Mink, Patsy

Legislative trailblazer Patsy T. Mink (1927–2002) battled racism and sexism and became one of the nation's most influential public servants. The first Japanese American woman and first woman of color elected to U.S. Congress, Mink championed women's rights and civil rights. She was most noted as coauthor of the landmark Title IX Amendment of the Higher Education Act, which led to transformation of all aspects of gender equality in American educational institutions. As tribute to Mink's momentous achievements for equal rights for all in the nation, the act was named the Patsy T. Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act. This entry focuses on Mink's political career, race and gender challenges, and significant contributions to advance equal rights for all.

Patsy Matsu Takemoto, a third-generation Japanese American, was born and raised on Maui, Hawai‘i. A trailblazer even in high school, Mink was elected student body president at Maui High School, despite unforeseen challenges. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawai‘i a month before the election caused discomfort among her classmates regarding anything related to Japan. The attack, coupled with Mink's overt ambition to be a student government officer—an unprecedented public expression of aspiration by a female student—increased students' uneasiness. Mink countered the situation by organizing a coalition of student groups, and she won the election. Mink graduated from Maui High School as class valedictorian.

Her trailblazing continued in college. Mink attended the University of Hawai‘i and then enrolled at Wilson College in Pennsylvania. She transferred to the University of Nebraska and protested its long-standing racial segregation policy, prohibiting international and other students of color from residing in dormitories that housed white students. Mink organized students, parents, employees, administrators, alumni, and sponsoring businesses and corporations to end the university's segregation policies. Mink and her coalition succeeded. Racial segregation in the University of Nebraska residence halls was terminated.

Mink returned to the University of Hawai‘i and earned bachelor degrees in zoology and chemistry in preparation for a medical career. Denied admission by 20 medical schools, which did not accept women, she changed her course toward a law career, partially with intent to use the judicial process to mandate medical schools to admit women. Mink enrolled in the University of Chicago Law School, where she met hydrologist John Mink, who became her husband and lifelong partner. With the juris doctor degree, awarded in 1951, she returned to Hawai‘i to practice law, but had lost her status as resident of Hawai‘i when she married John Mink, who was a nonresident, and she was disallowed to take the bar exam. Mink [Page 682]fought for her right to take the exam and became the first Japanese American woman to be admitted to the Hawai‘i Bar. Patsy and John's daughter, Gwendolyn Mink, became a prominent author and educator on labor and women's issues.

Mink's political career began in 1956 when she was elected to the Territory of Hawai‘i House of Representatives and then joined the Senate when Hawai‘i became the 50th state in 1959. As delegate to the 1960 Democratic National Convention, Mink attracted national attention when she delivered a speech on civil rights, linking the efforts of the black equality movement to antidiscrimination efforts among Asian Americans and persuading the Democratic Party to retain its progressive stance on the civil rights issue. She made news when she joined the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), as the only Asian American member of the activist organization with largely African American membership.

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