Fear of a Black Santa: The Black Santa Project Meets with Racism and Broken Promises from Toys for Tots

When you hear the name “The Black Santa Project” what comes to mind? To me, it’s the image of a version of jolly ol’ Saint Nick that’s more approachable and relatable for children of color. Frankly, I can’t imagine how the name “Black Santa” can conjure up any negative ideas whatsoever. Santa is a benevolent figure, a man who comes and gives gifts to children out of the kindness of his own heart. And, in fact, that’s why the image of a Black Santa Claus is used for The Black Santa Project: because that’s what they do. 

Started in 2021, The Black Santa Project is celebrating its fourth year of bringing toys to children to make sure no child feels left out at Christmas. But apparently, for some, the fact that it’s a Black Santa has led them to believe that the 501(c)3 nonprofit is somehow exclusionary, which has led to significant complications this year as they’ve tried to collect toys for children in need from the Toys for Tots program.

Does the traditional image of a white Santa Claus imply that such a Santa only delivers to white children? Of course it doesn’t, and The Black Santa Project does not collect toys only for Black children. The program started in 2021 when The Honorable Auon’tai Anderson– a former Denver School Board member who continues to work with Denver Public Schools and who is also the founder and CEO of The Center for Advancing Black Excellence in Education –received a call from brother jeff at brother jeff Cultural Center telling him that they needed a Black Santa for a local toy giveaway that was hosted by Montbello Walks. 

Anderson hobbled together a Santa suit quickly and managed to become the Black Santa for the event. Coincidentally, Pam Jiner at Montbello Walks needed to unload some excess toys, and the Black Santa Project was born. In fact, Yellow Scene (YS) sat down with Anderson last year to talk about the origins of the project and some of the other work they’ve done outside of gift giving, including the free Back to School Haircut event they held last January.

“We serve all kids,” explains Anderson about the project’s mission, “it’s not like we only serve Black kids.” MiDian Shofner– who is the CEO of The Black Santa Project’s fiscal sponsor, The Epitome of Black Excellence and Partnership –echoed Anderson’s sentiments, saying, “I think that when some people hear names like The Black Santa Project, they are assuming that there is exclusion, when actually it’s an invitation, and it’s an opportunity for the Black community to live out its purpose. We’ve always been an inclusive community.”

One of the main sources that The Black Santa Project was counting on for toys this year was the Greater Denver Toys for Tots program, a local chapter of the national nonprofit which is run by the Marine Corps Reserve. However, according to Anderson, his attempts to work with Toys for Tots this year has resulted in major complications, broken promises, damage to The Black Santa Project’s reputation, and even degrading language used to describe the people who run The Black Santa Project.

In addition to delivering toys to individual families, Toys for Tots also distributes toys to registered 501(c)3 organizations such as The Black Santa Project. Organizations can apply online and then show up at Toys for Tots with their valid tax ID information to pick up toys. Anderson says that, in previous years, Toys for Tots has offered 1200 toys per organization. Then last year, that number dropped to 800, and this year they dropped it even further, promising only 400 toys per organization.

With the number of toys significantly reduced, Anderson and his organization came up with a creative solution to try and make sure that they could get as many toys as possible to the people they serve in the community.

 “Because we knew that the toys were being reduced to 400 per organization, we decided to coalesce with other organizations to be able to have a greater impact and serve more people at once [rather] than to have small different things happen on the same day or same time and taking away from the mission of serving the community as a whole.” 

With a coalition of 12 different nonprofits onboard with The Black Santa Project, several of which were already approved for toys, Anderson and his partner organizations were told that they could not work together in that manner and have a single point of contact for multiple organizations. When Shofner was trying to pick up the first order of toys for the coalition, she was called in to meet with the head of the Toys for Tots chapter, Sgt Jarrod Maxon, as well as their civilian volunteer coordinator, Norma Jean Herrera, who  runs another organization, Ivan’s Crib, which distributes toys in the metro area. While Anderson says that both Maxon and Herrera admitted that the coalition was a good idea, they insisted that such an arrangement was simply not allowed.

“When we let [Herrera] know that we were intending on creating a coalition of organizations to come together to essentially optimize the way that we bring community together to celebrate, she seemingly offered her endorsement,” Shofner recalls, “and said that she thought it was great, and she even said that she wanted her organization that honors and supports the Latin community to be invited and included in that space. And so, as Auon’tai took [the] lead on creating ways in which organizations can logistically and pragmatically be involved, that’s when it was met with rejection and disdain by the Marine Corps members that were leading the campaign, and then seemingly Norma Jean changed up her tune and reneged on her excitement in her endorsement of what we were trying to create.”

The Black Santa Project leadership then had to coordinate with their partners and reapply for toys, now with a separate point of contact for each organization. This led to about half of the partners dropping out of the coalition, putting the coalition at about six or seven organizations. Still, they moved forward with collecting toys, and Anderson was granted special permission to pick up toys for only two of their partners: brother jeff Cultural Center and Sims-Fayloa Foundation. All of the other partner organizations had to have their own point of contact now, which was not part of the original plan or agreement that The Black Santa Project had entered into with its partners.

But when Anderson came to pick up toys that were donated from Ivan’s crib for brother jeff Cultural Center, having been approved for 400 toys, he now found they were receiving far less than the promised 400 toys. Herrera told Anderson that the orders were being cut due to a low supply of toys. “She listed off a whole litany of reasons why the supply was being low, and one, in part, that the Sargeants over the Toys for Tots operation simply were not doing their job, and that’s why they had to cut orders.” 

