Honoring Richard Aoki: Founding Member of the Black Panther Party

Richard Aoki

Many people probably don't know Richard Aoki-and that fact is another failure of the American educational system.

Aoki was a Japanese American Civil Rights activist and one of the first members of the Black Panther Party. March 15, 2010, marked the one-year anniversary of his death.

Last November, Aoki, a feature documentary by Ben Wang and Mike Cheng, was released chronicling the life of the late Aoki, a third-generation Japanese American who became one of the founding members of the Black Panther Party in 1966. Here's an excerpt from the description of the film:

Filmed over the last five years of Richard's life, this documentary features extensive footage with Richard and exclusive interviews with his comrades, friends and former students. Viewers will learn about Richard's childhood in a WWII Japanese American concentration camp, growing up in West Oakland and serving eight years in the U.S. military. The film explores previously unknown facts about the formation of the Black Panther Party, such as how Richard became intimately involved in its founding and contributed the first two firearms to the Party. Aoki highlights how Richard's leadership also made a significant impact on individuals and groups in the contemporary Asian-American Movement. Richard's contributions to the groundbreaking organization Asian American Political Alliance (AAPA) and its involvement in the Third World Liberation Front (TWLF) student strike led to the formation of ethnic studies at U.C. Berkeley. Above all else, Aoki is a film that demonstrates the incredible dedication to justice that one man's life has had and how the lessons of solidarity, commitment and discipline can carry on from one generation to the next.

Watch the trailer of the documentary here: