“Don’t move into our neighborhood,” warned the voice on the phone. Undeterred, the man who confronted that warning moved into the upscale suburb near Los Angeles. And that fateful move in 1961 led to a string of civil rights activism here and abroad for the Rev. Lester E. Kim.

Born to a family of humble sugar plantation workers, Kim has been called the godfather of counseling among Asian American churches. For nearly a half-century, he pioneered the longest continuous ecumenical counseling ministry in California.

In the century-old Korean diaspora, he is the second Korean American to be ordained in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). He has served in five different churches, as well as acted as a moderator for the Synod of Southern California and Hawaii, building bridges for second-wave Asian immigrant congregations after World War II. In the late 1970s, Kim headed up the legal defense committee for Yung Min Kim, a Korean American doctoral candidate convicted on very shaky ground by an all-white jury in an assault and burglary case in Santa Barbara County.

A patriotic lot, all four of his siblings served in World War II. Though retired, Kim still practices part-time in the Palos Verdes Peninsula/South Bay area of Los Angeles County.

The Kim family in 1931: Daniel, Kyeng Bo, David, Maruda, Lester and Marian (from left to right).

HERE IS LESTER KIM’S STORY IN HIS WORDS, BASED ON HIS 2004 AND 2005 INTERVIEWS WITH JOURNALIST K.W. LEE:

One January day back in 1961, I was provoked by an unfriendly phone call at my office. I had made an offer to buy a house in Rolling Hills Estates (in the Palos Verdes area of Southern California), after the real estate office told the agent to stop showing us around. The caller was asking me to withdraw the offer and not move into his neighborhood. I told him I would [meet him at his house] in one hour. That hour turned out to be a defining moment in my life.

At that time, pastoral counseling as a special ministry was virtually unknown. With a Ph.D. in this special field, I was invited to start this practice in the Palos Verdes Peninsula area. [My wife and I] were expecting a third child. During that hour of waiting, I walked around my office wondering if I should actually go or not. I decided I must go because, if I backed down from this challenge, then I may have to back down in the future.

I arrived at the caller’s house with a friend, a high school principal. A dozen people were there. They asked me to sell out to them; they were worried about losing property value. They offered to buy me out. After an hour of the group’s talking, someone said, “Say something, we are not bigots.” Then it became dead silent, and the meeting broke up. They were convicted by their own words.

The family in 1944, when they lived in Inglewood, Calif.: Daniel, Marian Yoon, Maruda, Paul Yoon, Kyeng Bo and Lester (from left to right).

Up to that time, I just sat and listened. As it turned out, the best thing that I could have done was to keep quiet. As a counselor, I could be quiet and listen for a long time.