At that time, San Antonio’s West Side was an extremely impoverished barrio (or “neighborhood,” in Spanish) in which mostly Tejanos (i.e., Mexican Americans granted citizenship under the 1848 Treaty of Guadelupe Hidalgo) and ethnic Mexicans who had more recently migrated to Texas, lived. In San Antonio, as in so many other U.S. cities, employment and wage discrimination, racial prejudice, and Jim Crow laws targeting not just Black and African Americans, but also Mexican Americans, ethnic Mexicans and other Latinos, kept them segregated from whites, and in impoverished neighborhoods, or slums, such as the one in which Emma ‘s grandparents lived.

In the West Side barrio, Tejanos and the more recent Mexican migrants lived in overcrowded, substandard housing with little or no sanitation and no electricity. Families contracted high rates of tuberculosis and other diseases and experienced very high infant mortality rates. They suffered from poverty, many hardships, and hunger. Despite these hardships, Emma’s grandparents were resilient and optimistic about the future. In the care of her grandparents, Emma thrived.

Emma’s grandfather communicated to her early on his fervid interest in politics impacting Mexicans on both sides of the Texas/Mexican border, and his belief that organized political action could make things better for all in their community. Emma absorbed information about politics, world events and social justice like a sponge. As a small child, Emma sat in her grandfather’s lap, reading the news from both English and Spanish language newspapers, while he did, including those printed by Magonistas, political exiles who wanted to overthrow Mexico’s dictator, Porfirio Díaz.

From these, Emma learned of the extreme conditions of poverty and unfair treatment under which Mexican workers had suffered, and how, under Díaz's regime, dissent and resistance had been suppressed. After 3 1/2 decades of Díaz’s wielding power in violation of the Mexican Constitution of 1857, in 1910, oppressed workers and others suffering under Díaz’s rule decided they had had enough. And so, the violent Mexican Revolution began. It continued at least ten years until Díaz’s dictatorship ended and Mexico became a constitutional republic in 1920; however, as the new government consolidated its power, the violence persisted for many years after that.

Emma’s family taught her to be not only politically knowledgeable but also actively engaged. Since she was six, her parents brought her to political rallies. Once she began living with her grandparents, her grandfather regularly brought her to San Antonio’s Plaza del Zacate, which was then a gathering spot in what is now known as Milam Park where Mexican Americans came to share news and discuss politics, as well as issues related to labor and civil rights.

Shortly before Emma’s thirteenth birthday, the U.S. stock market crashed, touching off the Great Depression. Life for Emma’s family and other Tejanos, and for Mexicans who had more recently migrated to Texas, grew increasingly more desperate and difficult. Against the backdrop of the terrible economic conditions across the country, and increasing scarcity of agricultural jobs, unemployment greatly increased; also, poverty, hunger, and suffering deepened.

Amidst the misery, anti-Mexican sentiment grew. Members of the Ku Klux Klan and many white people in the community increasingly pressured San Antonio’s authorities to deport and punish the more recently arrived Mexicans and, along with them, Tejanos, despite their rights as Mexican American citizens being well established. Agents of the recently created U.S. Border Patrol were increasingly deployed against both the Tejanos and the more recently arrived Mexicans who had migrated to Texas. Observing the severely challenging economic, social and political conditions experienced by so many, Emma resolved to fight the injustices her family and community faced, and their suffering from extreme hunger and poverty, largely attributable to these injustices, with all she had.

Emma’s labor activism started at age sixteen. Reading about female workers who had recently struck against the H. W. Finck Cigar Company to protest deceptive pay practices and deplorable working conditions, Emma decided to join their picket line. As Emma picketed with the cigar workers, police came, attacked, and arrested the workers. They also arrested Emma. This would be the first of many times over the years that Emma would be arrested for her involvement in civil, social and labor rights protests and actions.

Rather than discouraging or scaring her, this first arrest, and the many arrests after that, served only to reinforce Emma’s resolve. In a 1987 interview for an article in The Texas Observer, Emma said:

I had a basic underlying faith in the American idea of freedom and fairness. I felt there was something that had to be done. But the idea of having women kicked. Now that was something I was going to do something about, and I went out on the picket line. That was the first time I was arrested. …

I was arrested a number of times, [but] I don’t think that I was exactly fearful. I never thought in terms of fear. I thought in terms of justice.

In high school, Emma excelled at academics and athletics. She was active in extra-curricular activities, including the investigator’s club, orchestra, the drama and debate clubs, and an after-school reading club, in which she read the works of Thomas Paine, Charles A. Beard, and Karl Marx. Her reading club also introduced her to literature from the “Wobblies,” members of the Industrial Workers of the World international labor union. This reading, along with the prior knowledge she learned at home, at political rallies, and in the Plaza del Zacate, helped Emma become, in her high school years and those that immediately followed, the remarkably astute, knowledgeable, and creative labor and civil rights leader, organizer and activist that she did.

A gifted orator, Emma particularly shone on her high school’s debate team. Emma’s oratory skill came to serve her well in her labor organizing and civil rights efforts, which she continued throughout high school and the next few years. They would earn Emma the nickname, “La Pasionaria” (in Spanish, ‘The Passionate One’).

While a high school senior, in 1934, Emma played an important role in the formation of two locals for the International Ladies’ Garment Worker Union (ILGWU) in San Antonio. After graduating, Emma attended local colleges and worked as a door-to-door salesperson, operated an elevator, and washed jars in a pickle factory. She also continued to organize the ILGWU locals, writing leaflets, visiting workers’ homes to offer encouragement, and leading the workers in various forms of protest, including marches, pickets and sit-ins. Emma soon became a familiar figure in every protest by Hispanic workers in the region. However, her work went beyond these activities. Emma’s compassion, intelligence, and strong bilingual skills came to be trusted by many in her community, who sought out her assistance on various everyday matters.

According to internationally acclaimed writer, poet, and University at Texas-San Antonio Professor Carmen Tafolla (herself, a native of San Antonio’s West Side barrio), Emma became her community’s voice. She also, Professor Tafolla explained, while delivering Emma’s eulogy in 1999, became the community’s heart:

“La Pasionaria, we called her, because she was our passion, because she was our heart – defendiendo a los pobres [in Spanish, 'defending the poor’], speaking out at a time when neither Mexicans nor women were expected to speak at all.”

While organizing the ILGWU locals, Emma frequently found herself at odds with their leadership, who, she believed, did not fully appreciate the needs of the Mexican American community. By the end of 1935, Emma left her work with the ILGWU and started with the West Side Unemployed Council, which later combined with other organizations to form the Workers Alliance of America (WAA). By 1937, Emma became the WAA’s general secretary representing thousands of unemployed and underemployed workers in San Antonio. In June 1937, after attending its national convention, Emma was elected to its national executive board.

