Dr. Karen Korematsu, Founder and Executive Director of the Fred T. Korematsu Institute, after speaking to Rutgers Law Students about her father’s legacy, on April 13, 2022.
On Dec. 19, 2022, the New Jersey Senate passed NJ Assembly Joint Resolution 98, a bill to establish January 30 of each year as “Fred Korematsu Day of Civil Liberties and the Constitution of New Jersey.” The bill previously passed the NJ State Assembly last February 28th, so it now goes to Gov. Phil Murphy for his signature. While state and local entities such as California, Florida, and New York City have held their own celebrations of Fred Korematsu before, the first New Jersey state-wide celebration of Korematsu, civil liberties and the Constitution will take place on Jan. 30, 2023.
While Korematsu never lived in New Jersey, his case is part of a decades-long struggle by the nation’s Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community to have its history reflected in K-12 classrooms, college curricula, the legal academy, and the legal profession. For example, in April 2022, Rutgers Law School and the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF) provided a Continuing Legal Education (CLE) program focused on ways that lawyers of any background could address the ongoing scourge of anti-Asian violence.
