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While the Civil Rights Movement of the mid-1950s and early 1960s made great strides toward racial equity in the United States, it focused primarily on issues affecting Black Americans. Black activists and leaders like Rosa Parks, James Baldwin, and Martin Luther King Jr. advocated against numerous inequities that were detrimental to Black people and communities, including, but not limited to, segregation, hate crimes, and police brutality. Shortly following, the Black Power Movement emerged, emphasizing cultural integrity and pride, self-acceptance, and the celebration of historical attainments and contributions of Black people.1 In the 1960s and 1970s, the Chicano Movement formalized, highlighting injustices affecting Mexican American people.2 Community organizers from the United Farmworkers like Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta became nationally known, as they led one of the most successful labor strikes in American history. Terms like "La Raza" and "Brown Power" were introduced with the aim of uniting people of Latinx origin (e.g., Central Americans, South Americans, Caribbean Americans, etc.) and encouraging them to reclaim a pride in their ethnic identities.3
In the late 1960s, Chinese American, Japanese American, and Filipino American activists and community leaders (mostly college students) began to form coalitions to advocate for the civil rights and visibility of Asian Americans.4,5 As the most populous Asian ethnic groups in the United States at the time, these leaders believed that building bridges between their various Asian ethnic groups would result in a stronger united voice and, thus, more political capital. The term "Asian American" was created as a way of combatting previous offensive labels like "Oriental" or "Mongoloid," and the Asian American Movement formed with the mission of building a united front among Asian American ethnic groups.6
In response to the Black Power Movement and the Brown Power Movement, the Asian American Movement was sometimes referred to as the Yellow Power Movement. For instance, activist Amy Uyematsu (1971) stated that the movement sought "freedom from racial oppression through the power of a consolidated yellow people."7 At the time, many Filipino Americans vocally protested the terminology, as they did not identify with the term "yellow" and instead identified as "brown."8 Even as other Asian Americans with darker skin (e.g., Asian Indians, Vietnamese Americans) began to immigrate to the United States in larger numbers, the usage...