Start With Community Care...

In this season of such detriment and destruction, our collective survival will rely on organizing and rebuilding at the local level. Just like the old saying goes, Think Globally, Act Locally. This dictum makes sense to me as I think about my childhood in Harlem. This neighborhood will be the focus of this #ShistoryLesson.

A notebook worthy of your thoughts... Yuri Kochiyama, featured in this #SistoryLesson, is one of 16 fave Foremothers I selected as a notebook cover. This blank dotted journal is the perfect place for your world-changing musings! The printed goods collection, like the entire Brave Sis store, is !0% off with code: “Resist.”

What Clara Hale, Yuri Kochiyama, and Ethel Maud Collins Can Teach Us About Community Care

In this edition of #SistoryLessons, we’ll pay homage to laudable community caregivers, Clara (Mother) Hale and Yuri Kochiyama from my Our Brave Foremothers book, and a newer discovery for me, a dynamic woman named Ethel Maud Collins. Let’s explore how their life stories can help us gather fortitude for tough times.

​

Clara Hale: Love Every Child

I remember hearing about Hale House from my earliest childhood days, but it wasn’t until I was older that I came to understand the root of the institution was a mother’s love. Clara McBride (“Mother”) Hale began caring for neighborhood children in the 1960s, as a means to supplement her family income. But as she and her children witnessed the real-time destruction wrought upon their Harlem neighborhoods by poverty and drug addiction, she realized she had to do more. Particularly for the babies.

Mother Hale strove to help as many of these babies as possible, and as more and more children came under her care, she established a licensed treatment center—Hale House, where she and her daughter would end up providing care for over 1,000 infants and children, free of charge.

As we discussed in the last newsletter, Black children have been subjected to a long legacy of under-service: often deliberate, always systemic. I remember the 70s in Harlem, and saw with my own childhood eyes what it looked like to see a community struggling with addiction, poverty, and many other consequences of intergenerational trauma and the legacy of racism in our society.

Little babies do not ask to be born (none of us do!), and Mother Hale’s focus on these helpless innocents compelled others to gain more compassion for children born into crisis situations.

Addicted or otherwise impaired newborns often require skilled care and, certainly, enormous wells of patience. Mother Hale had an abundance of both to give. As she famously remarked, caring for her tiny charges began with the basics: “Hold them, rock them, love them, and tell them how great they are.”

Her words can be a hopeful mantra for our times, when so many social systems are being defunded and attacked. Increasingly, we must turn to each other for our individual, family, and community survival and well-being. During her lifetime, Mother Hale provided a great example of how to get that started.

Reflection: What would it look like to nurture and “mother” your community?

Yuri Kochiyama: Nisei Warrior for Racial Justice

​

While I have had the privilege of meeting a couple of the women in my Brave Sis Pantheon, such as Angela Davis and Toni Morrison, there is one woman I ardently wish I could have thanked to her face: the great Yuri Kochiyama, social justice seeker extraordinaire.

Born in San Pedro, California, her golden SoCal childhood was upended by the onset of WWII and ensuing internment of Japanese Americans. Her father died as a result of his imprisonment, and this tragedy constituted a turning point in Yuri’s life.

As an adult, she moved to New York, to raise her family in Harlem with her husband Bill. Coming face-to-face with housing discrimination and other systems of injustice, Yuri quickly understood that civil rights, Black liberation, and Asian American empowerment were interconnected struggles.

You may be familiar with the iconic photo that captures Yuri cradling her friend Malcolm X moments after his assassination in 1965—she had come to know and admire the Black leader, understanding the similarity in their fights for rights. But there is so much more to her story than this moment.

Over her lifetime, Yuri Kochiyama championed political prisoners, reparations for Japanese Americans, nuclear disarmament, and global solidarity. Whether advocating for Puerto Rican independence or supporting the Black Panthers, Yuri's legacy radiates a radical vision of justice rooted in solidarity and cross-racial resistance.

P.S.: Did You Know? Japanese Generational Naming Convention

When my daughters were little, I, like many parents, enjoyed watching “Sesame Street”—probably more than they did. There was this one episode where some girls kids taught Big Bird how to count in Japanese: “one two three,” means “ichi ni san.”

Adding the suffix “-sei,” (世), which means “generation” to these words provides the key to understanding Japanese American naming. Here is a quick rundown, with gratitude to the culturally celebratory vision of Jim Henson (I always sensed Sesame Street itself was a loving depiction of an idyllic Harlem brownstone block…)

In Japanese American communities, the Issei (一世), or first generation, were the original immigrants from Japan, who mostly arrived on US shores between the 1880s and 1924. Their children, the Nisei (二世), were born in the U.S. between the 1910s and 1940s. This was the generation most exposed to the trauma of World War II and widespread incarceration in internment or concentration camps.

