Thread by @NAPAWF

This #BlackHistoryMonth, we recognize that our movement for racial justice builds on so much from Black activists. Learn more about the long history of Black and AAPI solidarity in the United States below 🧵

1869 – Frederick Douglass, in a speech in Boston, states his opposition to restrictions on Chinese immigration.

1950s – Grace Lee Boggs and James Boggs together become leaders in the movements for labor rights, Civil Rights, and Asian American advocacy in Detroit.

1963 – Yuri Kochiyama and Malcom X first meet while protesting discriminatory hiring practices at a construction site in Brooklyn. They write each other letters over the next year, bonding over their shared commitment against war, nuclear weapons, and racial oppression.

1968 - The Asian American Political Alliance is founded by graduate students at the University of California Berkeley.

1971 - The Emergency Detention Act was repealed after pressure from Black and Japanese American activists.

1982 - Black civil rights and labor leaders in Detroit speak out and help bring awareness to the murder of Vincent Chin.

1994 - A gathering of Black women activists in Chicago invents the Reproductive Justice framework. They recognized that the existing women’s rights movement could not represent women of color, and devised the Reproductive Justice framework to center the most marginalized people.

As an AAPI organization that uses the Reproductive Justice framework to build power with our community, we recognize our movement builds on and borrows so much from Black activists who came before us, in particular Black women.