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This paper discusses the ambivalent reactions of Japanese Americans to the mass civil rights movement among African Americans during 1963-64. Although groups of Nisei, notably the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL), had long worked alongside Blacks in lobbying and legal campaigns for racial equality, the mass civil disobedience campaigns sparked concern among Japanese Americans who saw the movement as —at best— something that did not concern them, and at worst a wedge to divide them from white allies. This tension led to a series of confrontations. In mid-1963, when Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. invited the JACL to send representatives to join the March on Washington, local chapters protested, and the issue was resolved only by the intervention of national leaders. Meanwhile, Nisei newspapers published letters containing both praise and criticism of black protesters. A second crisis arose the following year when Nisei in California split over a ballot measure to repeal a Fair Housing Ordinance.