*For many descendants of enslaved Black Americans, the Juneteenth holiday is a way to express their social and political freedom through fashion.
As Insider reports, from the 16th to 19th centuries, slave codes in many states such as Virginia and South Carolina dictated what enslaved people were permitted to wear.
The slave owners provided their workers with fabric instead of clothes, such as flannel, osnaburg linen. The slaves were also given plains, “a stout and heavy woolen cloth that was often hot and scratchy to wear,” per Insider. The enslaved were required to cut and sew their own clothing.
According to The Negro Law of South Carolina, slaves were prohibited from “wearing finer, or of greater value than negro cloth.”
“I have a vivid recollection of the linsey-woolsey dress given me every winter by Mrs. Flint. How I hated it! It was one of the badges of slavery,” Harriet Ann Jacobs, an abolitionist activist and writer who escaped slavery, wrote in her memoir.
Here’s more Insider:
During the first official Juneteenth celebrations in Texas in 1866, Black Americans ceremoniously cast off their ragged clothes and threw them into the river. They instead donned clothes taken from the plantations that had belonged to their former “masters” as a symbol of their newfound freedom.
To this day, self-expression through fashion remains an important part of Juneteenth celebrations.
It is common for Black Americans to wear traditional clothing and colors from the African diaspora during the Juneteenth holiday.
“Red is the color of the blood which men must shed for their redemption and liberty; black is the color of the noble and distinguished race to which we belong; green is the color of the luxuriant vegetation of our Motherland,” according to the Universal Negro Improvement Association.
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