It took me until the very end of Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month to finally finish all of the PBS series, Asian Americans, which I highly recommend. It was an excellent show, and certainly in keeping with the quality of their offerings. The show discussed Sen. Daniel Inouye, whom I wrote about two weeks ago, here. The show also discussed Sen. Patsy Mink’s electoral history and how it was intertwined with Sen. Inouye.
Here’s her story...
Patsy Takemoto Mink, the first woman of color elected to Congress, participated in the passage of much of the 1960s Great Society legislation during the first phase of her congressional career. After a long hiatus, Mink returned to the House in the 1990s as an ardent defender of the social welfare state at a time when much of the legislation she had helped establish was being rolled back. As a veteran politician who had a significant impact on the nation during both stints in the U.S. House of Representatives, Mink’s legislative approach was premised on the belief that representation extended beyond the borders of one’s congressional district. “You were not elected to Congress, in my interpretation of things, to represent your district, period,” she once noted. “You are national legislators.”
Patsy Matsu Takemoto was born in Paia, Hawaii Territory, on December 6, 1927, one of two children raised by Suematsu Takemoto, a civil engineer, and Mitama Tateyama Takemoto. She graduated from Maui High School in 1944 as class president and valedictorian and went on to attend Wilson College in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, and the University of Nebraska at Lincoln before graduating with a BA in zoology and chemistry from the University of Hawaii in 1948. Mink originally planned to pursue a medical degree, but turned to law school after several medical schools turned down her application. Three years later, she earned a JD from the University of Chicago Law School, the first Hawaiian nisei woman to do so. In 1951 she married John Francis Mink, a graduate student in geology at the university. The couple had one child, a daughter named Gwendolyn, and moved to Honolulu. Facing discrimination from bigger firms due to her interracial marriage, Patsy T. Mink went into private law practice and lectured on business law at the University of Hawaii. In 1954 Mink founded the Oahu Young Democrats and worked as an attorney for the territorial house of representatives in 1955. Mink won election to that body in 1956 and 1958 before winning a seat in the territorial senate, where she served from 1958 to 1959.
history.house.gov/...
This is where her story converges with Sen. Daniel Inouye.
In 1959, when Hawaii achieved statehood, Mink set her sights on the new state’s lone At-Large seat in the U.S. House of Representatives and began to campaign for the post. Hawaii’s Delegate and Democratic “boss,” John Burns, remained in Washington, DC, until June, when he suddenly began working behind the scenes to rearrange the Democratic ballot to his liking. He convinced Daniel K. Inouye to abandon his Senate campaign and file for the House seat instead, frustrating Mink’s efforts and forcing a primary. Though Mink was also one of Burns’s protégés, she frequently broke with party leadership in the territorial legislature. Throughout her career, Mink never had a warm relationship with the state leaders of her party; she attributed their lack of support to her unwillingness to allow the party to influence her political agenda. Additionally, Burns viewed Inouye as his successor, and the two worked together atop the state Democratic Party for many years. The famously liberal International Longshore and Warehouse Union switched their endorsement from Mink to Inouye, who won by a 2 to 1 margin in the primary, leaving Mink to focus on her legal career. Mink returned to politics in 1962, winning a seat in the Hawaii state senate, where she served from 1962 to 1964 and eventually chaired the education committee. emphasis mine history.house.gov/...
It wasn’t easy to be against the Vietnam War. Even more so for a woman, and someone representing such a large military constituency. Sen. Mink displayed real political courage with both of these stands.
During the Johnson presidency, Mink strongly supported the administration’s domestic programs that were part of the Great Society legislation, but she was a critic of America’s increasing involvement in the Vietnam War. In September 1967, she refused to support the President’s request for an income tax increase because she feared that the new revenues would be used for military action rather than the expansion of social programs. It was, she said, like “administering aspirin to a seriously ill patient who needs major surgery.” If inflation threatened the economy, she suggested, the administration should raise taxes on big business and not just the average working taxpayers. In April 1972, she cosponsored Massachusetts Representative Michael Harrington’s concurrent resolution (H. Con. Res. 589) calling for an immediate termination of military activity in Vietnam, but the House took no action on it. Her views clashed with those of the three other Members of the Hawaii congressional delegation as well as with those of many of her constituents in a state with a heavy military presence. Years later, however, Mink recalled, “It was such a horrible thought to have this war that it really made no difference to me that I had a military constituency. It was a case of living up to my own views and my own conscience. If I was defeated for it, that’s the way it had to be. There was no way in which I could compromise my views on how I felt about it.” history.house.gov/...
Can you even imagine republicans doing this today? In today’s world we see people not understanding the tremendous efforts that went into passing legislation that can be taken for granted years later. Title IX seems like a no brainer, but it certainly wasn’t then, and is under assault again.
As enforcement of Title IX took effect, the full ramifications of the act became clear and many supporters of public school men’s sports programs objected to it, believing that their funding was being cut in favor of women’s sports under the new statute. In 1975 opponents filed an amendment to the appropriations bill (H.R. 5901) for the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare that would exempt school athletics from Title IX. Despite heavy lobbying by Mink, the amendment survived the House version of the bill. After the Senate struck the amendment in conference, the House faced a tight vote on whether to stand by its position. Just before voting, Mink received an emergency call informing her that her daughter had been in a life-threatening car accident in Upstate New York. Mink rushed to her daughter’s side while the voting commenced, ultimately ending in a narrow 212 to 211 victory for Title IX opponents. When newspapers characterized Mink’s tearful exit as a result of the vote, her allies leapt to the Congresswoman’s defense. Speaker Carl Albert of Oklahoma and Representative Daniel Flood of Pennsylvania explained the circumstances of Mink’s absence the following legislative day, and the House voted to “recede and concur” with the Senate, with Mink in attendance. Mink’s daughter (and Title IX) survived. history.house.gov/...
Sen. Mink died in 2002 after a bout of pneumonia; here’s what a few of her colleagues had to say about her tenure in Congress.
“Patsy Mink was a vibrant, passionate, and effective voice for the principles she believed in. Her passing is a significant loss for our committee, the people of Hawaii and the people of the United States.” Norman Y. Mineta, her colleague and a co-founder of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, called Mink “an American hero, a leader and a trailblazer who made an irreplaceable mark in the fabric of our country.” history.house.gov/...
After Sen. Mink passed away, the Title IX Act was renamed the Patsy T. Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act — that’s an incredible legacy for the first woman of color elected to Congress!