ARCHIVAL ACTIVATIONS #1
The Philadelphia Story: Another Experiment on Women
BY MARIAME KABA, DESIGNED BY MAX CANNER (2023)
This zine is about abortion, medical violence & the imperative for reproductive Justice.
[FIRST PRINTING OF 100; SECOND PRINTING OF 100; THIRD PRINTING OF 100]
VIEW ONLINE: issuu.com/projectnia/docs/philadelphiazine_digital
ARCHIVAL ACTIVATIONS #2
The Second Anti-War Moratorium
BY MARIAME KABA, DESIGNED BY ANDREA KSZYSTYNIAK (2023)
On November 15, 1969, 500,000 people marched on Washington in what was billed as the Second Moratorium Against the War in Vietnam. This zine describes the event and features archival documents from the mobilization.
[FIRST PRINTING OF 100]
VIEW ONLINE: issuu.com/projectnia/docs/antiwarmovementkabasingle
Ebony: More Than A Magazine
BY MARIAME KABA, DESIGNED BY CINDY LAU (2024)
The zine is based on the archival document “Ebony City Circulation based on issue of February, 1962” and offers historical background about Ebony Magazine.
[FIRST PRINTING OF 100]
VIEW ONLINE: issuu.com/projectnia/docs/mk_archivalactivations03_pages
ARCHIVAL ACTIVATIONS #4
The Ohio Penitentiary Fire of 1930
BY MARIAME KABA, DESIGNED
BY
KRUTTIKA SUSARLA (2024)
This zine is about the Ohio Penitentiary Fire of April 21, 1930that led to the death of 300+ inmates due to negligence from the prison warden and guards. It was the deadliest disaster in US prison history. There are three accompanying works of art by Kruttika Susarla, Hector “Bori” Rodriguez and Emma Li included.
[FIRST PRINTING OF 150]
VIEW ONLINE: issuu.com/projectnia/docs/ohio_penitentiary_fire_1930_issu
ARCHIVAL ACTIVATIONS #5
Reverse Freedom Rides
BY MARIAME KABA, DESIGNED BY TASH NIKOL (2024)
In 1962, George Singelmann of the New Orleans chapter of the White Citizens’ Council came up with a plan. He was going to send poor Black people to northern cities on Greyhound buses. He believed that this would show that northerners were hypocrites who didn’t want to integrate Black people into their communities, either. Singelmann referred to his plan as “Reverse Freedom Rides,” framing them as a response to the 1961 Freedom Rides in which Civil Rights activists protested against segregation.
[FIRST PRINTING OF 150]
ARCHIVAL ACTIVATIONS #6
A [short] History of U.S. Police
& Tear Gas
BY MARIAME KABA, DESIGNED BY CINDY LAU (2024)
This publication shares some historical background about the U.S. police and their use of tear gas, along with archival photos and documents from my collection. I hope that more people will come to oppose its use and support efforts to ban it.
[FIRST PRINTING OF 100]
VIEW ONLINE: issuu.com/projectnia/docs/mk_archivalactivations_ issue6_102824
The Southern Negro Youth Congress (SNYC): Interracial Youth Organizing in the 30s and 40s
BY MARIAME KABA, DESIGNED BY KRUTTIKA SUSARLA (2024)
The Southern Negro Youth Congress (SNYC) was a left-wing, interracial youth coalition dedicated to advancing the causes of civil rights and economic equality in the South between 1937 and 1949. It made important progress in organizing for democracy and workers’ rights in the South, and helped lay the groundwork for the Civil Rights Movement of the 50s and 60s. It includes a copy of a picture booklet titled “Would You Smile?” published by the Southern Negro Youth Congress (SNYC) in July 1946. The SNYC created the booklet intending to build solidarity within the white working class.
[FIRST PRINTING OF 150]
The 1975 North Carolina Prison Uprising
BY MARIAME KABA, DESIGNED BY KRUTTIKA SUSARLA (2024)
The Raleigh Revolt, as some historians refer to it, was one of the most significant women’s prison actions of the 70s. It challenged stereotypes of incarcerated women as passive victims and shed light on the horrific and violent exploitation of Black women in prison. It also showed that active resistance could be successful in changing conditions inside. This zine provides historical background about the uprising. The publication also includes an original art print by Kruttika Susarla.