Between 1935 and 1937, Emma increasingly garnered public attention as the leader of several very visible, highly coordinated actions to protest issues including the illegal deportation of Mexican American citizens by the U.S. Border Patrol; the abuse of Tejano and Mexican workers by local law enforcement; and the failure of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “New Deal” Works Projects Administration (WPA) to provide fair and equal access to jobs and resources for Mexican Americans. Emma also lobbied San Antonio’s mayor Charles K. Quin to improve distribution of relief supplies; called for new minimum wage guidelines; and petitioned WPA officials to investigate discriminatory practices of the Texas Relief Commission and other local agencies.

In 1936, Emma traveled to Mexico City to meet with labor leaders and to study at the Workers’ University of Mexico, and returned with new ideas about labor union organizing modeled after the Confederación de Trabajadores de México. Upon returning to San Antonio, Emma worked with Mrs. W. H. Ernst, leader of the strike on the H. W. Finck Cigar Company, to organize the Confederation of Mexican and Mexican American Workers; and in 1937, helped form the National Workers Alliance (NWA). As the NWA’s general secretary and one of its leading activists, Emma fought for jobs; a minimum wage; the right to strike; and an end to abuse and violence of Tejanos and ethnic Mexicans at the hands of U.S. Border Patrol agents. Thanks to Emma’s passionate, hard work and that of other organizers, the NWA quickly grew to include ten chapters; and by 1938, at age 21, Emma was considered one of the WAA’s most effective organizers.

On January 31, 1938, about 12,000 pecan shellers, mostly Tejano and Mexican women, walked off the job after the Southern Pecan Shelling Company (SPSC) announced it was going to cut their wages by approximately 20%. The pecan shellers gathered at a local park and chanted, “Emma, Emma,” and elected Emma their official strike leader. These workers already labored twelve hours a day, seven days a week, at starvation wages and under unsafe conditions—in picking sheds without windows and bathrooms, with fine pecan dust in unventilated spaces that, workers feared, contributed to the high rates of tuberculosis from which so many in the community suffered. Now, they were told, they would have to get by on significantly less.

The workers knew they could not. With Emma as their leader, they had hope. Instead of going back to work after a few days, as the SPSC’s management expected, the workers continued to strike, and, with Emma’s help, began to organize. Emma helped the shellers organize under the International Pecan Shellers Union (IPCU) Local 172. They were soon joined by another 6,000 to 8,000 workers.

The strike grew to be the largest San Antonio had ever seen. The organization applied for a charter from the United Cannery, Agricultural, Packing and Allied Workers of America (UCAPAWA), a national union affiliated with the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). Pecan production, then San Antonio’s biggest industry, ground to a halt.

Unsurprisingly, pecan producers, with city officials on their side and law enforcement at their disposal, fought back. San Antonio police attacked hundreds of protesters and picketers with ax handles and tear gas and hauled them off to jail on flimsy charges. Hundreds of strikers were arrested, Emma among them. However, the NWA, which Emma had helped form, fiercely and widely rallied the community’s support. The strike became a city-wide revolt by San Antonio’s poorest, most oppressed, and most vulnerable, and garnered much attention by local and national press.

In the midst of this extremely high stakes strike garnering national attention, union leaders worried about Emma’s political ties. The prior year, Emma had officially joined the Communist Party, and towards the end of that year, married the charismatic and highly visible Homer Brooks, Chairman of the Communist Party of Texas, who had once run for governor on the Communist Party ticket. In Emma’s day, many of the “radical” platforms which the Communist Party stood for, and for which Emma fought, are the very bedrock programs and protections we hold dear, today: Social Security; unemployment benefits; a minimum wage; a limited work day; equal access to education; and disability benefits, among them. Moreover, unlike so many other political organizations of her day, the Communist Party welcomed people of all races and of both sexes, and advocated for equality for all, core values in which Emma believed.

Nonetheless, in the 1930s, membership in the Communist Party was controversial. As the strike continued, the NWA’s leadership required Emma to step down from her official position as the strike’s leader. Emma agreed to officially renounce her title. However, she stayed on and for all practical purposes, continued to lead the strike just as she had before. Her name continued to appear in the national press, and she was arrested several times on invented charges. Tellingly, a February 28, 1938 TIME Magazine article called LABOR: La Pasionaria de Texas reported Emma as the true leader of the strike operating from behind the scenes.

Thirty-seven days into the strike, the pecan producers capitulated and agreed to arbitration. A few weeks later, the pecan shellers won a wage increase to seven or eight cents per pound, in accordance with the newly enacted Fair Labor Standards Act. While the pecan industry would, several years later, purchase new machines which eliminated the jobs of about 10,000 workers, the pecan shellers’ 1938 win about three months into the start of their strike was historic.

University of Texas historian Don Carleton called the pecan shellers’ strike of 1938, “the first successful rally in what became the Mexican-American social justice movement.”

The pecan workers’ success, and the national attention drawn to the health, discrimination, and economic issues impacting the city’s poorest and most vulnerable people, led to the creation of a fact-finding commission to study San Antonio’s population and problems. The commission concluded that discrimination against Latinos hurt the entire city and that political recognition of the population must take place. Although improvements did not occur quickly, or consistently, by the end of the 1930s, attitudes started changing towards San Antonio’s poorest citizens by the end of the 1930s.

However, Emma’s highly visible leadership, and the strike’s success, came with a price. Emma, a young Tejano women, had dared to lead a movement which directly opposed a powerful establishment of city leaders and pecan producers. And: she had won. As a Mexican American woman who dared to courageously use her voice, and use it effectively, she flouted every convention. She went against everything they stood for. They resolved to make her pay.

Emma decided to run for Congress on the Texas Communist Party ticket, and persuaded the newly elected mayor to allow use of San Antonio’s Municipal Auditorium for the party’s state convention. As the day of the planned event neared, city leaders and pecan producers used the press to whip the local San Antonio population into a frenzy. The press branded the gathering of approximately 150 activists seeking to hear Emma speak on subjects ranging from union rights, a minimum wage, Social Security, and racial equality as a “socialist plot.”

On August 25, 1939, the day of the convention, an angry mob of 5,000, fueled by anti-Mexican, anti-Communist, and anti-union hysteria, massed around and surrounded the city building. The mob started throwing rocks and bricks, then stormed through and past the police cordon, threatening to lynch Emma. It was one of San Antonio’s biggest, and worst, riots in its history. Emma and other state convention attendees barely escaped with their lives via a secret passageway, escorted by San Antonio police. Finding Emma gone, the mob vented their rage by ripping out auditorium seats, setting fires, and, together with the Ku Klux Klan, burned the city’s mayor in effigy for having defended Emma’s right to free speech.

While Emma’s life was saved that day, for many years, Emma received constant and serious death threats which forced her to change her name and to move out of San Antonio and the state of Texas for her safety. She was also, unbeknownst to her, blacklisted by the U.S. government. Her name appeared on U.S. enemies lists long after she divorced her husband in the 1940s and formally left the Communist Party, in 1946, after she became disillusioned with it after learning, first, of the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact of 1939, and later, of atrocities committed by Joseph Stalin. A file maintained on Emma by the Federal Bureau of Investigations was thick.

