Blue jeans get their color from the indigo plant. Turning the plant into dye is a delicate process only highly skilled people can do. And who's been doing it for centuries?
Our African ancestors had a long history of using indigo for fabric dyeing. We continued diligently cultivating it on plantations, and in South Carolina, indigo became the second-largest cash crop after rice.
Denim was once called “negro cloth” because enslaved Black people wore denim overalls and pants made of coarse cotton that could withstand hard labor. Levi Strauss gets the credit for denim, but it wouldn't be what it is without us. For decades, it wasn't socially acceptable for white people to wear denim except as souvenirs from touristy dude ranches or to do manual labor.
We did it again during the Civil Rights Movement. Activists marched in denim in direct opposition to the respectability politics that whites deemed acceptable to gain our rights. MLK's March on Washington popularized the jeans many wore to symbolize how little had changed since sharecropping days, when Black people worked in denim overalls. It wasn't until the 1970s that denim became a mainstream wardrobe staple.
Like most things, we made denim possible, before it was co-opted. Remember, this world was built on Black labor, creativity, and coolness. Now, we get to define what comes next.