Skip to content

The University of Iowa Libraries

Skip to content
Go to
InfoHawk+
University of Iowa Libraries University of Iowa Libraries The University of Iowa The University of Iowa Libraries

News & Announcements

special

Tag: Civil Rights

Apr 16 2021

An Activist’s Legacy: Ayako Mori Costantino  

Posted on April 16, 2021April 16, 2021 by Elizabeth Riordan

The following is written by Olson Graduate Research Assistant, Rachel Miller-Haughton 

Ayako Mori Costantino

Ayako Mori Costantino was a Japanese-American woman whose work with the communities she lived in and belonged to left a lasting impact. Her papers were donated to the Iowa Women’s Archives (IWA) and include photos, letters, books, audio tapes, and memorabilia from her life.  

Born in Sacramento, California in 1924, Ayako and her family were moved, as the US government mandated, to Tule Lake, a War Relocation Authority center. The Mori family were just a few of the over 110,000 Japanese Americans, over half of whom (66,000) were US citizens, forced into prison camps during the start of U.S. involvement in World War II. They were rounded up and imprisoned under the Roosevelt administration, allowed only to bring what they could carry and losing irreplaceable person property as well as land and other assets.  

A young Ayako (center, back row) and the rest of the Mori family around the time of their internment, date unknown

Ayako attended the Tri-State High School in Tule Lake. When students were allowed to leave the camps to attend college, in 1943, she moved to Chicago. In 1945 she began working for the US Civil Service in St. Louis, Missouri; after the end of World War II she moved to Japan for a stenography job. There she met an American military servicemember, Anthony “Tony” Costantino, and married him in 1948. The Costantinos had two children: a son, Mori, and a daughter, Toni.  

In 1956, the family moved to Iowa City so Tony Costantino could teach at the University of Iowa. It was here that Ayako Mori Costantino became involved in civil rights, women’s rights, and the rights of marginalized people. She was instrumental in creating the Iowa City Human Rights Ordinance in 1963, working as an organizer and hosting events. She was chair of the Human Relations Commission, an advocate in affirmative action and employment and housing discrimination cases. She worked with the League of Women Voters and helped to pass a 1964 fair housing law to prevent racial discrimination in housing. 

A. Mori with husband Tony

Her papers include letters to notable and influential people, and show that Mori Costantino was not afraid to lend her powerful voice to a myriad causes. One cause close to her experience was redress for survivors and families of the Japanese American internment camps. Her letter to Iowa Senator Tom Harkin from March 1989 discusses the need for reparations, saying “a government not required to pay for its errors may be prone to repeat its errors.” She goes on to acknowledge she wrote a personal account of the impact internment had on each of her family members to President George H. Bush, asking him to increase the funds promised. Many such accounts exist in her papers collected at IWA, not only her story but a larger image of the fight for redress—that is, an official apology and financial reparations for the invaluable losses suffered by Americans of Japanese descent.

Until 2020, when she passed away, Mori Costantino was an activist involved in many causes. She chaired the Johnson County (Iowa) League of Women Voters. She also served with organizations including the Iowa Civil Rights Commission, Women’s Political Caucus, the Education Equality Advisory Committee, and the Civil Liberties Union.  She was elected to represent Iowa at the National Women’s Conference in 1977 and campaigned for many Democrats, be they local representatives in Johnson County or presidential candidates.  

Ayako “A. Mori” Costantino was a woman who survived internment as a teen, then turned around and fought to right the injustices done to her and her community. She worked tirelessly as an advocate, a defender, and a civil and human rights champion. Her collection at IWA paints a picture of a person who deeply valued family, was a formidable writer, and committed her life to causes she believed in. She not only worked for Asian Americans but for marginalized and underserved people everywhere. It is well worth a trip to visit her papers and artifacts, to get to know this remarkable woman and understand her legacy. 

Posted in Collection ConnectionTagged A. Mori Costantino, Civil Rights, iowa women's archives, Japanese American, rachel miller-haughton, world war II
John Lewis speaking in front of a picture of MLK Jr
Jan 28 2021

John Lewis and Darwin Turner’s 1978 Summer Institute

Posted on January 28, 2021February 1, 2021 by Elizabeth Riordan

The following comes from Archives Assistant Denise Anderson

With the presidential election and Inauguration over, there has been a lot of talk about voting rights in the news. With Raphael Warnock’s win, Georgia’s first Black senator, we are reminded that the struggles and work of the Civil Rights Movement was not distant history. 

This coincides with a recent discovery in the Darwin Turner Papers.  While exploring the collection, we learned that the late U. S. Representative John Robert Lewis spoke at the University of Iowa in Shambaugh Auditorium on Friday night, June 16, 1978, about “Black Liberation and Political Action.”  This was at the invitation of Darwin T. Turner, head of the Afro-American Studies Program here at University of Iowa.  Turner organized 19 speakers for a two-week 1978 summer institute, the tenth at the University of Iowa, for teachers of Black history and culture from around the country.  The 1978 theme was “Black Culture in the Second Renaissance: A Study of Afro-American Thought and Experience, 1954-1970.”