For many years, Emma struggled with poverty and worked office and odd jobs to put herself through college. Over time, she earned her degree and a teacher certification from San Francisco State College. In 1952, she became a reading teacher and that year also gave birth to a son, Francisco Tenayuca Adams.

In 1968, Emma returned to San Antonio. When she did, she learned to her surprise, that in the intervening years, she had been re-discovered by a new generation of Chicana scholars, feminists, and by San Antonians and Texans who now lauded her as a folk heroine. In her hometown, Emma earned a master’s degree and taught bilingual education until her retirement in 1982.

Emma lived to see herself inducted into the San Antonio Women’s Hall of Fame in 1991. She died in 1999 at the age of 82. At her funeral, she received many honors.

Emma’s life has been celebrated in public murals, documentaries, corridos (ballads), biographical plays, and a bilingual children’s book. Very recently, she was also honored and remembered with a unique, immersive ofrenda (an altar or offering that set up to honor a deceased loved during Día de los Muerto, or “Day of the Dead”) at the San Antonio Museum of Art.

The South Texas Civil Rights Project also gives an annual award for outstanding civil rights accomplishments, named in Emma’s honor.

Photo #1: Emma Tenayuca standing inside jail, June, 1937. Photographed in San Antonio, Texas.

Photo # 2: Emma Tenayuca, greeted by her friends. Arriving back in San Antonio after visiting New York City for medical treatment and to attend a Communist Party school, June 7, 1939.

Credit for both: The San Antonio Light Collection, UT Institute of Texan Cultures at San Antonio. Link: houstonculture.org/hispanic/tenayuca.html

Once upon a time, in a place called Los Angeles, a young man with the last name, Takei, met a young woman with the last name, Nakamura. The man had lived in California since immigrating from Japan at the age of twelve; the woman was born in Sacramento, and had been educated several years in Japan. The two fell in love, and in 1935, wed.

On April 20, 1937, the couple bore a child. Reflecting the young man’s fascination with English history and culture, they named him “George” after the soon-to-be crowned King George VI, of England. A year later, George’s parents welcomed their second son, Henry, a roly-poly baby playfully named for the notoriously insatiable English King Henry VIII. In another two years, they welcomed to the world George’s sister, Nancy Reiko, called Nancy after a beloved family friend, and Reiko, or “gracious child” in Japanese.

A 1922 racist decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in effect for approximately thirty years prevented George’s father from becoming a naturalized American citizen, and discrimination, exclusion, and racism negatively impacted many aspects of his and other Japanese Americans’ lives. Nonetheless, George’s father held fast to the promise of American democracy and his vision of the American dream, opening a dry cleaning business, which prospered. For the first few years of George’s life, the family lived happily in a two-bedroom home in L.A.

They did, until shortly after Japan’s bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941, when the lives of George, his family, and Japanese Americans across the West Coast drastically changed. Across America and particularly in California, bigotry, anger, and fear of Japanese Americans quickly reached a fever pitch. In California, the terrible sentiment to “Lock up the Japs!” came to represent the most popular political position in the state.

On February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed and issued Executive Order (E.O.) 9066 authorizing the U.S. military to declare areas “from which any or all persons may be excluded,” and provide “transportation, food, shelter, and other accommodations” to persons excluded from those areas.

Two days later, California’s then-Attorney General, Earl Warren, determined to ride the tide of this sort of “populism” to become California’s 30th governor (which he did; and eleven years later, was even appointed Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court), and testified before Congress.

Warren urged the president, the War Department, and Congress, to use E.O. 9066 to carry out the mass military evacuation and exclusion of all persons of Japanese origin from all of California and the western halves of Arizona, Oregon, and Washington, without trial or hearing, as a “measure of national security and military necessity.”

In his statement and testimony to Congress, Warren leaned on racist tropes about Japanese Americans and advanced the argument that the FBI’s and U.S. military authorities’ absence of any reports of spying, sabotage, or other illegal or suspicious activities by Japanese Americans, should not allay fears about their loyalty to the U.S.

Rather, he cited this as the “most ominous sign in our whole situation” designed to lull American lawmakers and enforcers into a “false sense of insecurity.”

Soon after, official plans and actions to carry out Warren’s recommendation were launched across California and all along the West Coast. Over a hundred civilian exclusion orders were issued, each ordering Japanese Americans to report to a designated landmark for processing and removal. The U.S. government also seized the financial assets, property, and businesses of nearly all Japanese Americans.

And so, in May 1942, three weeks after George’s fifth birthday, U.S. soldiers arrived at his family’s home and ordered them to leave. His family was brought to the Santa Anita racetrack and given as shelter, a horse stall, an unsanitary space reeking of manure. George’s sister got sick first, then he did. Their mother cared for them as best she could. George and his sister recovered. In time, George had some semblance of normalcy when he started attending kindergarten beneath the Santa Anita grandstand.

Several months later, the U.S. War Relocation Authority ordered George’s family to relocate to another internment camp, far away, in an Arkansas swamp. On the long train ride, George’s father told him they were going on a “long vacation.” His Mom did her best to distract George and his siblings and ply them with treats. Thanks to his age, resilience, and his parents’ brave determination to appear cheerful and calm despite the terror and anxiety they felt, George viewed the trip as an adventure.

In Arkansas, George and his family lived in a cabin inside the barbed-wire prison that was Camp Rohwer, and would serve as their residence for the next 1 1/2 years. When they arrived, the cabin was steaming hot, and bare, but his father opened the windows and fetched army cots, and his mother went to work with a sewing machine she had smuggled over the journey. She wasted no time in fashioning curtains, rugs, and clothes from Army surplus fabrics and strips, in a creative and courageous effort to transform their empty cabin into something resembling a home.

Meanwhile, George’s father threw himself into efforts to help other families living in their block, becoming block leader and using his fluency in English and Japanese to represent the community’s concerns. In an interview conducted close to his eighty-seventh birthday, George said, of his parents’ determined efforts to help him and his siblings feel safe, and his Dad’s unrelenting activity in furtherance of new and creative ways to make life for the community of those interned in the camp with them, more bearable, and even, as much as could be managed, fun:

He was [always] setting up dances for teenagers or building baseball diamonds or helping old folks. I really think my father was Superman to have done what he did in camp and still be our father. I feel very blessed having the parents I had. We lived through so many scary, terrifying events...As long as we were with our parents, we were safe. My parents defined who I became—they and all the stresses we went through made me who I am today.

In January 1943, after the U.S. War Department issued a mandatory Loyalty Questionnaire for all imprisoned Japanese adults' completion, George’s parents faced a dilemma. While the war authority clearly wanted them to answer “yes” with regard to two questions, they decided they must answer “no,” as answering “yes” would put them in a false position. It would also send George’s father away from his wife and children, leaving them unprotected; and sending him into perilous combat for a country which had imprisoned them, labeled them “alien enemies,” and stripped them of everything they owned; and this, George’s father could and would not stand.

