Kiyoshi Kuromiya (May 9, 1943 – May 10, 2000) was a

Japanese-American are Americans of Japanese ancestry. Japanese Americans were among the three largest Asian American ethnic communities during the 20th century; but, according to the 2000 census, they have declined in number to constitute the sixth largest Asi ...

author and civil rights,

anti-war An anti-war movement (also ''antiwar'') is a social movement, usually in opposition to a particular nation's decision to start or carry on an armed conflict, unconditional of a maybe-existing just cause. The term anti-war can also refer to pa ...

gay liberation The gay liberation movement was a social and political movement of the late 1960s through the mid-1980s that urged lesbians and gay men to engage in radical direct action, and to counter societal shame with gay pride.Hoffman, 2007, pp.xi-xiii. ...

, and HIV/AIDS activist. Born in Wyoming at the World War II–era Japanese American internment camp known as Heart Mountain, Kuromiya became an aide to

Martin Luther King Jr. Martin Luther King Jr. (born Michael King Jr.; January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American Baptist minister and activist, one of the most prominent leaders in the civil rights movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968 ...

and a prominent opponent of the Vietnam War during the 1960s. Heart Mountain

One of the founders of the Gay Liberation Front Philadelphia, Kuromiya also founded the Critical Path Project and its newsletter. He was also the editor of

ACT UP AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) is an international, grassroots political group working to end the AIDS pandemic. The group works to improve the lives of people with AIDS through direct action, medical research, treatment and advocacy, ...

's Standard of Care, the first medical treatment and

cultural competency Cultural competence, also known as intercultural competence, is a range of cognitive, affective, and behavioural skills that lead to effective and appropriate communication with people of other cultures.Deardorff, D. K. (2009). ''The Sage handbook ...

guidelines produced for people living with HIV by people living with HIV/AIDS.

Family and early life

Kiyoshi Kuromiya was born on May 9, 1943, in Wyoming at the Heart Mountain Internment Camp, where his family had been relocated to from

Monrovia, California Monrovia is a city in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains in the San Gabriel Valley of Los Angeles County, California, United States. The population was 37,931 at the 2020 census. Monrovia has been used for filming TV shows, movies and co ...

, where Kuromiya grew up. Both Kuromiya's parents were born in California and after 15 years of living in Monrovia and a year between Arizona and Nevada in 1961, Kuromiya decided to leave the West Coast to go to college in Philadelphia to study at the University of Pennsylvania. Kuromiya labels his own motivation to move to Philadelphia in 1961 as due solely to the name "City of Brotherly Love," and Kuromiya's activism truly began in the 1960s when he became involved in civil rights organizing. Kiyoshi Kuromiya came out as gay to his parents when he was roughly 8 or 9 years old living in California and says that he was fairly sexually active. Kuromiya, who went by Steve instead of Kiyoshi at the time, the early '50s, mentioned in an interview with Tommi Mecca in 1983 that he did not know any of the terminology due to a lack of literature—he had never heard the word gay and didn't know what a homosexual was. As a result, Kuromiya utilized the Monrovia Public Library in order to learn more about the identity that he knew "was very important to him." Kuromiya was a third-generation Japanese American and grew up primarily attending white schools in the Los Angeles suburbs, he says in an interview with Marc Stein in 1997. He was arrested in a public park with a 16-year-old boy when he was only 9 or 10 for

lewdness Lascivious behavior is sexual behavior or conduct that is considered crude and offensive, or contrary to local moral or other standards of appropriate behavior. In this sense "lascivious" is similar in meaning to "lewd", "indecent", "lecherous", ...

and was put in juvenile hall for three days as punishment. Kuromiya mentions in his interview with Stein how his being arrested made him feel like a sort of criminal without knowing it, and left him with a feeling of shame that forced him to be secretive about his sex life—even early on.