John Lewis speaking in front of a picture of MLK Jr
Image John Lewis sent of himself to Darwin Turner

John Lewis had typed a brief acceptance letter in reply to Turner’s invitation, and then he turned the paper over and wrote a personal note on the back about the speech he had presented in 1963 at the March on Washington.  He included with the letter a recent photograph of himself.  Lewis was introduced in Iowa City as the former director of the Voter Education Project in Georgia and the associate director for domestic operations at ACTION, a volunteer service in Washington, D. C., within the Office of Public Affairs.  In 1963, Lewis was also chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), an organization you can learn more about through the papers of Eric Morton. Darwin Turner said of Lewis– along with James Farmer, Larry Neal, Ed Bullins, and James Turner who were also there to speak–helped shape the culture of the era.

The note on back of Lewis’s acceptance letter to Turner about the March on Washington

Another of the 19 speakers at the 1978 institute was Jibreel Khazan, born Ezell Blair, Jr. In his lecturer application, Khazan submitted a Bowsprit newspaper article that relates his experience as one of the Greensboro Four.  On February 1, 1960, Blair (as he was known then), along with fellow Black college students Joseph McNeil, David Richmond and Franklin McCain, seated themselves at the Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, and asked to be served.  They told the waitress they preferred to sit after she directed them to the standing counter Woolworth’s had designated for Black patrons.  She called a nearby police officer, who did not act, so the store closed early after the students had been sitting for about 15 or 20 minutes.  These four students stated they felt different when they walked out of Woolworth’s.  The following day, 24 Black students joined them at the lunch counter and the waitress just let them sit there.  On the third day, the New York Times reported that the students would continue the sit-in until they were served, prompting sympathetic white students to join the hundreds of Black students.  On the fourth day, the Ku Klux Klan arrived.  As things became threatening, Black football players protected the students.  Another store with a lunch counter, S. H. Kress, was also experiencing sit-ins.  On the sixth day, the 3,500-student body voted to continue the sit-ins, followed by the arrival of thousands of demonstrators from area schools.  Woolworth’s closed after receiving bomb threats.  The next week, Greensboro students halted the sit-in during negotiations.  However, sit-ins spread to other towns that week and the next.  By the end of that February, Montgomery, Birmingham and Tuskegee were experiencing sit-ins.  North Carolina, Virginia, Florida, South Carolina and Tennessee, as well.  In May, Blair was arrested, charged with trespassing and fined.  Finally, on July 25, Woolworth’s and Kress provided access to everyone at their lunch counters.

Following the death of Representative Lewis on July 17, 2020, a push to update the Voting Rights Act of 1965 has been renewed.  In December, Senator Patrick Leahy’s website explained “the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act establishes a targeted process for reviewing voting changes in jurisdictions nationwide, focused on measures that have historically been used to discriminate against voters.” His legacy also lives in the work of the new senators coming to Washington D.C. After winning the election, Raphael Warnock tweeted “John Lewis was a mentor, friend and parishioner. I’m honored to fight alongside my brother [John Ossoff] to carry on his legacy.”

 

 

*Jibreel Khazan’s presentation, “The Advent of Divine Justice: Attitudes for Freedom,” was filmed, and will be placed in the Iowa Digital Library.

**You can learn more about the Afro-American Studies institutes in the Darwin T. Turner Papers (RG 99.0340). 

Posted in Collection Connection, University ArchivesTagged Civil Rights, Darwin Turner, Denise Anderson, Jibreel Khazan, John Lewis, University archives

Categories

  • Collection Connection
  • Dada
  • Educational
  • Event Announcements
  • Exhibitions
  • From the Classroom
  • New Acquisitions
  • News
  • Science Fiction and Popular Culture
  • Staff Award
  • Staff News
  • Top 10
  • Uncategorized
  • University Archives
  • Weekly Update
  • Year In Review

Archives

Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.org
Proudly powered by WordPress | Theme: Zoia by Automattic.
University of Iowa Libraries University of Iowa Libraries The University of Iowa The University of Iowa Libraries
  • Contact the Libraries
  • Library locations & hours
  • News & Events
  • Help using the Libraries
  • Assistance for people with disabilities
  • Our diversity statement
  • Thank a Librarian
  • Web site/page feedback OR general suggestions
  • UI Libraries other links UI Libraries in the Internet Archive Use and reuse of UI Libraries web content - Creative Commons Staff SharePoint (authentication required)
  • UI Libraries on social media UI Libraries on Instagram UI Libraries on Facebook UI Libraries on Twitter UI Libraries on Pinterest UI Libraries on Tumblr UI Libraries on YouTube UI Libraries on Flickr UI Libraries blogs
  • 100 Main Library (LIB)
  • 125 West Washington St.
  • Iowa City, IA 52242-1420
  • 319-335-5299 (Service Desk)
  • ©2019 The University of Iowa
  • Give a gift to the Libraries!