Explore t-shirts from the collection of activist, coal miner, and educator Kipp Dawson.
Listen to Kipp Dawson discuss six shirts from her extensive collection, including: two shirts passed down from her mother’s work in her union and as a Gray Panther, a Pennsylvania Miners shirt from her time in the coal mines, a shirt expressing solidarity with Nelson Mandela, a “CRAM YOUR SPAM” shirt reflecting her time on the picket line in support of P-9 meat packing strikers in Austin, Minnesota, and a shirt gifted to her by a former student following the Parkland high school shooting in 2018, her final year teaching. As you listen, we invite you to consider what it means to wear your politics. Created for the gallery exhibit, “Wearing the Movement,” co-curated by Catherine A. Evans and Jessie B. Ramey (2025).
[Film credits: Jason Dilworth, SUNY Fredonia. Archival photographs from the Kipp M. Dawson Papers, Archives & Special Collections, University of Pittsburgh.]
