Kiyoshi Kuromiya
"[7] Kuromiya was a third-generation Japanese American and grew up primarily attending white schools in the Los Angeles suburbs, he says in an interview with Marc Stein in 1997.
[9] Kuromiya's increased involvement in human rights activities during the early 1960s stemmed largely from his sexual orientation and his feeling that the University of Pennsylvania was very closeted.
[4] Kuromiya continued his activism in earnest during his first year at Penn in 1962 by participating in the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) Maryland diner sit-ins.
Fred Shuttlesworth, and James Forman while helping a group of Black high school students register to vote at the state capitol building in Montgomery, Alabama.
"[10] In addition to deceptively luring thousands of people to the Penn library, Kuromiya was very involved in the antiwar movement throughout the early years of his activist career.
[4][10] The Annual Reminder protest happened for five years until 1969, and was the first time on record when individuals publicly assembled to call for equal rights for homosexuals.
[10] Kuromiya co-founded the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) in 1969 following the Stonewall riots in 1969 with Basil O'Brien, who he met later while attending a Homophile Action League meeting in Philadelphia.
[4][10] Kuromiya describes the idea behind gay liberation as a sort of male-consciousness raising that served to help individuals deal with the isolation they felt as a result of their sexual identity.
Under Kuromiya's leadership, the GLF recruited a diverse array of people and stood in solidarity with groups such as the Black Panther Party and the Young Lords.
[20] Kiyoshi approached his work with the motto "Information is power" and educated himself on the AIDS issues to the point he was invited to participate in National Institutes of Health alternative therapy panels.
[21][20] Kuromiya also founded the Critical Path newsletter, which he mailed out to thousands of people worldwide as well as to hundreds of incarcerated individuals who didn't have access to AIDS information.
[4][10] He further developed the Critical Path newsletter, one of the first resources on HIV treatment widely available to the public, into one of the first websites on the Internet, filled with the latest HIV/AIDS information.
[22] From there, the site became host to the Critical Path AIDS Project—through which Kuromiya operated a 24-hour hotline for anyone who sought his help and provided free internet to hundreds of people with HIV in Philadelphia.
