By Mariame Kaba with illustrations by Jon Bailiff
Half Letter Press, Fort Wayne, IN and Chicago, IL, 2023
Pages: 24
Format: PDF

Mariame Kaba is one of our favorite activists, historians, thinkers, and humans and it was a pleasure to collaborate with her on this, our third booklet together. Here she has teamed up with the illustrator Jon Bailiff, and combed her own archives and the materials of others to tell a fascinating story of Black and Native solidarity. In the introduction she writes: 

"A few years ago, I came across a brief description of Dick and Lillian Gregory’s fish-in protests in solidarity with Native Americans in the Pacific Northwest. I was intrigued, so I started researching and also collecting specific items related to their involvement in these protests. 

This publication offers a brief description of the fish-ins as a way to highlight a chapter in history that may be less well-known to modern audiences. The Gregorys’ involvement in the fish-ins is a concrete example of Black-Native solidarity. Perhaps you, like me, had never heard about the protests. I believe that knowing this history reminds us that we can in fact work for justice across differences. It’s been done and we can/should do so today."