Student raises $8,000 through t-shirts, plans to give to social justice causes

GREENFIELD, Mass. - In a summer of racial reckoning, 17-year-old Four Rivers student Carlie Mackenzie Kempf unexpectedly raised over $8,000 from selling shirts emblazoned with her very own Black Lives Matter design. Now, she’s committed to putting that money to good use.

In the weeks following the murder of George Floyd, local teenager Carlie Mackenzie Kempf created a Black Lives Matter design, a brown fist surrounded by flowers, and, in small lettering, the names of numerous victims of police brutality, such as George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. Artist, Mackenzie Kempf describes her art as “a good way to get my mind off the virus and COVID and quarantine.” Various versions of the piece exist, printed on a variety of clothes.

After making the initial design, her friend’s mother saw it and asked if she could create t-shirts with the design printed on it for her own family and Mackenzie Kempf’s. Mackenzie Kempf and her family, seeing the interest, set up an online shop on a site called Bonfire, hoping to sell upwards of 20 or so shirts. But word spread, and Mackenzie Kempf ended up selling far more than that.

With her $8,000 dollars raised, Mackenzie Kempf is committed to putting it all to good use. Some of the proceeds are going to the OKRA project, which, according to their website, is a “collective that seeks to address the global crisis faced by Black Trans people by bringing home cooked, healthy, and culturally specific meals and resources to Black Trans people.”

With the rest of the proceeds, Mackenzie Kempf hopes to donate diverse children's books to local schools including Four Rivers, Deerfield Elementary and many more. She’s already bought books, and has made plans to donate once COVID becomes less of an issue and schools are able to accept donations again. Asked why she chose to buy books, Mackenzie Kempf said that “I know when I was in elementary school, I know I would have loved to have a more diverse set of books.”

Mackenzie Kempf also says that the campaign has opened up discussion about race with her family. “My dad works at the sheriff's office, so he gets to share that point of view. Sometimes we get a little bit of conflict, but it’s nice to be able to actually talk about things which I had been afraid to bring up in the past.” Later, Mackenzie Kempf added by saying that “before this I didn’t like to talk about race. Now that I’ve started talking about it, I’ve realized people want to hear what I have to say about it. I’m not so afraid to share my opinion.”

At the time of writing, Mackenzie Kempf’s shirts are currently available here

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