Her life is featured in the National Museum of African American History and Culture at the Smithsonian and she was recorded by the Library of Congress regarding her experiences with civil rights in the United States.

In the 1940s and 1950s, she served as a stenographer and private secretary for the NAACP in Washington, D.C. Cecilia "Cissy" Suyat was born in Pu'unene, Maui, in Hawaii on July 20, 1928.

Suyat took night classes at Columbia University to become a court stenographer and eventually became the private secretary of Dr. Gloster B.

[4] Roy Wilkins, who was secretary of the NAACP, presided over the service at St. Philip's Episcopal Church in Harlem, New York.

[10] Suyat attended the opening of a new school building for the Thurgood Marshall Academy for Learning and Social Change in New York City's Harlem neighborhood in 2004.