Afternoon of Jazz Button: Museum Object and Cultural History

The object in the museum catalogue

This button is made of white paper with blue and black ink covered with a clear film, on a round two-piece metal button with a safety pin clutch. The button is printed:

THE JACKIE ROBINSON FOUNDATION PRESENTS AN AFTERNOON OF JAZZ GUEST

An Afternoon of Jazz began in 1963 when baseball great Jackie Robinson and his wife, Rachel, presented an all-star jazz concert in the backyard of their Stamford, Connecticut home as a fund-raiser to procure bail money for the student protestors jailed as a result of the Birmingham Campaign of the Civil Rights Movement led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Council. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a guest of the Robinsons at the first concert. The yearly festival continued under the auspices of the Jackie Robinson Foundation until 2002.

Materials, dates and provenance

• Object Name: button
• Physical Description: paper (overall material)
• Physical Description: ink (overall material)
• Physical Description: metal (overall material)
• Measurements: overall: 2 1/4 in; x 5.715 cm
• Measurements: overall: 7/16 in x 2 1/4 in; 1.11125 cm x 5.715 cm
• place made: United States
• ID Number: 2011.3087.60
• nonaccession number: 2011.3087
• catalog number: 2011.3087.60
• Credit Line: Gift of Devra Hall Levy
• Data Source: National Museum of American History

Sources and reuse

Catalogue descriptions and facts adapted from National Museum of American History through the Smithsonian's official Open Access dataset. This record explicitly marks its metadata CC0 1.0; formatting and selection have been changed.