For answering “No” to these questions, George’s parents were branded “disloyals” by the War Department and, in May 1944, relocated again to the notorious Tule Lake Camp, to live among other so-called “disloyals” behind three layers of barbed-wire fence, where they were guarded and policed by battle-ready troops in machine-gun towers. In Tule Lake Camp, life became increasingly dangerous, as unjust imprisonment and harsh military rule increasingly radicalized certain young men, leading to crack downs and raids of suspected radicals, with innocent people often arrested; and tensions increasing between internees and guards.

For George, however, the camp offered certain compensations. His family’s quarters lay just across from the mess hall; and it was in the mess hall where, on movie nights, films were shown. This allowed him to dash over on movie nights to nab front-row seats. On movie nights, through American and Japanese film, George was transported far from the barbed-wire enclosed camp in which he and his family were imprisoned, into a magical world of people he’d never imagined, in places far away. He found both a revelation, including the world of silent Japanese film to which a member of their community, designated the benshi, provided the sound track.

In August 1945, the U.S. bombed the Japanese cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, resulting in devastation and unprecedented, horrific deaths from atomic weapons; after which the Japanese government soon surrendered. At the war’s end, the U.S. decided that George’s family, along with other interned Japanese Americans, was finally due for release, and provided them a meager twenty-five dollars each and a one-way ticket anywhere in the U.S. While fearful of the racism and hatred they had experienced in L.A. at the start of the war, George’s father and his family nonetheless chose to return, and seek to re-establish their life there.

For George and his family, life continued to be difficult, scary, and treacherous in their first few years in post-war L.A. Impoverished and unable to find other housing or significant employment due to discrimination, they lived these years in high-crime Skid Row. For lack of other available paid work, George’s father worked during the day as a dishwasher and, for a time, opened a small employment agency to try to help other Japanese Americans get back on their feet, for free.

In 1950, George’s father started a new dry cleaning business and moved his family to a Mexican American neighborhood in East L.A. There, George and his family found their Mexican American neighbors and community warm and welcoming, and they thrived. George took Spanish throughout junior high and high school, engaged in leadership activities, and graduated with honors. His father got involved in politics and activism in their community, and remained active in both until his death in 1979.

As George grew into adulthood, he followed his Dad’s example, becoming active in politics, and in many civil rights and social justice causes…

As a theater student at UCLA, George got to meet the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. After this meeting, George and his cast mates sang at civil rights rallies, and marched with Dr. King.

In 1964, at the age of 27, after struggling some years to get acting work, George got his big break. He was cast in the role of Lieutenant Hikaru Kato Sulu, a “pan-Asian” officer in a new sci-fi TV series called Star Trek, a show featuring a singularly diverse cast and crew of space explorers engaged in a peaceable mission of seeking out new life, and new civilizations. Star Trek ran for three seasons, between September 1966 and June 1969. In syndication, it became more popular and developed a cult following. With the subsequent Star Trek film franchise, many TV spin-off series, and countless adaptions across various media, original cast members, including George Takei, became nothing less than legendary, intergalactic superstars.

Throughout his life, George Takei has sought to use his soaring profile as a celebrity to make as large a difference in social justice, civil rights, and humanist causes as possible. In 1981, George testified at a congressional hearing to urge the passage of legislation to provide restitution and a formal apology to surviving Japanese Americans unjustly incarcerated during WWII; legislation which finally came to fruition with the passage of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988. Since that time, George has been active in the cause to secure reparations for the descendants of enslaved people in the U.S., and in causes related to rights and protections for immigrants; racial, religious, and ethnic minorities; and LGBT+ persons. He has also sought to educate a vast audience of people about his family’s experience of forced removal and internment, through appearances at many U.S. schools and universities, televised and podcasted talks and interviews, social media, a musical called Allegiance he produced, in which he also acted; and graphic novels targeting adolescents and teenagers, including They Called us Enemy, first published in 2019.

On March 12, 2017, an exhibit called “New Frontiers: The Many Worlds of George Takei,” honoring George’s life, career, and civil rights activism, opened at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles, featuring many treasures and artifacts from George’s life and career. Chief among them was a tree root captured and sculpted by George’s father long ago, from the time of his incarceration in the swamps of Camp Rohwer, which his Dad had preserved, treasured, and saved across the family’s subsequent relocation to the camp at Lake Tule, as well as through his and his family’s later moves, to the end of his life.

For George Takei, his father’s ability to spot and find in the swamps of that internment camp, a thing of beauty embodied in the root of a cypress tree, worthy of capturing, sculpting, preserving, and treasuring throughout the time of their imprisonment, across many hardships thereafter, and over the rest of his life, is emblematic of his father’s teachings on the resilience required to live through, and somehow make life not merely bearable, but even beautiful and joyful, in harsh and terrible times.

In an excerpt from an interview published on October 16, 2020, George said:

This is part of resilience. You can’t just be moping and wallowing in your misery, in your pain. You have a right to it because you are in a horrible situation, but you can’t remain in that. You’ve got to make your joy, find your beauty.

Six days after his eighty-seventh birthday, George Takei’s publisher released his wonderfully narrated and beautifully illustrated children’s book, My Lost Freedom: A Japanese American World War II Story, to teach people of different ages and generations the lesson of his family’s and so many other Japanese Americans’ suffering and incarceration resulting from the misuse of the Alien Enemies Act and E.O. 9066; multiple leadership failures on the part of the U.S. government; and from the mass hysteria, racism, and anti-Asian and anti-immigrant sentiment that overwhelmed America during the second world war.

While promoting this book, and repeatedly over the past year, George Takei has warned that if Americans do not wish to repeat the irreversible mistake our country made in unjustly incarcerating some 120,00 Japanese Americans during WWII, stripping them of their liberty, property, and most fundamental rights, we must learn to read and understand our history, at its darkest as well as its brightest moments; and recognize that our “people’s republic” and democracy is very fragile, relying on citizens’ vigilant, frequent, and conscientious exercise of our participatory democratic rights in an effort safeguard civil liberties for all.

He has urged that when our democratic institutions, fundamental freedoms, and vulnerable populations are under threat, we must be prepared to demonstrate resilience; exercise true leadership and activism; and raise our voices in defense of our institutions, civil liberties, and social justice for those other than ourselves.

Two of these leaders, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Reverend Ralph Abernathy, had arrived in Birmingham with high hopes at the invitation of the Reverend Frederick (“Freddie”) Lee Shuttlesworth, who had, for eight years, served as pastor of Birmingham’s Bethel Baptist Church and, in that time, survived multiple beatings, bombings, and attempts on his life. Dr. King considered him “the most courageous fighter in the South.”

Prior to Dr. King’s and Reverend Abernathy’s arrival in Birmingham, the U.S. civil rights movement’s momentum had started to flag. Also, while President John F. Kennedy expressed support for civil rights, he had held back from introducing the landmark civil rights legislation that leaders wanted him to advance. Here, in this heavily segregated city of Birmingham, the new arrivals hoped to reinvigorate the campaign with new, bold displays of nonviolent resistance, to capture the attention of the press and the public, and push President Kennedy to take this decisive and critical step.