Student activism

Kuromiya started attending college at the University of Pennsylvania in September 1961 as one of six Benjamin Franklin National Scholars; he was a part of a large scholarship that covered almost all of the associated costs of attending. Kiyoshi decided to study

architecture Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and constructing buildings ...

, feeling it was a field that encompassed a variety of humanistic fields and was inspired by

Louis Kahn Louis Isadore Kahn (born Itze-Leib Schmuilowsky; – March 17, 1974) was an Estonian-born American architect based in Philadelphia. After working in various capacities for several firms in Philadelphia, he founded his own atelier in 1935. W ...

who too attended Penn and was a professor of architecture at the School of Design. Kuromiya's increased involvement in human rights activities during the early 1960s stemmed largely from his sexual orientation and his feeling that the University of Pennsylvania was very closeted. Kuromiya continued his

activism Activism (or Advocacy) consists of efforts to promote, impede, direct or intervene in social, political, economic or environmental reform with the desire to make changes in society toward a perceived greater good. Forms of activism range fro ...

in earnest during his first year at Penn in 1962 by participating in the

Congress of Racial Equality The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) is an African-American civil rights organization in the United States that played a pivotal role for African Americans in the civil rights movement. Founded in 1942, its stated mission is "to bring about ...

(CORE) Maryland diner sit-ins. Kuromiya was in attendance not far from

during his "

I Have a Dream "I Have a Dream" is a public speech that was delivered by American civil rights activist and Baptist minister, Martin Luther King Jr., during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963. In the speech, King called ...

" speech and met King along with Rev. Ralph Abernathy and

James Baldwin James Arthur Baldwin (August 2, 1924 – December 1, 1987) was an American writer. He garnered acclaim across various media, including essays, novels, plays, and poems. His first novel, '' Go Tell It on the Mountain'', was published in 1953; d ...

later that night. After meeting with Dr. King after the march on Washington in 1963, Kuromiya continued to work closely with the reverend throughout the

civil rights movement The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized institutional racial segregation, discrimination, and disenfranchisement throughout the United ...

. In 1965 Kuromiya and other activists took over Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania—calling it the Freedom Hotel in support of people injured at Pettus Bridge in Selma during the civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery in Alabama. A week later, on March 13, 1965, after flying down South, Kuromiya was assaulted by the police along with Dr. King, Rev.

Fred Shuttlesworth Frederick Lee Shuttlesworth (born Fred Lee Robinson, March 18, 1922 – October 5, 2011) was a U.S. civil rights activist who led the fight against segregation and other forms of racism as a minister in Birmingham, Alabama. He was a co-founder ...

, and

James Forman James Forman (October 4, 1928 – January 10, 2005) was a prominent African-American leader in the civil rights movement. He was active in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Black Panther Party, and the League of Revolutio ...

while helping a group of Black high school students register to vote at the state capitol building in Montgomery, Alabama. The next day, while hospitalized and police-cordoned, Kuromiya confronted the county's presiding officer about the incident, receiving an apology which King referred to as the first time a southern officer had apologized for injuring a civil rights worker. Kuromiya and King also received a signed statement from the Sheriff disbanding the sheriff's volunteer posse—the same as the

White Citizens Council The Citizens' Councils (commonly referred to as the White Citizens' Councils) were an associated network of white supremacist, segregationist organizations in the United States, concentrated in the South and created as part of a white backlash a ...

or K.K.K.—that assaulted Kuromiya. Kuromiya became so close to the King family that, after King's assassination in 1968, he helped care for the King children in Atlanta during the week of the funeral.

