Judy Garland
Political views

Garland was a life-long and active Democrat. During her lifetime, she was a member of the Hollywood Democratic committee and a financial and moral supporter of various causes, including the Civil Rights Movement. She donated money to the campaigns of Democratic presidential candidates Franklin D. Roosevelt, Adlai Stevenson II, John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy and Progressive candidate Henry A. Wallace.

In April 1944, Garland escorted Brigadier General Benjamin O. Davis Sr. to a reception honoring the general at the home of Ira Gershwin. Davis, the first Black general and highest-ranking Black officer in the U.S. military, was in Los Angeles for the premiere of Frank Capra 's documentary about Black Americans serving in World War II. In September 1947, Garland joined the Committee for the First Amendment, a group formed by Hollywood celebrities in support of the Hollywood Ten during the hearings of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), an investigative committee of the United States House of Representatives led by J. Parnell Thomas. HUAC was formed to investigate alleged disloyalty and subversive activities on the part of private citizens, public employees and organizations suspected of having communist ties. The Committee for the First Amendment sought to protect the civil liberties of those accused.

Other members included Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Dorothy Dandridge, John Garfield, Katharine Hepburn, Lena Horne, John Huston, Gene Kelly and Billy Wilder. Garland took part in recording an all-star radio broadcast on October 26, 1947, Hollywood Fights Back, during which she exhorted listeners to action: "Before every free conscience in America is subpoenaed, please speak up! Say your piece! Write your congressman a letter – air mail special. Let the Congress know what you think of its Un-American Committee."

Garland was a friend of President John F. Kennedy and his wife Jacqueline Kennedy and she often vacationed in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts. The house she stayed in during her vacations in Hyannis Port is known today as The Judy Garland House because of her association with the property. Garland would call Kennedy weekly, often ending her phone calls by singing the first few lines of "Over the Rainbow".

On August 28, 1963, Garland and other celebrities such as Josephine Baker, Sidney Poitier, Lena Horne, Paul Newman, Rita Moreno and Sammy Davis Jr. took part in the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, a demonstration organized to advocate for the civil and economic rights of African Americans. She had been photographed by the press in Los Angeles earlier in the month alongside Eartha Kitt, Marlon Brando and Charlton Heston as they planned their participation in the march on the nation's capital.

On September 16, 1963, Garland – along with daughter Liza Minnelli, Carolyn Jones, June Allyson and Allyson's daughter Pam Powell – held a press conference to protest the recent bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, that resulted in the death of four young African American girls. They expressed their shock and outrage at the attack and requested funds for the families of the victims. Powell and Minnelli both announced their intention to attend the funeral of the victims during the press conference.
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