A stencil family drawn from protest signs carried during demonstrations that contributed to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, designed by Vocal Type as part of their ongoing project to recover Black typographic history.
About
JAMES takes its reference from signage used during CORE's 1963 campaign against Jefferson Bank and Trust in St. Louis, a seven-month protest against discriminatory hiring practices that became the largest civil rights struggle in the city's history. Vocal Type's practice of grounding typefaces in specific moments of Black American history gives JAMES a documentary weight beyond its stencil letterforms. The result sits naturally in editorial, campaign and commemorative contexts where historical specificity matters.
Classification
JAMES is explicitly described as a stencil font family, placing it firmly in the display category with a stencil subcategory, designed for expressive headline and signage use.