Antiwar demonstrations

In April of 1968, Kuromiya instigated the largest antiwar demonstration in Penn's history, attracting thousands of people. Kiyoshi printed and put up leaflets from a fictional group called the Americong that said there would be an innocent dog burned with

napalm Napalm is an incendiary mixture of a gelling agent and a volatile petrochemical (usually gasoline (petrol) or diesel fuel). The name is a portmanteau of two of the constituents of the original thickening and gelling agents: coprecipitated al ...

in front of the

Van Pelt Library The Charles Patterson Van Pelt Library (also known as the Van Pelt-Dietrich Library Center, and simply Van Pelt) is the primary library at the University of Pennsylvania. The building was designed by architects Harbeson, Hough, Livingston & Lars ...

at Penn in protest of the use of napalm in the Vietnam War. On the day of the protest Kuromiya handed out leaflets that said "Congratulations, you've saved the life of an innocent dog. How about the hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese that have been burned alive?" In addition to deceptively luring thousands of people to the Penn library, Kuromiya was very involved in the antiwar movement throughout the early years of his activist career. On October 20 and 21, 1967, Kuromiya joined a large demonstration organized by

Abbie Hoffman Abbot Howard "Abbie" Hoffman (November 30, 1936 – April 12, 1989) was an American political and social activist who co-founded the Youth International Party ("Yippies") and was a member of the Chicago Seven. He was also a leading proponen ...

that attempted to

levitate the Pentagon The March on the Pentagon was a massive demonstration against the Vietnam War on October 21, 1967. The protest involved more than 100,000 attendees at a rally by the Lincoln Memorial. Later about 50,000 people marched across the city to The Penta ...

building by joining hands around it in a performance art protest. When the levitation failed, Kiyoshi joined other protesters in taking police barricades to make bonfires all the way around the length of the Pentagon. The next year, Kiyoshi created posters for mail distribution under the name Dirty Linen Corporation that depicted Bill Greenshields grinning while burning his draft card with the words "FUCK THE DRAFT" in huge letters. Later that year, Kuromiya was arrested by federal marshals and

Secret Service A secret service is a government agency, intelligence agency, or the activities of a government agency, concerned with the gathering of intelligence data. The tasks and powers of a secret service can vary greatly from one country to another. Fo ...

for using the U.S. mail system for his crime-inciting and indecent poster. Despite the danger of doing so, Kuromiya distributed 2,000 copies of the poster at the Democratic convention at the Chicago Conrad Hilton Hotel, which was surrounded by machine guns and jeep trucks with barbed wire as a result of the Chicago police riot.

Gay liberation struggle

In addition to Kuromiya's civil rights and antiwar movement involvement, Kiyoshi was very active in the

movement. Kuromiya actually officially came out as

gay ''Gay'' is a term that primarily refers to a homosexual person or the trait of being homosexual. The term originally meant 'carefree', 'cheerful', or 'bright and showy'. While scant usage referring to male homosexuality dates to the late 1 ...

on July 4, 1965, at the first

Annual Reminder The Annual Reminders were a series of early pickets organized by gay organizations, held yearly from 1965 through 1969. The Reminder took place each July 4 at Independence Hall in Philadelphia and were among the earliest LGBT demonstrations in the ...

protest which took place at Independence Hall. There were similar demonstrations in

Washington, D.C. ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, Na ...

and New York City and the Philadelphia protest brought in a total of 12 activists. The Annual Reminder protest happened for five years until 1969, and was the first time on record where individuals publicly assembled to call for equal rights for homosexuals. Kuromiya co-founded the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) in 1969 following the Stonewall riots in 1969 with Basil O'Brien, who he met later while attending a Homophile Action League meeting in Philadelphia. Kuromiya describes the idea behind gay liberation as a sort of male-consciousness raising that served to help individuals deal with the isolation they felt as a result of their sexual identity. The GLF in Philadelphia had a significant proportion of African-Americans, Latinos, and Asians—though they were only a small group of about a dozen in 1969. Nonetheless, the GLF was more radical than some of its peer organizations that formed after Stonewall. Under Kuromiya's leadership, the GLF recruited a diverse array of people and stood in solidarity with groups such as the

Black Panther Party The Black Panther Party (BPP), originally the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, was a Marxist-Leninist and black power political organization founded by college students Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton in October 1966 in Oakland, Califo ...

and the

Young Lords The Young Lords, also known as the Young Lords Organization (YLO) or Young Lords Party (YLP), was a Chicago-based street gang that became a civil and human rights organization. The group aims to fight for neighborhood empowerment and self-det ...

