Interesting Facts about Kiyoshi Kuromiya, a Japanese American civil rights activists

Search engine giant Google celebrates Kiyoshi Kuromiya (キヨシ・クロミヤ) on June 4, 2022. Google Doodle celebrates the inspiring life of Kiyoshi Kuromiya and the legacy of activism he abandoned. He was engaged with movements like civil rights, anti-war, gay liberation, HIV/AIDS education, and more. On this day in 2019, Kuromiya was inducted to the National LGBTQ Wall of Honor at the Stonewall National Monument.

45 Interesting Facts about Kiyoshi Kuromiya (キヨシ・クロミヤ)

1. Kiyoshi Kuromiya (キヨシ.クロミヤ) was born on May 9, 1943, in Wyoming at the Heart Mountain Concentration Camp, where his family had been migrated from Monrovia, California where Kuromiya grew up.
2. Born in Wyoming at the World War II-time Japanese American internment camp known as Heart Mountain, Kuromiya became a helper to Martin Luther King Jr. and a famous rival of the Vietnam War during the 1960s.
3. After the war finished, Kuromiya’s family moved to California, while a gay Asian-American man attending fundamentally Caucsian schools, he experienced what it seemed like to be seen as various. He later shared that he didn’t have a clue about any of the terminologies around gay culture because of an absence of literature. Subsequently, Kuromiya used his public library to study his identity.
4. One of the founders of the Gay Liberation Front Philadelphia, Kiyoshi Kuromiya additionally established the Critical Path Project and its newsletter; he was likewise the editor of ACT UP’s Standard of Care, the first medical treatment and cultural competency rules to be created for individuals living with HIV by people living with HIV/AIDS.
5. Kiyoshi Kuromiya was a third-generation Japanese American and grew up basically attending Caucasian schools in the Los Angeles rural areas.
6. Kiyoshi Kuromiya emerged as gay to his parents when he was approximately 8 or 9 years of age living in California.
7. Kuromiya’s expanded association in human rights activities during the mid-1960s stemmed to a great extent from his gender orientation and his inclination that the University of Pennsylvania was extremely closeted.
8. Kiyoshi Kuromiya’s very first antiwar exhibition came in 1962 with the Grinnell Support Against the Resumption of Nuclear Testing demonstration; he and another Ivy League student at Columbia picketed through a snowy blizzard for two days after fasting for two days.
9. At the University of Pennsylvania, Kuromiya was the instigator of the biggest antiwar demonstration in Penn’s history, with 2,000 individuals participating.
10. Kiyoshi Kuromiya really started his activism decisively during his first year at Penn in 1962 by taking part in the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) Maryland diner sit-ins on Route 40, Aberdeen, Maryland, 1962.
11. In the wake of meeting with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. after the march on Washington in 1963, Kuromiya kept on working intimately with the reverend all through the civil rights movement.
12. Kiyoshi Kuromiya was one of the few Asian Americans who partook in the Selma to Montgomery marches in 1965.
13. Kuromiya and different activists took over Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania — calling it the Freedom Hotel on the side of individuals harmed at Pettus Bridge in Selma during the civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery in Alabama.
14. Kiyoshi Kuromiya even became so close to Dr. Ruler and his family that he helped take care of King’s children in Atlanta after his death during the week of the funeral in 1968.
15. As well as beguilingly attracting 2,000 individuals to the Penn library in his notorious antiwar demonstration, Kuromiya was extremely engaged with the antiwar movement all through the early years of his activist career.
16. On October 20 and 21 of 1967, Kiyoshi Kuromiya joined a huge demonstration organized by Abbie Hoffman that attempted to suspend the Pentagon working by joining hands around it in a performance art protest.
17. Notwithstanding Kiyoshi Kuromiya’s civil rights and antiwar movement involvement, Kiyoshi was very active in the gay liberation movement.
18. Kiyoshi Kuromiya actually officially came out as gay on July 4, 1965, at the first Annual Reminder protest which occurred at Independence Hall.
19. Kuromiya co-founded the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) in 1969 following the Stonewall riots 1969 with Basil O’Brien who he met later while attending a Homophile Action League meeting in Philadelphia.
