I’m not here to litigate who killed Malcolm.
Not here to debate why the FBI feared him, or how America labeled him a threat while ignoring the threats it posed to him.
And I’m not here to retell how his words and works changed the lives of millions of Black people. That story is already written — in books, on films, etched into the collective memory of our people.
What I am here to do is shine a light on something we too often overlook — the bond between two freedom fighters who shared more than a birthday. They shared vision. Commitment. Consequence.
A few years ago, I first heard Yuri Kochiyama’s name while listening to Dr. Greg Carr, Professor of Africana Studies at Howard. He spoke of her not as a footnote in Malcolm’s life, but as a force in her own right — a woman who stood not beside, but with us. And today, while scrolling through images of Malcolm’s final moments, I saw her again — kneeling beside his body, hands cradling his head, anguish in her eyes. Not a bystander. Not a guest. But a believer.
May 19th belongs to both of them — Malcolm and Yuri.
Two fire starters. Two revolutionaries who found each other in the middle of the storm.
They met in the struggle. Not on stage, not on the front page, but in the margins where movements are built, where solidarity doesn’t come with applause. Yuri was there when Malcolm died, cradling his body. That moment gets repeated often, but we rarely ask: Why was she there in the first place? What brought a Japanese American woman, interned during World War II, mother of six, to be in that room, believing in Malcolm and the OAAU not as a guest, but as family?
Yuri Kochiyama wasn’t adjacent to the movement; she was in it. She understood that freedom for one is never enough. That injustice in Harlem echoes injustice in Hiroshima. That the same country that put her in a camp would surveil, fear, and silence Malcolm. She didn’t just love Malcolm’s courage, she trusted it. She saw what too many still can’t: that his global vision, his shift from “me against you” to “us against injustice,” made him not less dangerous, but more effective.
When he formed the Organization of Afro-American Unity, it was about transcending borders — racial, national, ideological. And Yuri was right there. Supporting, building, showing what cross-racial solidarity actually looks like. It wasn’t hashtags or photo ops. It was presence. Proximity. Principle.
So today, on this shared birthday, we honor not just the lives of Malcolm and Yuri — we honor the partnership that lived between them. A Black Muslim man from Lansing and a Japanese American woman from San Pedro found common ground in the belief that liberation was not a solo journey. They modeled what it meant to move past the slogans and do the work — together.
The ancestors got it right with this date. May 19th is for fire starters. The truth tellers. The unity builders.
Happy birthday, Malcolm.
Happy birthday, Yuri.
We still hear you.
