LOS ANGELES (KABC) — As 2024 comes to a close, we’re shining a light on a moment in history 100 years ago that’s largely been forgotten.

A young Los Angeles fashion designer has taken it upon herself to remind the world of the importance of this event.

She’s also showing us how knowledge makes us stronger.

The world of fashion is designed for change. With each season, there are new fits, colors and looks. There’s always a new hot and a new not.

However, Michelle Hanabusa’s fashion has an extra layer.

“I’ve never been good with words, and so I think fashion, in a way, has been a vehicle for me to express my emotions and thoughts,” she said.

“I just told myself that if I was going to do something on my own, it was going to have a purpose.”

Much like her latest creation titled “1924,” but before that, there was “American Made.”

“‘American Made’ started because I wanted to celebrate how diverse the U.S. is made of, and it was very grassroots at that time,” she recalled.

“We ended up photographing 500 folks just organically, all throughout the United States. We just wanted to tell how diverse and interesting our community’s stories were.”

Diversity is America’s superpower. People whose DNA comes from all over the world, but together are “American made.”

Hanabusa’s next brainstorm came as a rash of hate crimes toward Asian Americans swept the country.

She felt she had to do something.

“One of my team members at that time, she says, ‘The way you’re kind of describing it feels like hate is a virus,’ and I pause at that moment and I was like, ‘Carrie, there’s something here,'” she said.

Hanabusa’s team designed one T-shirt and passed it along to a bunch of friends.

“Within a matter of couple weeks, we went viral, and we had over like 3 million organic impressions,” she said.

“Hate is a virus”

The creation “1924” is Hanabusa’s intriguing way of bringing attention to the Immigration Act of 1924, signed by President Calvin Coolidge.

It was the idea of Hanabusa’s mentor, Mike Murase, who’s not only the founder of UCLA’s Asian American Studies program, but also a longtime Civil Rights activist.

“The Immigration Act of 1924 was really an exclusion act to keep the balance of ethnicities and countries of origin the way it was in 1890, which was predominantly Western European and northern European,” said Murase.

A white Congress that was blatantly trying to keep America white.

It put severe restrictions on immigrants of color and was especially hard on Japanese. In fact, newspapers called it a “Japanese ban.”

But it went much further than that, restricting almost all Asians and Africans, while people from countries that were largely Caucasian were still welcome.

America had changed.

“Prior to that, it was the Statue of Liberty; the huddled masses yearning to breathe free… everybody come on board,” said Murase.

Lady Liberty’s “worldwide welcome” was over.

In fact, the headline in the New York Times read, “America of the melting pot comes to an end.”

“It really got me to think about how my family’s immigration story could potentially have been affected if they didn’t immigrate before that date of 1924,” said Hanabusa. “My great grandfather came to the U.S. in the early 1900s, and so they were already here in Los Angeles, you know, creating a life for themselves.”

A powerful point. What would America be if this bigoted law was always in place? What if similar laws are in our future?

“I can use fashion as a vehicle to get people to pay attention, to get people to maybe be inspired to take their own action right in their own creative way,” said Hanabusa.

That’s why she calls her brand “Uprisers.”

This designer with purpose is arming young people with knowledge, challenging them to make a difference.

Thanks to Hanabusa, now you know about 1924.

Meanwhile, the designer’s special focus on using fashion for the greater good is attracting the attention of huge brands. She has a number of cooperative projects underway.

In the meantime, you can find her Uprisers brand at a number of stores or just search “Uprisers Clothing” online.