The Sansei (third generation, (三世) were born in the following decades, often leading a more fully “Americanized” life, with lesser fluency in Japanese language or customs.

From the number four (Yon), came the Yonsei (四世) or fourth generation, born in the 1970s through the 1990s. While this generation grew up even further removed from the immigrant experience and their cultural roots—certainly most of their Issei great-grandparents and many of their Nisei grandparents' generations would have passed, many have deliberately sought out and reconnected with their ancestry.

The Gosei (Go, (五世, from five) and Rokusei (六世, from Roku, the number six), represent the fifth and sixth generations. Born from the 1990s to today, reflect a rich multiracial and multicultural identity.
​
These terms don’t just reflect birth order—they speak to history, resilience, and the evolving nature of identity across time.

And if you're curious, and thinking ahead to the years to come, the other numbers up to ten are: Nana (七), Hachi (八), Kyū (九), and Jū (十). Try writing out their generational names, to get a bit of a Japanese lesson!

(Super duper linguistic info: I provided these characters in Kanji, the characters that represent compound meanings and are used mainly for nouns, stems of verbs and adjectives, and names. The most frequently used script in Japanese is Hiragana, a phonetic script for native Japanese words, grammatical particles, and word endings. And finally, there is Katakana script, another phonetic form that is mainly used for foreign words, loanwords, and emphasis.

In everyday writing, all three are combined, but Kanji and Hiragana make up the bulk of standard Japanese sentences. Of these, Hiragana is the most frequently used script overall, since it appears in every sentence as particles and grammatical endings, even when Kanji are also present.

I've shared all this to give you a sense of how complicated the language is: a reflection of the nuances and complexities of cultures! Also, if you speak or are learning Japanese, hat tip to you! And if, like me, you tend to go down rabbit holes, see the very bottom of this newsletter..)

Reflection: What issues beyond your borders move you? Who can you show up for beyond your own cultural or ethnic group?

Ethel Maud Collins: Organizing at the Roots, Literally

Brave Sis Project has always cast an eye on unheralded women of color to celebrate, and when I find someone new to me, it’s a special thrill. In my recent research, I was happy to “meet” Jamaican-born Ethel Maud Collins. She was an activist, a helping hand—as well as a skilled hair stylist and mini-entrepreneur.

Hairdressers are essential artisans, and in some respects, life savers. Case in point: I’ve been traveling these days, and was fortunate to find a salon in North Minneapolis that could fit me in for a loc-retightening session. Had I not found Miracle (literally her name), it would have been a sorry (and raggedy) state of affairs for me!

As the old song goes, I just wanna testify... to the vitality of hair salons (and barber shops!) as spaces for community comfort: you not only get your “hair did,” you get to convene and converse with the patrons and the stylists, learn what’s important within the community, and maybe acquire some good advice (or at least interesting stories) along with your wash and set.

But Ethel was also involved in revolutionary Black thought, as an acolyte of Marcus Garvey, and brought many of her clients into his philosophy of Black liberation. She also was deeply involved in mutual aid and cooperative economics for her people.

This community support was very important for the new immigrant community. In researching my new book, I’ve come to learn more about the journey of Caribbean migrants to my hometown of New York and Harlem specifically, where the welcome was not always warm—and the weather certainly was not...

Anti-Caribbean bias from US-born Black Americans is rarely seen in this day and age, thankfully, but in the context of this period (Harlem Renaissance on one end, World War II on the other, and the Great Depression in the middle), mutual aid for incoming migrants was a lifeline. A special thanks to Ethel for “doing it all”!

Reflection: What are some other unconventional spaces that provide essential community support?

Reflection and Action: Journal Prompts for Everyone

Thinking about Mother Hale: How does caring for others strengthen a community? Write about a time you helped someone in need.

Thinking about Yuri Kochiyama: What was a time you stood up for another group’s rights?

Thinking about Ethel Maud Collins: When do you feel compelled to juggle multiple roles across taking action and providing care—why, and for whom?

HerStory / OurStory: Journal Prompts for Women of Color

Thinking about Mother Hale: What does nurturing look like in your community — beyond bloodlines? What local caregiving organizations might you be interested in learning more about, or even volunteering for or donating to?

Thinking about Yuri Kochiyama: When have you felt truly “seen” by someone from a different community or ethnic/cultural group? Who has stood beside you in moments of struggle—and who hasn’t?

