Color of Hockey: Riveters place Dabney's Black Rosie logo in spotlight

William Douglas has been writing The Color of Hockey blog for the past 10 years. Douglas joined NHL.com in March 2019 and writes about people of color in the sport. Today, as part of the NHL's celebration of Gender Equality Month, he profiles Jordan Dabney, who designed the popular Black Rosie alternate jersey for the Metropolitan Riveters of the Premier Hockey Federation.

Jordan Dabney was watching highlights of her favorite NHL player, Dallas Stars goalie Braden Holtby, last month when she noticed her social media accounts were going haywire.
Friends and followers were alerting Dabney the Colorado Avalanche had just tweeted a photo of forward Andre Burakovsky wearing a special Metropolitan Riveters jersey she designed for the Premier Hockey Federation women's team with their traditional Rosie the Riveter logo reimagined as a Black woman.
"I was like a maniac and happy-crying because it was so cool," Dabney said. "There were some people emailing me, tagging me on Instagram and Twitter. Hard to imagine that so many people have seen something I've drawn and helped to create."

The Riveters launched the red, black, green and white jersey and related merchandise with a Black woman flexing her arm in the iconic World War II-era Rosie the Riveter pose in February. It became a sensation even before the Riveters debuted it in their 4-3 loss to the Toronto Six on Feb. 26.
Black Rosie items -- replica jerseys, T-shirts, hoodies, beanies and joggers -- accounted for 87 percent of the Riveters total merchandise sales between Feb. 1 and March 15 and became the best-selling collection at the team's store for the entire season, said Jasmine Baker, the Riveters' director of brand strategy.
And the Avalanche recently contacted Dabney, a 21-year-old Ashburn, Virginia, resident, about the possibility of collaborating.
"I don't think it's settled in yet," Dabney said. "Hockey is my favorite sport and design, at one point is something that I was going to do, and it's just come together. And it's impacted people in a way I couldn't even imagine."
Baker said she was surprised -- to a point -- by the response to the Black Rosie jersey. She said she knew it would sell but she didn't expect the amount of buzz it generated on social media and elsewhere.
"To see it go viral was something no one really anticipated," Baker said. "What's surprising is when I talk about the type of impressions we've gotten, the type of engagement that we've received, the type of love the NHL players are showing us, the type of support we've gotten from the NHL behind us."

The Riveters had been thinking about going with a Black Rosie logo for a several years, said Erica L. Ayala, an analyst on PHF broadcasts who covered the team.
"About two seasons ago, there were a few people, myself included, who were given a mock-up," Ayala said, "and it seemed like the league was going to make Black Rosie happen, which was really exciting."
The logo had yet to surface when Katie Fitzgerald, a Riveters goalie in 2017, had a Black woman working as a riveter painted on one side of her mask. About the same time, Ayala said she was looking for a logo for her blossoming media brand.
She contacted Dabney, who does design work for the Black Girl Hockey Club (BGHC), a nonprofit group established by Renee Hess in 2018 to make hockey more inclusive for Black women and others through scholarship programs, meetups at games and candid conversations about race and culture in the sport.

Dabney and Ayala then collaborated on a Black Rosie image holding a microphone.
Ayala said the Riveters revisited the Black Rosie concept after Anya Packer became general manager on April 8, 2021, and Baker, who had done merchandising work with the New York Liberty and Atlanta Dream of the WNBA, came on board in October 2021.
"I had been trying to coordinate Jasmine Baker and Anya Packer doing some work together," Ayala said, "because I know Jasmine had done some 'merch' before and Anya knew about the Black Rosie idea because she and I had had conversations here and there about how powerful it would be for the Riveters to embrace that."
Baker said the Riveters reached out to Dabney and asked her to come up a simple but meaningful design. The result was a jersey that honors unsung Black women, particularly the more than 600,000 who were "Rosies" in factories, shipyards and offices during World War II.

The jersey was also meant to recognize the Black players who had played for the Riveters, including Cherie Stewart (2015-16), Kelsey Koelzer (2016-19), Chelsea Ziadie (2018-19) and Saroya Tinker (2020-21).
Dabney called designing the Black Rosie jersey a labor of love. She has been a hockey fan since 2014 when she first saw Black players in the 1992 "The Mighty Ducks" movie.
Her passion for hockey and art merged in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, a Black man who died while in custody of Minneapolis police in May 2020.
She drew and posted a picture of former NHL player JT Brown, inspired by him becoming the first NHL player to protest during the playing of "The Star-Spangled Banner" when he raised his fist during preseason and regular-season games with the Tampa Bay Lightning in 2017 to raise awareness of police brutality and other challenges people of color face.
"It was the first piece of art I ever posted," she said.

Brown, now a television analyst for the Seattle Kraken, said he loved the piece.
"I reached out to her asking if I could use it as my (social media) profile picture, which I did for a while," said Brown, who scored 72 points (23 goals, 49 assists) in 365 games with the Lightning, Anaheim Ducks and Minnesota Wild from 2011-19. "I got a canvas of her print made that I have at my house."
Dabney has gone on to create hockey-themed prints, T-shirts and tote bags for sale and charity. She is donating her profits from Black Rosie replica jersey sales to BGHC; the Riveters are donating a portion of the Black Rosie replica and game-worn jersey sales to BGHC as well.
"Just to have little kids, little Black girls who look like me, feel comfortable in this sport, I would do it 10 times over, a million and one times the same way," Dabney said of her donation. "I want other people to feel like I feel in hockey, and they can't really feel that way unless they feel included and have a space."
Photos: Tisha Gale, Greg Townes, Jordan Dabney, Kaylin Markart