The Red Scare and the Hollywood blacklist of the 1950s destroyed the careers of many progressive and left writers and performers in film, music, and the arts. Black women performers who already faced racism and marginalization in the entertainment industry were particularly vulnerable to the blacklist. Pianist and composer Hazel Scott, actor and journalist Fredi Washington, actor Lena Horne, and musician and writer Shirley Graham, all of whom Red Channels, an anticommunist publication targeting the entertainment industry, named as so-called subversives, were among those most affected.
Mariame Kaba is an organizer, educator, librarian, and prison industrial complex (PIC) abolitionist who is active in movements for racial, gender, and transformative justice. Kaba is the founder and director of Project NIA, a grassroots abolitionist organization with a vision to end youth incarceration. Mariame co-leads the initiative Interrupting Criminalization, a project she co-founded with Andrea Ritchie in 2018.
Kaba is the author of the New York Times Bestseller We Do This Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice (Haymarket Press 2021), Missing Daddy (Haymarket 2019), Fumbling Towards Repair: A Workbook for Community Accountability Faciltators with Shira Hassan (Project NIA, 2019), See You Soon (Haymarket, March 2022) and No More Police: A Case for Abolition with Andrea Ritchie (The New Press, Aug 2022).pport and tools for repair, restoration, and moving toward a future beyond incarceration.
Publication date: April 15, 2025
by Tara Betts, Tempest Hazel, et al.