Thinking about Ethel Maud Collins: Where do you go to get a bit of “down home wisdom” (the kind that is helpful, not the kind that is pushy and out of line?!)

Activated Allies: Prompts and Actions for White Friends

Acting in honor of Mother Hale: Consider finding a way to support BIPOC-led child advocacy and foster care organizations, or to donate to or volunteer for a BIPOC-led child welfare group.

Acting in honor of Yuri Kochiyama: Learn from global liberation leaders led by women of color. Study one solidarity movement Kochiyama supported. How could you continue that work today? Learn about Asian American and Black solidarity in civil rights. (See end of this issue!)

Acting in honor of Ethel Maud Collins: Volunteer for a mutual aid project. Let someone else lead; you can try out being a humble role player in support!

More on Their Lives

Clara McBride Hale, known to the world as Mother Hale, was born on April 1, 1905, in Philadelphia. Clara faced hardship early in life—losing her father when she was young and becoming an orphan by the age of 16. Resilient in the face of these challenges, she supported herself by working as a domestic while continuing her education, and eventually became the first in her family to graduate high school.

Shortly after reaching this milestone, she married Thomas Hale, and together they moved to New York City. Clara gave birth to two daughters, adopted a son, and worked as a domestic while studying business administration.
​
Tragedy struck again in 1938 when her husband died suddenly, leaving the 27-year-old widowed during the depths of the Great Depression with three biological children and an adopted son. Needing both income and a way to care for her own children, Clara began providing childcare from her Harlem home. Her warmth and consistency created such a nurturing environment that neighborhood children often asked to stay with her permanently. By 1940, she had also become a foster parent.

Systemic adversities such as poverty, housing instability, and racial discrimination were ever-present challenges for Black and Brown communities, and Harlem was no exception. By the late 1960s, heroin addiction had become a full-blown crisis, hitting these underserved communities with devastation. One day, when Clara’s adult daughter Lorraine encountered a mother nodding off on the street—a well-known sign of barbiturate stupor; her newborn nearly slipping from her arms—she knew urgent intervention was needed. She turned to her then 64-year-old mother, urging her to help. Clara agreed to take the child in, and thus, Hale House was born.

At first, Clara focused on caring for children in need of stable homes, especially those abandoned or living in precarious situations. Sometimes they were able to return to the maternal household after a period of stabilization, but others remained under her care for longer terms. Over time, to address the intersecting challenges these families faced, Clara began mentoring young parents, teaching them the basics of childcare and offering a model of loving, structured parenting.

Over the decades, Hale House cared for thousands of children—infants, toddlers, and adolescents—many of whom had been written off by society as beyond saving. To countless New Yorkers and those in the national humanitarian world, Mother Hale became a symbol of relentless compassion and grassroots care—often referred to as the American Mother Teresa.
​
Clara Hale passed away on December 18, 1992 at 87, but her legacy endures not just through the children she nurtured but through the standard she set for what love in action truly looks like. In Harlem today, you will find Mother Clara Hale Way and the Mother Clara Hale Bus Depot honoring her memory, as well as in the stories of those who were once held in her arms and given a second chance.
​
Her work also resonates in today's movements for child welfare, family support, and equitable healthcare—proof that compassion can be revolutionary, and that one person’s quiet service can ripple across generations.

Yuri Kochiyama might have seemed an unlikely face of the Black Power movement, but she understood deeply that liberation struggles are interconnected. Even late in life, she actively fought against anti-Arab and Muslim discrimination, connecting Islamophobia to the trauma she experienced as a Japanese American during World War II.

Back in 1941, Yuri was living a typical Southern California teenage life—popular girl, tennis team leader, student body vice president—but the attack on Pearl Harbor turned her world upside down. Like over 100,000 other Japanese Americans, she was forcibly removed from her home and sent to an internment camp. Her father, recovering from surgery, was arrested without cause, labeled a prisoner of war, jailed, and died shortly after his release from federal custody—a result of his poor treatment while incarcerated. This early experience of state violence shaped her lifelong commitment to justice.

By the early 1960s, Yuri and her husband, Bill, were raising their six children in public housing in Harlem, facing firsthand the realities of educational inequity and housing injustice. Bill himself was a Nisei soldier who fought on the U.S. side during the War, and his sense of patriotism was certainly offended by the injustice he saw around his family.