Birmingham’s Black residents, having suffered from extreme racial segregation and officially sanctioned violence, seemed ripe to resist. Between 1945 and 1962, fifty unsolved, racially motivated bombings inspired the city’s terrible nickname, “Bombingham.” A Birmingham neighborhood inhabited by both Black and white families experienced so many attacks, it was called “Dynamite Hill.” Black churches engaged in the civil rights movement were also targeted, and attacked.

The first phase of the Birmingham civil rights campaign of organized sit-ins, kneel-ins, marches and other forms of protest were supported by many Birmingham residents and showed early promise. However, as time wore on, the leaders’ hopes started to fade. Hundreds of residents were arrested, and with these arrests, Birmingham residents started to succumb to disillusionment, burn-out, and fear. Increasingly, African American residents expressed they did not dare to continue to publicly resist as they feared losing jobs and homes if they did.

On April 10, 1963, an injunction barring protests and a prohibitively high increase in the bail bond set for those arrested (from $200 to $1,500, equal to an increase from $2,000 to $15,000 in 2024) by the city’s Commissioner of Public Safety, Eugene “Bull” Connor, decreased the public’s willingness to participate even more. In the April 12, 1963 march led by Dr. King, Reverend Abernathy, and Reverend Shuttlesworth, only fifty Birmingham residents followed. For their participation, all were arrested and jailed.

On April 19, 1963, TIME magazine ran an article with the title “The South: Poorly Timed Protest,” claiming, “[t]o many Birmingham Negroes, King’s drive inflamed tensions at a time when the city seemed to be making some progress, however small, in race relations.” The magazine carried the quote of the Rev. Albert S. Foley, chairman of Alabama’s Advisory Committee of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, characterizing Dr. King’s and his co-leaders’ campaign as “poorly timed and misdirected.”

From his jail cell, Dr. King penned his famous Letter from a Birmingham Jail in reaction to a statement from eight Birmingham clergymen carried in the Birmingham News which condemned the protests, and explaining to the world his reasons for taking a stand in Birmingham and the purpose of his civil rights campaign. After he and the others were released, the three leaders conferred. They realized they had few options; fewer ideas; and diminishing hope. Until a fourth leader, the Reverend James Bevel, a veteran of the Nashville Student movement described by a fellow activist as “crazy and brilliant, all the same time,” stepped up, and shared his “crazy” and “brilliant” idea.

Reverend Bevel urged Dr. King and the other leaders to light the flames of resistance with the bravery and resilience of Birmingham’s children, instead. Bevel proposed fueling the movement through the energy of children he and his wife had steadily recruited and cultivated at youth meetings every day after school at Birmingham’s St. James Baptist Church. Some of these children had attended the meetings held for adults there, too, stood up, and volunteered to go to jail.

Dr. King hated the idea. He did not want to put children in danger. However, he could not see another way. After much doubt, hesitation, and misgiving, James Bevel’s argument prevailed.

The children were taught techniques of non-violent resistance. They were eager to participate, and many did so without their parents’ permission or even knowledge. The civil rights leaders sent the pre-arranged signal, using a pre-arranged song (Big Joe Turner’s “Shake, Rattle and Roll!”), and message, communicated by on air by local DJs, including one known as “Shelley, the Playboy”: “Kids, there’s gonna be a party at the park!…We gonna jump and shout, we gonna turn it out!”

And with that, the children knew it was time to begin their crusade.

So, on May 2, 1963: the children deployed, and marched! Hundreds left school, climbing out of windows and doors to join the demonstration at the 16th Street Baptist Church starting-point.

The children marched. They filed out of the 16th Street Baptist Church, two by two, fifty at a time, towards city hall and the downtown business district, according to plan. They were mostly teenagers, but some as young as six.

The children marched, singing as they went. As they marched, police approached, came and arrested them; loaded them into police cars and wagons; and took them to jail.

Another fifty children followed, also singing. They, too, were arrested, and another line followed; then another, after that. The children marched in different directions, and police pursued. When caught, children were loaded into school buses, and transported to Birmingham’s jails, juvenile detention facilities, and a local fairgrounds.

More than 1,000 children, all told, marched on May 2, 1963; at least six hundred were caught, and jailed.

The next day, May 3, 1963, hundreds more children came out, and marched. By now, the city’s jails were filled. Some children were released from jail; and when they were, many returned to march again.

The city’s public safety commissioner had the fire department set up water cannons, to places where children were expected to march, and ordered police to attack the children and bystanders with batons, clubs, dogs, and high-pressure fire hoses, and to arrest more children, as needed; and they did.

Under heavy spray from the fire hoses, many children were forced to the ground; others scattered, hid behind trees, and ran. The force of the water was very powerful, and very cold; it tore tree bark, clothing, skin and hair, and it stung.

But one small group of children locked arms and continued to march, to the best of their ability, just as they had been taught. The children pushed past the force of the water, singing, “Freedom, freedom, freedom!” And as they did, other children were inspired to continue marching, and found themselves able to push past, just as the earlier ones had.

On the second day, approximately 1,922 children were arrested. The city and county jails were full, with more than 300 children crammed into holding cells meant for fifty people. And still, the days passed; and still, the children continued to protest, and march. They were joined by others, including adults, who, inspired by the children’s courage, and also joined the demonstration.

The brutality of the police’s attacks was filmed and photographed and, when circulated by the media, horrified the nation and drew the world’s attention to the children’s plight; to racial segregation; and to the brutality of officially sanctioned violence in the American South.

The attacks and the Children’s Crusade caught the U.S. President’s attention, as well. On May 4, 1963, President Kennedy sent his assistant attorney general to Birmingham to urge the city’s white leaders to negotiate with the demonstrators. By May 6, 2,500 protestors of all ages populated the city’s jails; each day, the number of protesters continued to grow.

On May 10, 1963, Birmingham’s white city officials capitulated and agreed to a tentative deal that included the desegregation of lunch counters, fitting rooms, restrooms, and drinking fountains. The children were released from jail. However, proponents of segregation and hate violently expressed their objections in a bombing campaign that began the evening of May 11, 1963. That night, a bomb exploded and damaged the A.G. Gaston Motel, where Dr. King had been lodging; another was set, and damaged the home of his brother, the Reverend Alfred Daniel King.

On May 20, 1963, the Birmingham Board of Education announced that all 1,081 high school students who had taken part in the demonstrations would be expelled from school; and that many middle school and even elementary school children would be suspended, as well. A federal district court upheld the ruling. However, the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the decision, and ordered the students readmitted to school.

On June 11, 1963, President Kennedy, bolstered by the courage shown by the children in their crusade, made a televised address in which he announced his support for landmark federal civil rights legislation to ban racial discrimination in many areas of American life. He called on Congress to enact this legislation. After the Children’s Crusade, the American civil rights movement regained momentum. On July 12, 1963, the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ordered all Birmingham schools to begin integrating, the result of a lawsuit filed six years earlier by Birmingham barber James Armstrong Sr., whose children had been denied admittance to the then all-white Graymont Elementary School.

