Richard Aoki was a third-generation Japanese American citizen born in 1938 in California.
In 1941, Aoki's family along with 20,000 other Japanese Americans and Japanese people living in the United States were forcibly relocated to concentration camps because of the war. After the war, Aoki's family moved to Oakland.
Aoki served in the Army for 8 years before attending Merrit College where he met the founders of the Black Panther Party, Huey Newton and Bobby Seale. Aoki went on to become a Field Marshall in the Black Panther Party.
Aoki transferred to attend college at Berkeley. There "he became a member of the Asian American Political Alliance, a student organization that led the fight for ethnic studies. From 1968, Aoki was one of the leaders of the Third World Liberation Front (TWLF), the group who led a strike that resulted in the development of Berkeley’s ethnic studies department," according to a 2001 Asian Week article. “The Third World Liberation Front strike at Berkeley was the longest — at three months — ugliest — thousands of dollars of cost to the university — and bloodiest — 168 of us arrested — in the history of the U.C. system,” Aoki reportedly told the magazine. Later Aoki would become one of the first coordinators of Asian-American studies at UC Berkeley and taught some of the program's courses.
Aoki died in March 2009 having dedicated his life to social justice and racial harmony. In his own words: “…Based on my experience, I’ve seen where unity amongst the races has yielded positive results. I don’t see any other way for people to gain freedom, justice, and equality here except by being internationalist.”
There is a new documentary about Aoki's life that is currently screening in several places across the country. For more information about Aoki read a radio transcript interview here.
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Mixed Experience History Month is the annual blog post series created by writer Heidi Durrow celebrating the history of the Mixed experience. Established in 2007, Mixed Experience History Month is an effort to show that there is a long history of achievements of those involved in the Mixed experience. Please look for more profiles of people, places and events of the Mixed experience every weekday of May at Lightskinned-ed Girl, the blog! Thanks for reading. And check out some of the previous year's profiles: 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010.
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