This post is by Adrienne Cannon, the Manuscript Division’s specialist in African American history.
In 1927 the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) started a Christmas seal program. The idea originated with NAACP official Memphis Tennessee Garrison, who in 1925 proposed the program to the Association’s chairman, Mary White Ovington, and director of branches Robert W. Bagnall. Her intent was to raise money for the legal defense of two black boys accused of murdering a white boy in Mississippi. The Library of Congress holds the extensive records of the NAACP and has digitized portions of the Legal Defense and Educational Fund Records, also in its custody.
Memphis Tennessee Garrison was born in Hollins, Virginia, in 1890. Her parents chose her unusual name in honor of an aunt who taught school in Memphis. Garrison graduated magna cum laude from Bluefield State College in West Virginia and pursued advanced studies at Ohio University. She began her career as a teacher in 1908 at a public school in McDowell County, West Virginia, and remained there until her retirement in the early 1950s. In 1918, she married William Garrison, an electrician and foreman at U.S. Steel Gary Mine. They had no children.
Garrison first heard of the NAACP after one of its founders, W. E. B. Du Bois, visited the coalfields in Bluefield, West Virginia, in 1920. He was the editor of The Crisis, the official organ of the NAACP. Garrison established a Crisis agency and enlisted her students in selling subscriptions. By 1921, she had organized the Gary Branch, the third NAACP branch in West Virginia.
When the NAACP Christmas seal program began six years later in 1927, the seals sold for one cent each. The advertising slogan that Garrison devised for the campaign was “A Penny for Justice.” For the first five years, she had the seals printed, and handled their sale and distribution from her home. The venture was so popular that by 1932 the NAACP national office undertook the production, promotion, and sale of the seals.
In 1953, the NAACP launched the “Fight For Freedom Fund” campaign. The goal was to eliminate all state-imposed racial discrimination and segregation by 1963, the Centennial of Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. Garrison felt that the Christmas seals could become “Freedom Seals” and the income from the sales used to benefit the campaign. The slogan then became “Invest in Freedom.” Most of the seals featured traditional holiday images and colors, such as a tree, wreath, angel, candle, or winter scene depicted in red, green, blue, white, gold, and silver.
For the first two years Garrison designed the seals herself. Another designer was Louise E. Jefferson, an illustrator, graphic designer, photographer, and cartographer commissioned by the NAACP. Jefferson would design the seals for over forty years. Still other designers included artists E. Simms Campbell, Romare Bearden, and Elton Fax, and sculptor Richmond Barthe. Garrison reported that the sale of the seals netted $516.00 in 1927 and $165,876 in 1968. The NAACP Christmas seal program, which continued into the 1990s, was one the NAACP’s most successful fundraisers.
In the 1920s Garrison began her Negro Artists Series, which brought entertainment and cultural activities to black communities in West Virginia. She was a member of the West Virginia State Teachers’ Association and became its first female president in 1929. From 1931 to 1946, she worked as a welfare worker and mediator for U.S. Steel. At the same time, Garrison’s dedication to the NAACP steadily grew. She served as treasurer of the NAACP West Virginia State Conference (formed in 1944) from 1945 to1966 and was the NAACP national field secretary from 1956 to 1959. From 1963 to 1966 she served as both the national vice president of the NAACP board of directors and as a member of the West Virginia Human Rights Commission.
Garrison was also active in politics. She served as the head of the Colored Women’s Division of the Republican Party from 1932 to 1940 and was a member of President Lyndon Johnson’s National Citizen’s Committee on Community Relations in 1964. She received numerous awards and honors, including the NAACP’s Madam C. J. Walker Gold Medal Award in 1929, the T. G. Nutter Award for outstanding achievement and Christian service to humanity in the field of civil rights in 1959, an honorary doctorate of humanities from Marshall University in 1970, and the Governor’s Living the Dream Award in 1988. Garrison died in Huntington, West Virginia, on July 25, 1988.
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“proposed the program . . .” Memphis T. Garrison to Mary White Ovington, December 30, 1925, box I: G216; Memphis T. Garrison to Robert W. Bagnall, December 30, 1925, box I: G216, NAACP Records, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.
“accused of murdering . . .” Ancella R. Bickley and Lynda Ann Ewen, eds., Memphis Tennessee Garrison: The Remarkable Story of a Black Appalachian Woman (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2001), 168-169.
“was born . . .” “Mrs. Memphis Tennessee Garrison—Lovable Lady,” New Journal and Guide, October 2, 1943, A7. Garrison also suggested that her name evoked her family history: “My name came from a family of schoolteachers. A paternal group were teachers in their early days.” Also: Bickley and Ewen, Memphis Tennessee Garrison, 5.
“Garrison graduated . . .” Bickley and Ewen, Memphis Tennessee Garrison, xvi-xxii, 226-227.
“Garrison established . . .” Ibid., 146, 158-159.
“was so popular . . .” Ibid., 168-172.
“Garrison felt . . .” “For Mrs. Memphis T. Garrison: Love of People a Way of Life,” New Pittsburgh Courier, July 29, 1967, 17.
“designed the seals herself . . .” Bickley and Ewen, Memphis Tennessee Garrison, 170. Also: “NAACP Freedom Seals Campaign Gets Underway,” New York Amsterdam News, December 10, 1966, 19.
“Jefferson would design . . .” Julie Stoner, “Louise E. Jefferson—A Hidden African American Cartographer,” Worlds Revealed: Geography & Maps at the Library of Congress (blog), February 7, 2022, https://blogs.loc.gov/maps/2022/02/louise-e-jefferson-a-hidden-african-american-cartographer.
“Still other designers . . .” “NAACP Freedom Seals Campaign Gets Underway,” New York Amsterdam News, December 10, 1966, 19.
“Garrison reported . . .” Bickley and Ewen, Memphis Tennessee Garrison, 169-172.
“she served . . .” Ibid., 141-151, 227.
“Garrison was also very active . . .” Ibid, 227.