Gregory J. Robinson

This project examines the social and political encounter between African Americans and Nisei in the decade following WWII. It centers on the collaboration between the NAACP and the Japanese American Citizens League in the postwar legal struggle for civil rights that climaxed in the Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education ruling. It examines the role of the Nisei in Brown, both as participants in the NAACP's campaign and as symbolic actors in support of equal rights. Finally, it discusses the decline of the black-Nisei alliance in the 1950s, and examines its long-term impact on the two groups, notably on the rebirth of political activism among the Nisei in the 1970s and their formation of a successful movement for reparations from the government for their wartime internment.