On August 28, 1963, Dr. King led the historic March on Washington in which he delivered his legendary “I Have a Dream” speech.

However, violence, terror, and tragedy still continued to chase the heels of the crusade.

On September 15, 1963, the 16th Street Baptist Church was bombed by the Ku Klux Klan, resulting in the tragic deaths of four African American girls, Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, and Carole Robertson, all aged 14, and Denise McNair, 11. Also killed that day were two African American teenage boys, Virgil Ware,13; killed by a white teenager; and Johnny Robinson, 16, shot in the back by a white police officer.

On November 22, 1963, President Kennedy was assassinated.

In testament to the bravery of the many African American children who participated in the Children’s Crusade of 1963, as well as these young martyrs, the landmark Civil Rights Act was passed and signed into law by President Kennedy’s successor, President Lyndon B. Johnson, on July 2, 1964. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 banned racial discrimination in housing, education, employment, and public accommodations, and stands as an important bulwark against such discrimination in these areas, today.

The Children’s Crusade of 1963 has since been recognized as one of the most powerful and effective protests in American history, and a watershed in the U.S. civil rights movement. In 2017, Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument was established to preserve and commemorate the Children's Crusade and other civil rights movement events. It includes Kelly Ingram Park, with life-sized statues, interpretive signs, and a free cell phone tour that commemorate the Children's Crusade.

Last year marked the 60th anniversary of this historic crusade, which did so much to protect people of all races against discrimination in so many critical areas of life, and to further the American dream of equal opportunity and justice.

For the seventh year this May, the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute (BCRI) organized a reenactment of the Children’s Crusade with students, educators, high school poets, city leaders, a representative of the U.S. Department of Justice, and members of the Foot Soldiers, a group of those who participated in the historic protests sixty-one years ago.

Over seven hundred students from across Birmingham participated, along with others who came from other parts of the country, including Washington, DC and Berkeley, CA. The event was kicked off with an empowerment ceremony. BCRI staff wanted to ensure that the next generation is ready to fight for change.

As a teen and young woman, Virginia traveled widely. Studying at prestigious schools in the U.S. and Europe, she became fluent in five languages and well versed in the foreign affairs, languages and cultures of many places; particularly, she loved the literary, artistic and music scene, and sense of freedom she experienced in Paris. Virginia dreamed of one day becoming a U.S. ambassador, and set out to realize her dream, even though at the time, for a woman, this sort of dream would not easily be achieved. Of the U.S. State Department’s 1,500 foreign service officers, only six were women, and none ambassadors; and women were prohibited from keeping their foreign service commissions if they married. Nonetheless, Virginia resolved to work towards achieving her dream.

At ages 23 and 24, Virginia took the U.S. Foreign Service Exam but failed it twice. Determined to gain relevant experience before trying again, Virginia obtained a job as a consular clerk for the U.S. Embassy in Warsaw in 1931, worked there two years, then transferred to a second consulate in a Turkish city. While hunting in Turkey, Virginia suffered a terrible accident resulting in her left leg’s amputation below the knee, requiring her to use a prosthetic leg she called “Cuthbert.”

After recovering and learning to walk with her prosthesis, Virginia resumed work as a consular clerk in Venice. Living and working in a one-party fascist state under Mussolini, with Hitler now Chancellor in Germany and Stalin ruling the Soviet Union, Virginia found herself surrounded by a rising tide of fascism and extremism. Also, as a woman and, since her accident, an amputee, Virginia faced severe discrimination and was passed over for opportunities and promotions for which she was eminently qualified and capable, and kept at her low-ranking clerical position without any raise in pay. Nonetheless, she had not lost sight of her dream. In 1937, Virginia, with the full support and encouragement of her superiors, asked to retake the foreign service exam but was denied by those who administered it, on the grounds that as an amputee, she was not “able-bodied” and therefore, could not qualify. Her appeals to the Secretary of State and then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt were also denied.

After her unsuccessful appeals, Virginia was ordered to report in June 1938 to the U.S. Consulate in Talinn in the increasingly authoritarian Baltic state of Estonia. Virginia watched, as here too, a nationalist fever took hold: political parties banned; the press censored; and potentially foreign names changed to sound Estonian. In March 1939, Virginia, deciding she had had enough of clerking for the consulate and Estonia, resigned from the State Department.

In September 1939, Germany launched a sudden, terrible attack on Poland. Two days later, Britain and France declared war in response.

As she watched the Nazis’ fascist regime spread, with their brutal policies against European Jews, Virginia’s anger grew. So did her resolve and determination to do all she could to resist, and fight. At the outbreak of WWII, instead of heading home to the U.S., which continued to remain neutral, Virginia left for London and tried to volunteer for the Auxiliary Territorial Service, the women’s branch of the British Army. Rejected as a foreigner, Virginia sailed to Paris and volunteered as an ambulance driver in the French Army, serving as one until France’s army and government collapsed.

As the Nazis overran France, Virginia recognized she must flee for her own safety, but resolved that as soon as she was able, she would do all she could to help her beloved France fight to regain its old freedoms, independence, and government. Against all signs and odds, Virginia was convinced the French could and would rise again.

So, Virginia fled to England and began working as a code clerk in the American Embassy. On her way there, a travel companion (who just happened to be an undercover agent) recognized Virginia’s talents, skill, intelligence, creativity, passion and potential, and provided her London contacts to the British intelligence agency later known as the Special Operations Executive (SOE).

In London, Virginia made contact with the SOE, which trained her as a spy! After completing her training, Virginia arrived in the southern half of France in August 1941 under the cover of a French-American New York Post columnist, one of the first spies Britain sent. As a pioneering secret agent, Virginia had to teach herself the "exacting tasks of being available, arranging contacts, recommending who to bribe and where to hide, soothing the jagged nerves of agents on the run and supervising the distribution of wireless sets." Virginia was industrious, fearless, and taught herself well. She wasted no time commencing her counterintelligence duties: recruiting a network of French citizens to the Resistance; rescuing several downed British pilots; and introducing several new SOE operatives into France.

By early 1942, Virginia was leading resistance operations in Marseille and planning and executing the successful escape to England of twelve SOE agents and Resistance fighters arrested and incarcerated by the Vichy French police. Several escapees later returned to France and became leaders of SOE networks. Virginia also coordinated robust efforts in organizing, funding, supplying, and arming the French Resistance; securing safe houses for agents; overseeing SOE parachute drops to supply resistance fighters; and orchestrating sabotage attacks against German supply lines.