20. Kiyoshi Kuromiya partook with the Gay Pioneers in the first organized gay and lesbian civil rights demonstrations which were held at Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell every Fourth of July from 1965 to 1969.
21. Under Kiyoshi Kuromiya’s leadership, the GLF enlisted a different array of people and remained in solidarity with groups, for example, the Black Panther Party and the Young Lords.
22. Kiyoshi Kuromiya even got support for the gay liberation battle when he represented the GLF as a straightforwardly gay agent at the 1970 Black Panther Party Convention at Temple University.
23. In 1970, Kiyoshi Kuromiya went to Rebirth of Dionysian Spirit, a national gay liberation conference in Austin, Texas — an experience that had an impact on how he saw the gay liberation battle in certain faculties.
24. In 1972, Kiyoshi Kuromiya made the first gay association on the University of Pennsylvania campus, Gay Coffee Hour, which met every week on campus and was available to non-students and served as an elective space for gay bars for gay people of all ages.
25. In the late 1970s and mid-1980s, Kiyoshi Kuromiya worked with architect R. Buckminster Fuller, assisting Fuller with finishing a significant number of his books.
26. In 1983, Kiyoshi Kuromiya visited the Heart Mountain Relocation Camp for Japanese Americans he was born with his mother, which he recalls just as a formative experience for him as an activist.
27. Kiyoshi Kuromiya survived a fight with lung cancer during the 1970s and soon after became dear companions with and toured the country for around five years with techno-futurist Buckminster Fuller until he died in 1983.
28. Kuromiya started working sincerely on the AIDS movement once the AIDS epidemic started in America in the mid-1980s.
29. During the 1980s and 1990s, Kiyoshi Kuromiya was a pioneering AIDS activist whose cooperation in the AIDS mobilization effort assisted in rethinking the nature of social movement activism and reviving LGBT politics in the AIDS era.
30. Kiyoshi Kuromiya was generally associated with ACT UP (the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) — which he established in the Philadelphia chapter.
31. In the wake of being diagnosed with AIDS himself in 1989, Kuromiya’s advocacy work just strengthened.
32. Kiyoshi Kuromiya moved toward his work with the motto “Information is power” and educated himself on the AIDS issues to the point he was invited to take part in National Institutes of Health elective therapy panels.
33. He made the ACT UP Standards of Care, which was the first of its sort for individuals with HIV produced by People with AIDS (PWA).
34. Kiyoshi Kuromiya likewise established the Critical Path newsletter, which he mailed out to a great many individuals worldwide as well as to many detained people who didn’t have access to AIDS data.
35. He further developed the Critical Path newsletter, one of the first resources on HIV treatment broadly available to the public, into one of the very first websites on the Internet, loaded up with the most recent HIV/AIDS data.
36. From that point, the site became host to the Critical Path AIDS Project — through which Kuromiya worked a 24-hour hotline for any individual who looked for his assistance and gave free internet to many individuals with HIV in Philadelphia.
37. During the 1980s and 1990s, Kiyoshi Kuromiya was a pioneering AIDS activist whose support in the AIDS mobilization effort assisted with redefine the nature of social movement activism and revitalizing LGBT politics in the AIDS era.
38. In the late 1990s, Kiyoshi Kuromiya was a part of a few successful effect litigation cases.
39. Kiyoshi Kuromiya teamed up on Fuller’s last 6 books and composed the last book posthumously in 1992.
40. Most unmistakably he helped the researcher with “Critical Path,” an influential 1981 book about technology’s capability to work on the world. Kuromiya was likewise a nationally ranked Scrabble player.
41. Kiyoshi Kuromiya’s advantage in and commitment to digital democracy were derived in part from Fuller’s philosophy.
42. Kuromiya died in 2000 of complications from cancer at age 57, however, his death was at first reported as because of complications from AIDS.
43. As well as being enlisted to the National LGBTQ Wall of Honor at Stonewall, he was named a San Francisco Rainbow Honor Walk Honoree in 2018.
44. As a proud gay man and AIDS survivor, Kuromiya served as a vocal leader for marginalized groups and enthusiastically battled for civil rights.
45. on June 4, 2022, Google featured a Doodle on its homepage for celebrating Kiyoshi Kuromiya.