In 2005, Kochiyama was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize through the “1,000 Women for the Nobel Peace Prize 2005” project.[18] In a lifetime of community service starting in her hometown of San Pedro, California, Yuri also taught English to immigrant students and volunteered at soup kitchens and homeless shelters in New York City. Yuri spoke at over 100 high schools and colleges in at least 15 states and Canada, including Harvard, Radcliffe, Yale, Princeton, Spelman, Temple, UMass/Amherst, New York University, UC Berkeley, and San Francisco State University. In 2010, she received an Honorary Doctorate Degree from California State University, East Bay. In Debbie Allen’s television series Cool Women (2001), Yuri stated, “The legacy I would like to leave is that people try to build bridges and not walls.”

Yuri Kochiyama was a Japanese American human rights activist. She is notable as one of the few prominent non-black black separatists. Influenced by Marxism, Maoism, and the thoughts of Malcolm X, she was an advocate for many revolutionary movements.

Because the internet is often a great place for amplifying amateur observations and because Wikipedia lacks context and because it's one of the most divisive election seasons ever, today's Google Doodle celebrating the life of civil rights activist Yuri Kochiyama turned into a thing.

Some internet people said Google was celebrating a radical. Indeed, Kochiyama's Wikipedia entry cites her as "one of the few prominent non-black Black separatists....Influenced by Marxism, Maoism, and the thoughts of Malcolm X."

Couple this with conservatives blasting Facebook for its left-leaning bias and you have what amounts to a typically tone-deaf move from a Silicon Valley giant, or larger evidence of a socialist conspiracy.

Anyone who had worked with Kochiyama knows these characterizations are wrong.

When I was in my early 20s and being a good Asian American, meaning I attended meetings at college, I met Kochiyama maybe a half dozen times. She did work with Malcolm X — he died in her arms — and well into her old age she continued to fight for people of color. She held closely to the causes Malcolm X fought for later in his life, a focus on human rights, not just black rights. She lived in a Japanese internment camp during WWII so she knew something about that.