian American experience? Is yellow more nuancing? ... Or more flattening?"

In the pinnacle of the civil rights era, activists used yellow as a term of empowerment - a term they chose for themselves. In some ways, I'm still seeing that today.

When the director of Crazy Rich Asians, Jon Chu, wanted to include a Mandarin version of Coldplay's song "Yellow" in a pivotal scene of his movie, some people were concerned that including it might not fly in such a high-profile movie about Asians. But that was exactly Chu's point. He wrote a letter to the band pleading his case - he wanted to attach something gorgeous to the word.

"If we're going to be called yellow," Chu wrote, "we're going to make it beautiful."

I can't help but think back to a group of people I spoke to late last year.

The Yellow Jackets Collective is an activist group, the name an echo of the 1960s. They're four people in New York City who identify themselves with a wide swath of terms, in addition to yellow: she/her, womxn, brown, Asian American, femme, child of Chinese immigrants, Korean American, 1st gen., first gen. diasporic and "collaborating towards futures that center marginalized bodies."

I send them an e-mail. "Why yellow?"

They point out that they don't just walk around the world calling every East Asian person they meet "yellow."

"Identity ideally is about you and how you feel and what you believe has shaped you," Michelle Ling responds.

I let Ling's words percolate. I don't know if I'll walk around in the world calling myself yellow - maybe to people who have similar experiences to mine; certainly not around people who've flung slurs at me.

Even so, having different words to choose from is itself a comfort. Having yellow in my arsenal makes me feel like my identity doesn't hinge on just one thing - one phrase, one history or one experience.

After a back-and-forth with the group, something they've written stops me in my metaphorical tracks. It's from the Yellow Jackets mantra; a snapback comment that I can't help but appreciate:

"We say Yellow again because at our most powerful we are a YELLOW PERIL and those who oppress us should be afraid. We are watching you. We are making moves."

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subscribe to Code Switch podcast I'm on the phone with an associate history professor at Indiana University, Bloomington, named Ellen Wu. We're talking about skin color, identity and how people like us - Americans of East Asian descent - can describe ourselves.

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Necessary but not Sufficient: Yellow Power! by Larry Kubota, April 1969

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Welcome to the NEW Nikkei Album!

We've launched Nikkei Album in beta, so everyone can now start uploading and creating their own albums. There may be things that don't work quite right yet. Please email us to report any errors.

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We've launched Nikkei Album in beta, so everyone can now start uploading and creating their own albums. There may be things that don't work quite right yet. Please email us to report any errors.

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Yellow Power: The Origins of Asian America by Nina Wallace, 2017