As Virginia’s success and tales of her notoriety grew, so did the Nazis’ determination to catch the woman whom members of the French resistance affectionately nicknamed “The Limping Lady” (“La Dame qui Boite”). Employing endless disguises to quickly change her appearance—sometimes four different ones in a single day—and using various code names, Virginia managed to keep her cover and evade capture for almost a year and a half. However, by late 1942, Virginia recognized that the Gestapo was desperate to catch her, elevating her to the top of their “most wanted list” and circulating a sketch of her with the order: “The woman who limps is one of the most dangerous Allied agents in France. We must find and destroy her.”

Just as the Gestapo was closing in, Virginia escaped to Spain on foot across a 7,500 foot pass in the Pyrenees, a harrowing journey of approximately 50 miles over two days in the snow, in great pain from her prosthetic leg. During the journey, she successfully hid both the fact of her prosthesis and her pain from her guide, who would not have led her had he been aware of her condition.

Crossing into Spain, Virginia was arrested and spent twenty days in jail for lack of documentation, before her release as a result of efforts of the American Embassy. She worked for a while for the SOE in Madrid, then returned to London in July 1943, where she asked her SOE superiors to allow her to return to France to continue her work. When they (quite understandably) refused to do so, citing the risk, Virginia took a wireless course, contacted the American Office of Strategic Services (the precursor agency to the Central Intelligence Agency), and persuaded them to hire her and return her to France in March 1944.

In France for her second tour, Virginia renewed her contacts in the Resistance and proceeded to set up sabotage and guerrilla groups and supply each with arms, money, and rations. Still very much wanted and actively hunted by the Gestapo, Virginia, disguised as a peasant woman, herded goats across the countryside as a cover while spying on German troop movements and activities. In the German occupation’s final days, Virginia’s teams destroyed bridges, derailed freight trains returning to Germany, downed key telephone lines, and took more than five hundred prisoners. They reclaimed villages well before Allied troops advanced into France. On the eve of the D-Day invasion, Virginia led several thousand French resistance fighters.

Toward the end of the war, Virginia left for Austria to foment anti-Nazi resistance there with her future husband, Lieutenant Paul Gaston Goillot. The operation was called off when the German forces collapsed, and the pair returned to Paris; in 1957, after living together on and off for years, they married.

After the war, in 1947, Virginia joined the newly-created Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), becoming one of its first female employees and serving as an intelligence analyst gathering information about Soviet infiltration of European countries until her resignation the following year. In 1950, Virginia was rehired as a member of the Special Activities Division to head extremely secret paramilitary operations in France, and to model the establishment of resistance groups in several European countries in the event of an attack by the Soviet Union. The CIA acknowledges that while employed there, Virginia was passed over for promotions, honors, and opportunities for which she was qualified, despite support and efforts from superiors who worked with her closely. Nonetheless, her presence as the first female operations officer in the CIA’s entire covert action arm inspired others. In 1966, she retired at the mandatory retirement age of 60.

For her efforts in France, Virginia was awarded a Distinguished Service Cross in 1945, the only one awarded a civilian woman in World War II. Virginia was also made an honorary Member of the Order of the British Empire and awarded the Croix de Guerre by France. In 1988, Virginia’s name was added to the Military Intelligence Corps Hall of Fame; it has also been used in a CIA field agent training facility and a section of the CIA Museum.

In Fall 2021, the CIA Museum staff commissioned a 3D recreation of one of its Intelligence Art Collection’s most famous paintings depicting Virginia Hall in the early morning hours operating a radio powered by a makeshift generator built from a bicycle frame. The 3D recreation was created to allow the blind or visually impaired to feel the painting by running their fingers over the scene, and thereby also trigger audio recordings to further explain what is depicted in the image.

Virginia never realized her dream of becoming an ambassador. However, in 2006, on the 100th anniversary of her birth, British and French ambassadors gathered in Washington, DC to celebrate and honor Virginia and her indomitable spirit, and to present a certificate signed by King George IV to Virginia’s niece.

Once upon a time, there was a man with a strange name who lived in the Bronx, NY, and loved to teach, compose music, and write. The son of Jewish immigrants who fled Russian pogroms shortly before he was born, the man hated violence, social injustice, and discrimination. His name was Abel Meeropol.

Abel lived with his wife Anne, another teacher who loved to act and sing, and taught English at the same public high school that he attended growing up. He had many memorable, gifted students, including one who would one day be very famous: James Baldwin.

Abel and Anne wanted to have children, but their two biological sons were stillborn. When Abel published his poems and songs, he did so using the pen name, “Lewis Allan,” memorializing them both. (Some two decades later, Abel and Anne would adopt and raise two boys left orphaned in the wake of their parents’ controversial execution, after their conviction for espionage-related activities, but that is a story for another day.)

One day, Abel came across an image that he would never forget. The image was a newspaper photo of two Black teens, Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith, lynched by a white mob in Indiana. The ghastly image, shocking evidence of the omnipresence and brutality of racist violence in America, haunted him.

Abel poured his revulsion, horror and sorrow into a poem he at first named, ‘Bitter Fruit,’ and published in a teacher’s union magazine in 1937. Later, he set the poem to music and changed the name to ‘Strange Fruit,’ the name it bears today…

The song juxtaposes harrowing images of an inhumane, shocking outrage on what would otherwise appear a peaceful, bucolic setting. Its imagery stands as an unflinching reminder of the brutal and unforgivable toll of unchecked racism, violence and hate. The first of three stanzas, which many may find triggering, appears below:

Southern trees bear a strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black bodies swinging in the Southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.

In late 1938 or early 1939, Abel performed ‘Strange Fruit’ for Billie Holiday at New York City’s only integrated night club. Billie agreed to perform it as her last number, that evening. The rest is music history.

The stage lights were turned off; table service stopped; and Billie performed the grim, chilling song. For what appeared to be uncountable time, no one breathed a word. Until one person clapped, applause rose, and turned into a sustained ovation.

In April 1939, Billie turned to a different record company, Commodore Records, to record ‘Strange Fruit’ when her usual record company refused to record it. At first, radio stations would not play it, and Billie worried about performing it due to apprehensions of backlash and retaliation by white audiences. Later, Billie learned to overcome her fear; indeed, ‘Strange Fruit’ became her signature song and, upon its release, the best-selling record of Billie’s career.

Then came the 1950s, and the height of McCarthyism and the ‘Red Scare.’ In this scary time, ‘Strange Fruit’ all but disappeared from the public scene. For a time, the song’s future seemed to be dead.

However, the song’s haunting legacy and lyrics lingered in America’s collective memory, and was not so easily suppressed.

Indeed, lynching persisted in America through 1968. According to records maintained by NAACP, 4,743 lynchings occurred in the US between 1882 and 1968. While Black people comprised the majority (72%) of people lynched, some white people were also lynched for helping Black people or for opposing lynching, as were immigrants from Mexico, China, Australia, and other places.

Civil rights campaigners encouraged constituents to mail copies of ‘Strange Fruit’ to their congressional representatives, in efforts to persuade lawmakers to pass a Federal anti-lynching bill. In the first half of the 1900s, lawmakers tried nearly 200 times to do, but failed, stymied by filibuster by Southern senators. This continued all the way until February 2020, when the Emmett Till Antilynching Act, named after the 14 year old boy whose 1955 death from lynching sparked outrage, finally passed the House and Senate and was signed into law by President Biden.