When looking for the Toys for Tots organization to rectify the situation, Anderson was told that, if there were any toys leftover after the other distributions, The Black Santa Project staff would have to come to a military base to pick them up.

“And I was like, red flag, I’m not doing that,” says Anderson, “especially with Trump just being elected president, not going to be me.”

Furthermore, Anderson worried about people working with the project who might be undocumented being forced to provide a government ID just to get on the base and pick up these toys. When they brought this up to Herrera, she allegedly became worried about the toys for her own organization, Ivan’s Crib, which was promised leftover toys, and expressed her desire to bring the issue up to Toys for Tots national. 

“It’s interesting that she now wanted to get activated in a more activism sort of way when it became her issue,” says Anderson, “but when it was our issue she didn’t want to help us.”

At that point, Anderson says Herrera started telling him about all of the dysfunction within the organization. Anderson says that Herrera informed him that she was instructed to change the verbiage on the website after the fact to say that a coalition like the one The Black Santa Project was attempting wasn’t allowed in an attempt to assure that Anderson and his colleagues wouldn’t be proven correct. 

“And then when she said they probably have screenshots, they responded with ‘Those f***ers are too dumb to have screenshots,’” Anderson recalls. “She had stated on November 25th that we had been called racial slurs and racial epithets by the sargeants there that run the Toys for Tots, utilizing the n-word.”

Anderson said that after that, Herrera convinced the Sergeant Major in charge of the program to meet with Anderson, insisting that Anderson was an important person in the community to speak with. After a two-hour meeting with the Sergeant Major, Anderson says that everything The Black Santa Project was trying to do was completely agreed to, and it came to light that other organizations were actually allowed to coordinate together and have unified pick up times, despite what Sgt.  Maxon had said previously. 

“So we end up finding out that the issue is really ‘The Black Santa Project,’” Anderson says regarding the revelation at their meeting. “It’s that they don’t believe in the mission because it’s specifically about Black people.”

But around this time, something strange started happening. Both Anderson and Shofner report that Herrera started contacting the partner organizations to cast doubt on the legitimacy of The Black Santa Project. 

“Norma Jean [Herrera] actually went to one of our partnering organizations in the community and she started to question The Black Santa Project and she was giving them false information about how partnering with our organization put their 501(c)3 somehow in jeopardy,” recalls Shofner. “She started questioning a lot of different things that she was seeing because The Black Santa Project continued to galvanize community members to raise dollars for not only toys, but also for the Black Mother’s Day celebration that we did.”

The Black Mother’s Day celebration involved honoring Black mothers who lost children to gun violence, including gun violence at the hands of the Aurora Police Department. It also honored Stephanie Clifton, the mother of Stephan Long, who fought long and hard for her son’s freedom after he was charged with first degree murder in a shooting that was eventually ruled to be self-defense. 

The Black Mother’s Day celebration brought these mothers together, offered them therapy, and bought them a dinner on behalf of The Black Santa Project. In addition, The Black Santa project provided presents for all the children associated with those families, 20 in total, to make sure that they got the Christmas they deserved without the financial burden falling on these mothers.

As the beginning of December rolled around, Anderson heard that other organizations were picking up toys, so he reached out to Herrera only to be told that, going forward, their point of contact would be Sgt. Maxon. 

Anderson says that, after five attempts to contact Maxon, he picked up on the sixth call and informed Anderson that the promises made in their last meeting would not be fulfilled. As Anderson recalls, Maxon told him that the previous agreements had been “null and voided” and that Toys for Tots was now requiring board members for each nonprofit to be present for toys to be picked up. When Anderson reminded Maxon that this was contrary to the conversation that Anderson had had with one of Maxon’s superiors, Anderson says Maxon hung up the phone.

A few days later, The Epitome of Black Excellence and Partnership served Toys for Tots with a cease and desist letter, at which point Toys for Tots changed their tone significantly. Anderson says that they then received a phone call saying to come pick up the remainder of the toys promised to them in their original agreement, saying that the Colonel and Lt. Colonel of the project made the decision to allow them to pick up the toys. The Black Santa Project was told they had to come in the middle of the day on a weekday, meaning that Anderson was forced to take off work to pick up the toys himself. In addition, Anderson says that Toys for Tots did not want him walking through the front door when he came to pick the toys up, an instruction that Anderson disobeyed in protest. But despite the inconvenience and indignity, Toys for Tots had at least released the remainder of the toys.

Despite this, the entire situation with the Toys for Tots cost The Black Santa Project time and resources and also lost them partner organizations. Because of this, Anderson predicts that The Black Santa Project will fall 3,500-4,000 toys short of their 10,000 toy goal. 

“We still hold firm that what they’ve done is wrong,” states Anderson. “They have only done this to our organization. They allegedly called us out of our names. And we’re not going to continue to stand by and take this mistreatment.”

In everything that took place, Anderson sees Herrera’s involvement as being one of the main contributors to everything that went wrong. 

Anderson says that, going forward, he will not be relying on Toys for Tots to get toys for the program. Norma Jean Herrera and Sgt. Jarrod Maxon did not respond to requests for comment on this article.

With Christmas Day coming up, there’s not a lot of time left to help out The Black Santa Project. If you want to help them overcome the shortfall that they’re facing this year, they will be accepting donations up until 10 a.m. on Saturday, December 21 on their Donorbox site.