Judy Tzu-Chun Wu - Fierce and Fearless: Patsy Takemoto Mink, First Woman of Color in Congress

FIERCE AND FEARLESS

Fierce and Fearless

Patsy Takemoto Mink, First Woman of Color in Congress

Judy Tzu-Chun Wu and Gwendolyn Mink

NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS

New York

NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS

New York

www.nyupress.org

2022 by New York University

All rights reserved

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Wu, Judy Tzu-Chun, author. | Mink, Gwendolyn, 1952author.

Title: Fierce and fearless : Patsy Takemoto Mink, first woman of color in Congress / Judy Tzu-Chun Wu, and Gwendolyn Mink.

Other titles: Patsy Takemoto Mink, first woman of color in Congress

Description: New York : NYU Press, [2022] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021031269 | ISBN 9781479831920 (hardback) | ISBN 9781479868247 (ebook) | ISBN 9781479826292 (ebook other)

Subjects: LCSH: Mink, Patsy T., 19272002. | LegislatorsUnited StatesBiography. | Women legislatorsUnited StatesBiography. | LegislatorsHawaiiBiography. | Women legislatorsHawaiiBiography. | United States. CongressBiography. | United StatesPolitics and government20th century. | Japanese American lawyersHawaiiBiography. | Japanese AmericansBiography. | Japanese American womenBiography.

Classification: LCC E840.8.M544 W8 2022 | DDC 328.73/092 [B]dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021031269

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As is fitting for a work that explores Patsy Minks achievements and collaborations, this book emerged from an intellectual partnership. A feminist historian of Asian American identity and politics, Judy Tzu-Chun Wu began research into the life of Patsy Mink in 2012. Early on, Judy was advised to consult with Wendy (Gwendolyn) Mink, Patsys daughter and a political scientist. Wendy grew up in a tightly knit family; she was Patsy and John Minks only child. Both she and her father served as political interlocutors and strategists for Patsy. During Wendys childhood and adolescence, they discussed issues and ideas over breakfast, during commutes, and at the daily dinner table. Later, they continued to work through policy and political questions together over daily phone, fax, and email exchanges, as well as during frequent visits.

We decided to join our work on Patsy Mink, and thus to bring together the personal and the political, the specificity of a story with the perspective of history. We met regularly during Judys trips to Washington, DC. Judy conducted research elsewhere, but the bulk of sources were at the Library of Congress, specifically the over two thousand manuscript boxes that constitute the Patsy T. Mink Papers. When in town, Judy usually met with Wendy twice a week for dinner. Reflecting our ethnic backgrounds and culinary comfort zones, we ate Japanese and Chinese food. Wendy shared stories and knowledge of American politics during these meals.

Each chapter begins with a vignette by Wendy, reflecting on her familys life, her mothers political activities, and her analysis of their mutual political collaborations. Judy drives the narrative chapters with historical analysis and at times revisits topics and events from a different vantage point. We hope the duet of vignettes and chapters together tell a layered and textured story of the remarkable woman Patsy Mink.

Speaking Truth to Power

In 2002, at the age of seventy-four, Patsy Takemoto Mink rose before Congress to celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of Title IX. The first congresswoman of color, Mink served as a US representative from Hawaii from 1965 to 1977 and again from 1990 to 2002. She had a special relationship to this landmark piece of legislation, which prohibits sex discrimination in any educational program that receives federal funds.

Mink recounted the sea change in womens involvement in sports from the 1970s to the early twenty-first century. In the 1970s, Women athletes were so few and unknown that the only well-known athlete we could bring in to testify was Billie Jean King.

Title IX meant more than transforming the ability of girls and women to participate in athletics. Mink reminded her audience, Since its enactment, Title IX has opened the doors of educational opportunity to literally millions of girls and women across the country. Title IX has helped to tear down inequitable admissions policies, increase opportunities for women in nontraditional fields of study such as math and science, improve vocational educational opportunities for women, reduce discrimination against pregnant students and teen mothers, protect female students from sexual harassment in our schools, and increase athletic opportunities for girls and women. Nevertheless, Title IX still provides the legal foundation for gender equity in schools. When Mink passed away in 2002, just a few months after the thirtieth anniversary celebration, Title IX was renamed the Patsy T. Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act.

Who is Patsy Mink? Why is she not widely recognized among the feminist pantheon in US history? How did a third-generation Japanese American from Hawaii become such an influential political voice in Washington, DC? After all, Mink made her mark advocating for racial equality, antiwar politics, environmental protection, and womens rights.

Born on December 6, 1927, and passing away September 28, 2002, Mink lived nearly three-quarters of a century. She was born on the rural outposts of a US territory. In 1893, haole, or white, business and missionary interests illegally deposed Native Hawaiian sovereign Queen Liliuokalani and called for annexation. The white settlers installed a plantation economy, and Minks grandparents arrived from Japan as contract farm workers. They were subject to racialized naturalization laws that designated them forever foreigners, aliens ineligible for citizenship. Only in 1952, as the United States allied with Japan during the Cold War, did Japanese immigrants gain naturalization rights to become US citizens. It took another seven years before Hawaii became the fiftieth state. The delay stemmed from mainland concerns about the sizable nonwhite population on the islands and fears of Communist-inspired labor organizing.

Mink was a first in so many ways. She was the first Japanese American woman in Hawaii to practice law, the first to run for and win a seat in the Hawaii legislature, the first woman of color to serve in the US House of Representatives, and the first Asian American to run for the US presidency in 1972. Beyond these achievements, Mink also advocated for progressive initiatives, such as government-funded childcare, an end to nuclear testing in the Pacific, peace in Viet Nam, welfare programs to alleviate poverty, and educational access for all.

Despite Minks impressive accomplishments, no book-length study has analyzed her extensive political career. Research on the 1960s and 1970s tends to focus on women and people of color as grassroots activists, as outsiders demanding change. Scholars interested in traditional political history incline towards white male protagonists. Analyses of US race relations foreground white-Black interactions, with much less attention given to Asian Americans. Minks Japanese American ancestry, her origins in Hawaii, and her engagement with legislative activism challenge what we know about race, feminism, and politics.