“We Black Folks Had to Wear Lowells”
Slavery, Negro Cloth, and the Enduring Legacy of Lowell Manufacturing
A lecture by Jonathan Michael Square (Parsons School of Design)

In this talk, Jonathan Michael Square explores how the production and circulation of “negro cloth”—inexpensive, coarse textiles like Lowell cloth—reveal the deep entanglement of slavery and industrial capitalism in nineteenth-century Massachusetts. Drawing from his ongoing research and forthcoming book Negro Cloth: How Slavery Birthed the American Fashion Industry, Square traces how textiles manufactured in the industrial North were used to clothe enslaved people in the plantation South, with particular attention to the material realities of those forced to wear and often produce such fabrics. Through archival sources, WPA narratives, and textile samples, the talk examines how discomfort and durability shaped the lived experience of bondage, while also illuminating the ways enslaved individuals asserted aesthetic agency under duress. Ultimately, Square argues that the history of American fashion is inseparable from the history of slavery with “negro cloth” serving as a material through line.

A Material Culture of Africa and the African Diaspora Lecture

January 28, 2026 at 6pm

38 West 86th Street, BGC Lecture Hall