In 1965, civil rights activist, singer-songwriter and musician Nina Simone recorded her version, calling ‘Strange Fruit,’ “about the ugliest song I have ever heard…Ugly in the sense that it is violent and tears at the guts of what white people have done to my people in this country.”

Since then, ‘Strange Fruit’ has been introduced and reintroduced by diverse artists for new generations. The same year Abel died (1986) at age 83, Sting performed it on an album celebrating the 25th anniversary of Amnesty International. In 1999, Time magazine named ‘Strange Fruit’ the "song of the century;” in 2002, the Library of Congress selected it for the National Recording Registry. Since then, it has been performed and sampled by punk bands, rap and jazz artists, and has gained increased interest over the years.

The lyrics to ‘Strange Fruit’ are every bit as powerful and resonant today as they were in the 1930s, when Abel penned them. And while discrimination, racism, injustice and violence persist, as do forces to inflame them and suppress those who would fight them, so does the will to continue to resist.

‘Strange Fruit,’ one of the most eloquent of civil rights protest songs, and in many ways, an anthem, lives on in the collective imagination and spirit of those who will not allow the truth of our American heritage of brutality against Black people suppressed; and who will not allow the freedoms so many civil rights activists, leaders and supporters have fought, bled and died for, repressed.

*An adapted version of this story suitable for limited English proficient people and people learning English as a second language—and especially, for Japanese students who are doing this—is now available on Professor Louise Haynes’ wonderful Social Issues in Song publication, along with a short interview with me about this song; other songs on social issues I care about; and why I started this blog. You can find the adapted story, and the interview, here.

Once upon a time, there was a girl named María Ylagan Orosa. María grew up on the Philippine Island of Luzon with seven brothers and sisters, and when she was young, the Philippine-American War raged around her. So did terrible hardship, in which far too many Filipinos died from disease and starvation. María's Dad was a steamship captain who served the resistance movement by secretly transporting troops and supplies. Soon after fleeing their home to escape American forces, her father was taken a political prisoner, and soon after, he died.

As a girl, María helped her mother support their family through a general store. As a young woman, she attended universities in the Philippines and the state of Washington, working summers in salmon canneries in Ketchikan, Alaska, where she learned industrial methods of food preservation and packaging. Despite significant racial and gender barriers, María earned bachelors and masters degrees in chemistry and pharmaceutical science, worked briefly as an assistant chemist for the State of Washington, and returned home…

Back in the Philippines, María worked as a university instructor teaching home economics, and as a chemist. She also served her government’s Bureau of Food Science, becoming head of the Home Economics division; chief of its Division of Food Preservation; and later, head of the plant utilization division of the Bureau of Plant Industry.

María created new ways of using and preserving indigenous foods, seeking to free her native land and people through food production independence from expensive imports and foreign control. All told, María created almost 700 innovative food products from native plants, among them, banana ketchup, still extremely popular among Filipinos around the world today; Soyalac, a nutrient-rich drink made from soybeans; and Darak, rice cookies packed with Vitamin B1, which could prevent beriberi disease. She innovated the practice of freezing and canning mangoes so they could be exported around the world. Also, she invented the Payalok Oven, which enabled Filipinos to bake foods like cakes from nutritious local flours, and over a fire, when electricity was unavailable.

María also traveled the world to learn methods of food technology and preservation as a government-sponsored scholar, and then returned to the Philippines, to teach, demonstrate, and promote these methods at home. She founded the Homemakers Association of the Philippines, deploying hundreds of demonstrators across the Philippines in a mission to educate women with limited resources in food preparation, gardening, poultry raising, and handicrafts, and different ways of earning income. Also, she founded the Health-Heart-Head-Hand (4-H) Club, dedicated to improving rural communities by seeking to engage youth through agriculturally focused, experiential learning programs to foster development in leadership and life skills. In 1924, the club had 22,000 members and exists today.

And then, one day, came the next war: WW II. After the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, and then attacked the Philippines, María’s family evacuated. However, María stayed…

María stayed to work in her lab and, under Japanese occupation, manage a food production operation with 400 of her students. As the conflict cut off imports and disrupted agricultural production, food shortages grew widespread. To supplement Filipinos’ meager wartime rations, María redirected her division’s resources into churning out nutrient-dense food products for those who remained, caught in the crossfire and wartime internment: to live; to fight; to work; to strive; to survive.

One of her relatives, alive in 2020, Evelyn Garcia, said, “To this day, we actually meet relatives that say ‘My grandfather survived the war because of Maria Y. Orosa.’”

In sum, María, always a fighter, an innovator, a humanitarian, a dreamer, and a nourisher of human stomachs, aspirations, and dreams, became part of the resistance.

During WW II, María became a captain in the Markings Guerrillas, a group that helped U.S. forces fight the occupying Japanese army. With her civilian army of students, María produced rations of Soyalac and Durak to feed themselves, hundreds of underground Filipino units, and thousands prisoners of war in places such as the Santo Tomas Internment Camp to whom she, and other members of the resistance, smuggled food.

María died a resistance leader and patriot, serving her country. She was hit by shrapnel while working in her lab, and died ten days later in the hospital, when a second shelling killed her and four hundred doctors and civilians.

While María posthumously received several honors, a surprise greeted archaeologists from the University of Philippines in February 2020 when they found, while excavating a tomb behind the former hospital in which she died, a stone engraved, “MARIA Y. OROSA / NOV. 29 1892 – FEB. 13 1945 / DIED IN LINE OF DUTY.”

I’m starting this blog primarily to help those in America who feel scared, lost, disoriented—among many other things!—in the wake of the ground-shifting 2024 election, to find a place where we can hear, listen to, and share “campfire stories of resilience and resistance,” from the present time and long ago, to tide us over in difficult times, and to enable us to dream, plan, and find a way to move forward, in our individual, creative and communal lives.

So that we do not feel stuck or paralyzed with fear, and find our creative way, our agency, and our path forward.

Once we start sharing, I am thinking that those who feel comfortable can start sharing networks, resources, and strategies for working through and past the very difficult times, supporting each other, and pushing our plans forward, no matter how scary and challenging the road ahead.

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As I envision primarily as a way to help create a safe, creative space for a community of people to think, write, contribute and act, I am also actively looking for writers, activists, and others to share with me their own “campfire stories of resistance and resilience,” for me to consider sharing with others on this blog. This may include stories; ideas for stories; or people you know that you think have stories to tell, and who might be available for me to communicate with, by phone, email, or other methods.

If you have an idea for a “campfire story” of resistance or resilience, whether it’s a story from “long ago” and “far away” or a contemporary one here & now, a story, or someone you think I might want to talk to or email about the story, please send it to me (or let me know)!

My email box for such stories/ideas, etc. is: Lois@storiesofresistance.org.

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