Christmas Boycott

Note: We #IrememberOurHistory®
#TheGCFHawleyMuseum® Are adding this information to a NC Black History specific gallery because much of what was going on in other areas of America directly affected Black people in North Carolina.
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Image 1- Photograph: Left corner insert, Louis Lomax. Back row: James Baldwin, Oliver Killens, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee and (folk singer) Odetta Holmes are the artists who formed the Association of Artists for Freedom, which called for a Christmas boycott to protest the church bombing, and asked that, instead of buying gifts, people make Christmas contributions to civil rights organizations. Photograph sourced from: Finding Eliza dot com

The article was printed in the Illustrated news in November 1963.
Article sourced from: Finding Eliza dot com.
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Image 2- Materials produced by the Association for The Black Revolution and the White Backlash event, including a sheet for submitting audience questions to the panel and a transcript of the event. Also included is an autographed letter signed in a postmarked envelope written to the Association by Maxine McNair, mother to Denise McNair, one of the children who died in the bombing.
Sourced from: Boo-Hooray dot com.
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The Association of Artists For Freedom

In one of the most gruesome acts of terrorism in the United States, the Ku Klux Klan firebombed a Birmingham church in 1963, killing four young girls.

This tragic event shaped the civil rights era, and was the direct catalyst for the founding of the Association of Artists for Freedom.

In 1963, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, James Baldwin, John Oliver Killens, Odetta, and Louis Lomax formed the Association of Artists for Freedom, which called for a Christmas boycott to protest the church bombing, and asked that, instead of buying gifts, people make Christmas contributions to civil rights organizations.

The Association of Artists For Freedom was an important precursor to the Black Arts Movement.

Perhaps the most significant event the Association organized was a town hall titled, “The Black Revolution and the White Backlash,” which Harold Cruse described as a “radical, grandstand assault on white liberals.”

The panel featured several prominent black artists: Lorraine Hansberry, LeRoi Jones, Paule Marshall, John Killens, Ruby Dee, Davis Susskind, Ossie Davis, Charles E. Silberman, and James Weschler.

Link to JET magazine Oct 17, 1963 article about Boycotting Christmas
https://noirg.org/.../Jet.10.17.1963.BoycottChristmas.pdf...
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Link to paper about Black Artists and Writers Movement 1963-1964

https://scholarworks.umb.edu/amst_faculty_pubs/13/