Vintage Bacardi Rum Runner Oakland T-Shirt 80s

A rum company sponsoring a footrace is funny on its own. Naming it the Rum Run and calling the participants Rum Runners — which is what you called someone smuggling liquor during Prohibition — is the kind of pun a marketing department builds an entire event around. The back of this shirt says “I’m a Rum Runner For Sickle Cell” in a ring around the Bacardi bat.

The cause was real and specific. Sickle cell disease affects more than 100,000 Americans, overwhelmingly in Black communities, and by the 1980s charity road races had become one of the main fundraising engines for sickle cell foundations — many of them organized by African-American volunteer groups, several still running decades later.

The front carries the Oakland skyline under the race logo, dated ’84. Fine print on the back: © 1984 Bacardi Imports, Miami, Florida. Screen Stars blank.

A race named after smugglers, run for a blood disorder, sponsored by rum.