Category Archives: Special Events

This Martin Luther King Day, it feels appropriate to honor the work of another great advocate for Civil Rights. If I were in California, I’d definitely be heading to this event at UC Berkeley for Fred Korematsu Day on January 30th.

“Fred T. Korematsu was a national civil rights hero. In 1942, at the age of 23, he refused to go to the government’s incarceration camps for Japanese Americans. After he was arrested and convicted of defying the government’s order, he appealed his case all the way to the Supreme Court. In 1944, the Supreme Court ruled against him, arguing that the incarceration was justified due to military necessity.

In 1983, Prof. Peter Irons, a legal historian, discovered key documents that government intelligence agencies had hidden from the Supreme Court in 1944. The documents consistently showed that Japanese Americans had committed no acts of treason to justify mass incarceration. With this new evidence, a legal team of mostly Japanese American attorneys re-opened Korematsu’s 40 year-old case on the basis of government misconduct. On November 10, 1983, Korematsu’s conviction was overturned in a federal court in San Francisco. It was a pivotal moment in civil rights history.

Korematsu remained an activist throughout his life. In 1998, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, from President Bill Clinton. In 2010, the state of California passed the Fred Korematsu Day bill, making January 30 the first day in the US named after an Asian American. Korematsu’s growing legacy continues to inspire activists of all backgrounds and demonstrates the importance of speaking up to fight injustice.” (via)

At the Berkeley event on the 30th, the Reverend Jesse Jackson will headline an afternoon of speakers, including Mr. Korematsu’s daughter. Attendees will also see the 2000 documentary, Of Civil Wrongs and Rights: the Fred Korematsu Story.

Even if you can’t get to California, I think on this day of honoring the work of Martin Luther King Jr., let us also remember those countless civil rights advocates who are lesser known, but whose work remains so vital today.

(Thanks Angry Asian Man!)