[FIRST PRINTING OF 100, SECOND PRINTING OF 100]
Charles Ray and the New York Committee of Vigilance
BY MARIAME KABA, DESIGNED BY TASH NIKOL OF GRACE ISSUES PRESS (2025)
Charles B. Ray (1807-1886) was a journalist, minister, and anti-slavery activist. Along with abolitionist, printer and journalist David Ruggles, Ray was one founder of The New York Committee of Vigilance for the Protection of The People of Color (NYCV). The NYCV aided fugitives from enslavement and worked to prevent the kidnapping and enslavement of free Black people. It features a letter soliciting donations for the New York Committee of Vigilance for the Protection of The People of Color (NYCV) dated 1849 that is signed by Ray and others.
[FIRST PRINTING OF 200LIMITED EDITION]
Blocking Traffic: A Brief History of Road Closures as Protest
BY MARIAME KABA, DESIGNED BY CINDY LAU (2025)
The mainstream press often portrays highway and traffic shutdowns as a new and irresponsible form of political protest. Closing highways and roads, many politicians and pundits insist, is dangerous, and contrasts with the respectable, measured, non-obstructive and non-violent protest of the Civil Rights Movement (CRM). The truth, though, is that highway and road shutdowns have been a consistent feature of a wide range of protest movements for some 60 years, going back to the CRM itself. These protests have not always been immediately successful, but they have sometimes won concessions. This publication incorporates images that I have collected over many years to illustrate how protesters have blocked highways and roads for decades.
[FIRST PRINTING OF 150]
The Fifth Street Building Takeover
BY MARIAME KABA, DESIGNED BY KRUTTIKA SUSARLA (2024)
On New Year’s Day, 1971, a group of radical feminist lesbian women occupied an abandoned building at 330 East Fifth Street in New York City. They planned to repair the derelict space and transform it into a women’s center, providing childcare, books, clothes, and solidarity to women abandoned or ignored by the city government.
The takeover only lasted two weeks. But the action was a powerful source of inspiration and imagination for those who took part in it. Jane Lurie, a filmmaker who participated in and recorded the occupation, captured the women’s chant in her documentary The Fifth Street Women’s Building: “Our hands/Our feet/Our minds/Our bodies/Are tools for change.”
[FIRST PRINTING OF 150]
LIMITED EDITION ARTIST BOOK
The Anguilla Prison Massacre
DESIGNED BY TASH NIKOL OF GRACE ISSUES PRESS, PRINTED BY SMALL EDITIONS (2024)
On July 12, 1947, the New York Times published an article with the headline “Five Convicts Slain in Break in Georgia.” It opened: “Five Negro convicts were shot to death and eight others were wounded, two critically, in an escape attempt at a state highway work camp today, Warden H. G. Worthy said.” The article continued, relying heavily on the warden’s account of events. The initial account of what happened at Anguilla Prison Camp on July 11, 1947, turned out to be remarkable after all: It was a complete lie.
What actually took place at Anguilla was a massacre and lynching.
Anguilla Prison Massacre is a set of two pamphlet-bound artist books, with enclosure. One pamphlet uses archival research and reproductions to walk the reader through the Anguilla Massacre. It uses archival material to show the incident as first reported; the letter sent by an incarcerated victim to the NAACP; the disbanding of the prison work camp on the GA road systems; the evidence and trial; and ultimately the not guilty verdict. The book offers reproductions of archival information: the letter sent to the NAACP, a 1946 map of Georgia state roads, and the not guilty verdict.
The second component, A Mass Lynching in Georgia: Anguilla 1947, gives the historical background of Georgia that led up to the Anguilla Massacre—Jim Crow laws, disenfranchisement of Black voters, state-sanctioned lynching and violence in and out of the prison. Mariame Kaba writes about her relationship to the material, how she has felt haunted by the massacre, as well as what grew from it—a collaborative project with artist Rachel Willis (and this project). She also connects this history to the current state violence against Black people.
[LIMITED EDITION OF 150]
LEARN MORE ONLINE: booklyn.org/catalog/anguilla-prison-massacre/