. Kuromiya even received support for the gay liberation struggle when he represented the GLF as an openly gay delegate to the 1970 Black Panther Party Convention at

Temple University Temple University (Temple or TU) is a public state-related research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was founded in 1884 by the Baptist minister Russell Conwell and his congregation Grace Baptist Church of Philadelphia then called ...

. In 1970, Kuromiya attended Rebirth of Dionysian Spirit, a national gay liberation conference in Austin, Texas—an experience that changed the way he viewed the gay liberation struggle in some senses. In 1972, Kiyoshi created the first gay organization on the University of Pennsylvania campus, Gay Coffee Hour, which met every week on campus and was open to non-students and served as an alternative space to gay bars for gay people of all ages.

AIDS advocacy

Kuromiya began working earnestly on the AIDS movement once the AIDS epidemic began in America in the early 1980s. Kiyoshi was most involved with

(the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power)— of which he founded the Philadelphia chapter. After being diagnosed with AIDS himself in 1989, Kuromiya only intensified his

advocacy Advocacy is an activity by an individual or group that aims to influence decisions within political, economic, and social institutions. Advocacy includes activities and publications to influence public policy, laws and budgets by using fact ...

work. Kiyoshi approached his work with the motto "Information is power" and educated himself on the AIDS issues to the point he was invited to participate in National Institutes of Health alternative therapy panels. He created the ACT UP Standards of Care, which was the first of its kind for people with HIV produced by people with AIDS. Kuromiya also founded the Critical Path newsletter, which he mailed out to thousands of people worldwide as well as to hundreds of

incarcerated A prison, also known as a jail, gaol (dated, standard English, Australian, and historically in Canada), penitentiary (American English and Canadian English), detention center (or detention centre outside the US), correction center, correct ...

individuals who didn't have access to AIDS information. He further developed the Critical Path newsletter, one of the first resources on

HIV treatment The human immunodeficiency viruses (HIV) are two species of ''Lentivirus'' (a subgroup of retrovirus) that infect humans. Over time, they cause acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), a condition in which progressive failure of the immune ...

widely available to the public, into one of the very first websites on the Internet, filled with the latest HIV/AIDS information. From there, the site became host to the Critical Path AIDS Project—through which Kuromiya operated a 24-hour hotline for anyone who sought his help and provided free internet to hundreds of people with HIV in Philadelphia.

Impact litigation

In the late 1990s, Kuromiya was a part of several successful

impact litigation Strategic litigation, also known as impact litigation, is the practice of bringing lawsuits intended to effect societal change. Impact litigation cases may be class action lawsuits or individual claims with broader significance, and may rely on s ...

cases. Kiyoshi went to the Supreme Court in 1997 in order to expand freedom of speech rights to protections of the circulation of sexually explicit information about AIDS on the Internet, which led to the court's striking down part of the

Communications Decency Act The Communications Decency Act of 1996 (CDA) was the United States Congress's first notable attempt to regulate pornographic material on the Internet. In the 1997 landmark case '' Reno v. ACLU'', the United States Supreme Court unanimously struck ...

. In 1999 Kuromiya was also involved in the class-action suit, ''Kuromiya vs. The United States of America'', in which he presented his case for the legalization of marijuana for medical use for people with AIDS. Kuromiya also ran a marijuana buyer's club as a medical marijuana activist and served a few dozen clients with AIDS in the Philadelphia-area with free marijuana.

