<Begin Segment 20>

MA: What do you think living in Harlem, like, what impact did that have on your political development? Do you think that if you hadn't lived in Harlem, you would have been as involved with the Black Power movement?

YK: Uh-uh.

MA: Or at all, I guess?

YK: No. Because even though we live... you know, before we lived in Harlem, which was a low-income project, we lived in a low-income project in Mid-Manhattan. If we lived in Mid-Manhattan all the time, never went to Harlem, uh-uh. Because I wouldn't know all the kind of things that were happening in Harlem, what kind of organizations and who were the key leaders and speakers. No, I would only know what's happening in Midtown. And although New York had wonderful, I think, activists and leaders, it was a great place, I thought, to raise children, yeah.

MA: And your children also got involved in a lot of different things.

YK: Oh, they got involved so young. They were teenagers and were really involved. And that's why both my kids, while they were still teenagers, they went on their own to Mississippi different times and with different groups. But, I mean, and so it was natural that then the third child, I wouldn't let her go to those, she was too young. But she was so active. But I did let her go to, you know, the big demonstrations like in Washington, D.C. and stuff like that. And then later, our little ones started going. And I was surprised that our little ones, when I was reading some of their schoolwork when they were in grammar school, one of them wrote on Vietnam when they were very young. And another one wrote on... what was the other country they wrote on? Oh, Puerto Rico. Maybe because we had a lot of Puerto Rican neighbors and they were interested. And I was really amazed, and I was so happy that... I don't know where they got all their information, I don't know if some of it -- you know, their friends were Puerto Rican, or because, well, because so many Puerto Ricans lived in the project, too, that they were able to hear from their friends' parents. Because Puerto Ricans felt they were looked down upon, and they felt the racism. So I'm sort of glad that we happened to be, I thought, just in the right places.

MA: Why do you think more Niseis did not get involved?

YK: What?

MA: Why do you think more Niseis didn't get involved in the Civil Rights Movement and the Black Power movement? Why do think there was, Niseis didn't tend to get involved to protest, especially in black movements? Why do think there was that --

YK: Especially in what?

MA: In black movements. Why do you think there was that divide? Because I think that you're very unusual yourself.

YK: Luckily we lived in Harlem. And living in projects from the '50s. And like, you know when so many blacks were being killed in the South? What's the most biggest case in the South? When we heard about, you know, the kid, fourteen years old, he was from Chicago...

MA: Emmett Till.

YK: Yes, right. And he just whistled at a white woman. And I think they even showed a picture in the paper what he looked like. It was shocking, it was so horrendous. And yet, I think it was smart that his mother wanted everybody to see what was done to her son. And that really inflamed all the blacks, 'cause it was happening to so many blacks. And I'm just so glad that my kids learned real young that, to be black -- it is a white country. Even though all kinds of people live in America, the power is mostly in white hands. I think so. We were lucky that maybe our kids had some good teachers, regardless of their background.

MA: Well, and they also attended the Freedom School, and they also had education outside of the public government education system.

YK: Right, oh, yeah.

MA: So that probably had an impact.

YK: Oh, our kids were lucky. And so, I mean, by the time Audee was fifteen and Billy was seventeen and they said, "We want to go to Mississippi." Well, Audee was only fifteen, we didn't know... except that SNCC, high school, SNCC said they'll pay the way. So we didn't have to worry, we wouldn't have to get the money. But we told Billy, "Look, we don't have any extra money." My husband, I don't know if he was still going to college or what, but if he was working, he was not making much. He was working for some Christian organization. And so what Billy did, his high school friends would go to Central Park on weekends with a guitar, and they would sing freedom songs, high school kids, and people would come from all over and drop nickels and dimes and maybe some people, well, quarters and even, I don't know about dollars. But his friends raised enough money that he could get not just a one-way ticket to Mississippi, he has to get back, but they made enough money so he could go back and get a two-way ticket. So he was really lucky.

MA: Yes.

<End Segment 20> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.