Fredrick D. Kakinami Cloyd, M.A.
Equality Works Board Member
Fredrick Douglas Kakinami Cloyd (he/him) is an independent writer, scholar, artist/performer-activist whose work focuses on history and the individual in relation to social justice. He was born in Japan shortly after the official U.S. occupation of Japan. His Postwar Black-American and Japanese heritages are fuel for his social-historical memoir on a historical Black Pacific entitled: Dream of the Water Children: Memory and Mourning in the Black Pacific. Fredrick’s essay: “On Being a Black-Japanese Amerasian Being,” was included in the anthology: The Beiging of America: Personal Narratives About Being Mixed Race in the 21st Century and he has been published in such publications as Kartika Review, Oakland Word, The Pacific Reader, Nikkei Heritage, as well as featured on various radio and television programs and interviews.
In 2012, he was one of the artists featured in the Japanese National Historical Society (NJAHS) Exhibit celebrating the opening of a new Japanese-American museum in San Francisco entitled “Generation Nexus: Peace in the Post-War Era.” He has done presentations, consults and facilitated workshops related to Black Pacific issues, anti-oppression perspectives on identity and social change. At the University of California, he was a presenter for the prestigious Andrew-Sawyer Lecture Series entitled: Transpacific Approach to Critical Mixed Race Studies, as well as the Coordinator of the 2018 Symposium on Japanese War Brides which was recorded on C-Span as: Japanese War Brides—Occupation & Migration. He is a staff writer for the Hapa Project based at the Shinso Ito Center for Japanese Religions and Culture at University of Southern California.
He received his Masters in a postcolonial social cultural anthropology program at California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco. His studies took him to Europe and Turkey with a focus on social justice advocacy and community-building.