Personal life and death

In 1983, Kuromiya visited with his mother at the Heart Mountain Relocation Camp for Japanese Americans, where he was born, which he recalls as being a formative experience for him as an activist. He survived a battle with lung cancer in the mid-1970s. Soon after he became close friends with techno-futurist

Buckminster Fuller Richard Buckminster Fuller (; July 12, 1895 – July 1, 1983) was an American architect, systems theorist, writer, designer, inventor, philosopher, and futurist. He styled his name as R. Buckminster Fuller in his writings, publishing more ...

, with whom he toured the country for about five years. Kuromiya collaborated on Fuller's last six books and published Fuller's last book posthumously in 1992. Most prominently Kuromiya assisted the scientist with '' Critical Path'', an influential 1981 book about technology's potential to improve the world. Kuromiya was also a nationally ranked '' Scrabble'' player. Kuromiya died of complications from cancer on May 10, 2000, a day after his 57th birthday, though his death was initially reported as due to complications from AIDS.

Legacy

On June 4, 2022, he was honored with a Google Doodle.

Brief timeline

* 1962: CORE restaurant sit-ins, Route 40, Aberdeen, Maryland * 1963: Martin Luther King, Jr. speech, 8/28, Lincoln Memorial, and later to meet King at Willard Hotel, Washington, DC * 1965: Injured at

State Capitol Building This is a list of state and territorial capitols in the United States, the building or complex of buildings from which the government of each U.S. state, the District of Columbia and the organized territories of the United States, exercise its ...

, Montgomery, Alabama, leading black high school students in voter registration march, 3/13 * 1965: First homosexual rights demonstration ever -

Independence Hall Independence Hall is a historic civic building in Philadelphia, where both the United States Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution were debated and adopted by America's Founding Fathers. The structure forms the centerp ...

, Philadelphia, 7/4 * 1967: "Armies of Night" march on Pentagon, Arlington, VA * 1968: Martin Luther King, Jr. funeral, Atlanta - cared for Martin Jr. and Dexter week of funeral at King house in Vine City * 1968: Lincoln Park and Conrad Hilton, Chicago, Democratic National Convention riots at Grant Park * 1969: Spoke at Black Panther Party's Revolutionary People's Constitutional Convention,

, Philadelphia * 1970: "Rebirth of Dionysian Spirit," National Gay Liberation Conference, Austin, TX * 1972: First Rainbow Family Gathering, Granby, CO * 1974–1977: Survived metastatic lung cancer * 1978–1983: Traveled worldwide with

, collaborated on his last six books, published last book posthumously in 1992 (Fuller died in 1983); Philadelphia, California * 1988: First employee of We the People with AIDS and charter member of

ACT-UP AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) is an international, grassroots political group working to end the AIDS pandemic. The group works to improve the lives of people with AIDS through direct action, medical research, treatment and advocacy, ...

, Philadelphia * 1992: ACT-UP members injured at demo at Bellevue Stratford Hotel, numerous ACT-UP arrests around the country * 1996: Sat on FDA panel that recommended approval of first potent protease inhibitors * 1997: Critical Path AIDS Project - Supreme Court overturns Communications Decency Act on internet censorship - lead litigant * 1999: Kuromiya vs. United States of America - class action suit on medical use of marijuana.

References

External links

Critical Path AIDS Project

Kiyoshi Kuromiya 10th anniversary of his death and the AIDS Education Month for Philadelphia Fight

ACT UP Philadelphia

Kiyoshi Kuromiya papers on HIV/AIDS research and organizations
held by th
John J. Wilcox, Jr. LGBT Archives, William Way LGBT Community Center
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Kuromiya, Kiyoshi 1943 births 2000 deaths 20th-century LGBT people AIDS-related deaths in Pennsylvania American cannabis activists American people of Japanese descent Deaths from cancer in Pennsylvania Japanese-American civil rights activists Japanese-American internees LGBT American people of Asian descent LGBT people from Pennsylvania LGBT people from Wyoming Members of ACT UP Political activists from Pennsylvania HIV/AIDS activists National LGBTQ Wall of Honor