After the 1963 bombing of a Birmingham church that killed four young Black girls, Yuri’s activism expanded dramatically. She became a vocal advocate for Asian American rights, global liberation movements, and anti-imperialism.
​
Her Harlem apartment became a hub for grassroots organizing. She hosted meetings for the Harlem Community for Self Defense, and the Young Lords, a Puerto Rican revolutionary group. She later co-founded Asian Americans for Action, forging links between Asian American activism and the Black liberation movement.

In October 1963, Yuri was at a courthouse protest in Brooklyn, where activists were rallying against the arrest of Black Muslim leaders. Malcolm X was also there, and Yuri went up to him. “I admire what you’re doing for your people,” she said, and he responded with a polite handshake. This brief encounter marked the beginning of her deeper involvement in Black liberation work. Within a year, she had joined Malcolm X’s Organization of Afro-American Unity and became increasingly active in anti-racist and anti-imperialist movements, introducing him to Japanese peace activists and survivors of the atomic bomb, for example.
​
In one of the most iconic images of the civil rights era, Yuri is seen cradling Malcolm X’s head after he was fatally shot at Harlem’s Audubon Ballroom on February 21, 1965—an enduring emblem of their bond that seared her presence in a pivotal moment of Black history.

Together with her husband, Yuri remained politically active for decades. They played a key role in securing the passage of the 1988 Civil Liberties Act (signed, believe it or not, by Ronald Reagan), which offered a formal apology and reparations to Japanese American internment survivors. The moment the bill passed, Yuri called for similar reparations for Black Americans—descendants of nearly 400 years of enslavement—underscoring her lifelong belief in solidarity, justice, and the unbreakable ties between oppressed communities.
​
Her plea has remained unaddressed.

Yuri Kochiyama died on June 1, 2014, at the age of 93. For more on her legacy, check out this compelling podcast from Daughters of the Whirlwind with her granddaughter Akemi entitled “Growing up Kochiyama.” We celebrate these demonstrations of Afro-Asian unity, a powerful example of solidarity across difference.

​

Ethel Maud Collins was born in 1892 in Brown’s Town, Jamaica, and she made her big move to Harlem in 1920—a period when the neighborhood was bursting with Caribbean energy and activism.
​
Hardly one to sit on the sidelines, Ethel dove straight into the action. She rapidly joined Marcus Garvey’s legendary Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). The UNIA promoted global Black unity, pride, and self-reliance by encouraging economic independence, supporting Black-owned businesses, and advocating for the creation of an independent Black nation in Africa. Its platform centered on the motto “One God! One Aim! One Destiny!” and the vision of “Africa for the Africans, those at home and those abroad.”

Quick on her feet and quicker with her pen, Ethel became the executive secretary of the New York Garvey Club, later stepping up as acting secretary for the whole of the UNIA headquarters. Coinciding with this work, she ran a beauty shop right from her Fifth Avenue apartment. Whether you needed an updo or liberatory uplift, she could help with both! Her home salon became an unofficial headquarters for plugged women into Garvey’s ideas. I have not been able to successfully discover how long she lived, but she is one of many unsung heroes who did the quiet work of keeping communities whole.

And while there is no historical record of this, I imagine her fearless brand of defending Black liberation alongside grassroots community-building shares philosophical commonalities with those of other Caribbean Americans. I'm specifically thinking of the Barbudan-American St. Hill family, across the East River in Brooklyn, and their little daughter—whom we know today by her married name, Shirley Chisholm.

What These Women Knew, and What We Must Remember

These three remarkable women—Clara, Yuri, and Ethel—reflect a shared legacy of care, creativity, and justice. Clara’s tender rearing of marginalized and at-risk children, Yuri’s radical solidarity across movements, and Ethel’s subtle social activation each model how lived experience can seed transformative change.

Like them, we can continue to build communities grounded in dignity, connection, and intergenerational resilience.

Feeling the Love? Check out the Store...

Your patronage of the Brave Sis Shop helps keep this free newsletter going, so check out the goods and tell a few pals, would you?

Yuri Kochiyama "Consciousness is Power" Relaxed t-shirt

$32.50

"Consciousness is power. Tomorrow's world is yours to build."—Yuri Kochiyama. One of the most remarkable stories of the Civil Rights movement is that of Japanese American activist Yuri Kochiyama.

Buy Now

​

The Japanese numbers one to ten in Hiragana:

1. いち (ichi)
2. に (ni)
3. さん (san)
4. し / よん (shi / yon)
5. ご (go)
6. ろく (roku)
7. しち / なな (shichi / nana)
8. はち (hachi)
9. きゅう / く (kyū / ku)
10. じゅう (jū)

​Unsubscribe | Update your profile | Read in browser - all newsletters​