Activism Archives - Page 3 of 161

Toki Wakayama

The Wakayama case was a wartime test case that challenged the detention of Japanese Americans forcibly removed from the West Coast.

Teiko Ishida (1916-98) was the first woman to be appointed to the national board of the Japanese American Citizens League in 1939 and was the first woman appointed to the position of national secretary of the JACL from 1943 to 1945.

Mitsuye Yamada

Acclaimed poet, feminist writer, and human rights activist. Much of Yamada’s work draws on the wartime incarceration of Japanese Americans.

Shimeji Kanazawa

Nisei activist who was the community liaison between the Japanese community and the military government in Hawai’i during World War II. She later supported community causes for the elderly like Project Dana.

Irene Gomez-Bethke

Irene Gomez-Bethke, a daughter of Mexican parents who immigrated to Minnesota, played a leadership role in bending the arc of history toward social justice, serving as Minnesota Commissioner of Human Rights, guiding boards and commissions as a volunteer, and co-founding both Centro Cultural Chicano and Instituto de Arte y Cultura.

Emily Grey

Best known for initiating the effort to free an enslaved woman named Eliza Winston in 1860, she weathered mob violence for her efforts. She rebuilt her home and business after the incident and lived in Minneapolis for the remainder of her life.

Theresa Ericksen

After graduating from Northwestern Hospital’s School of Nursing in 1894, Theresa Ericksen led a life of service as a healer, teacher, and promoter of public health and nursing education. Her legacy has ties to the Minnesota Nursing Association, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Christmas Seals, and Fort Snelling National Cemetery.

Alice Tripp

A self-proclaimed “jumper-inner,” Alice Tripp made her mark as a grassroots activist and self-taught farmer. She was a key leader of a movement opposing the CU Powerline, which began construction on western Minnesota farmland in the early 1970s.

Nellie Stone Johnson

Nellie Stone Johnson was an African American union and civil rights leader whose career spanned the class-conscious politics of the 1930s and the liberal reforms of the Minnesota DFL Party.

Ruth Nomura Tanbara

In August of 1942, Ruth Tanbara and her husband, Earl, were the first Japanese Americans to resettle in St. Paul as a result of President Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066. They assisted the St. Paul Resettlement Committee during World War II and remained in the city after the war’s end, becoming life-long community leaders in St. Paul.