Brooks Brothers, like many other commercial institutions in the Northeast, supported and benefited from the institution of slavery in the South. By counting enslavers among its clientele, Brooks Brothers directly benefited from the buying and selling of enslaved men, women and children. The longevity, national reach, and varied product lines of Brooks Brothers necessarily resulted in the company profiting from the slave economy. In this talk, I explore the structure of the Brooks Brothers’ business, extant examples of Brooks Brothers-supplied clothing, and Brooks Brothers appeals to Southern clients to pay outstanding bills as evidence of its connection to the peculiar institution. This story has a peculiar relationship to the French Quarter, which will be elaborated in depth in the talk.
About the speaker:
Jonathan Michael Square is the Assistant Professor of Black Visual Culture at Parsons School of Design. He has taught at the University of Pennsylvania, Fashion Institute of Technology, and most recently Harvard University. He has a PhD from New York University, a M.A. from the University of Texas at Austin, and a B.A. from Cornell University. A proponent in the power of social media as a platform for radical pedagogy, he founded and runs the digital humanities project Fashioning the Self in Slavery and Freedom, which explores the intersection of fashion and slavery. While serving as a fellow in the Costume Institute, Square will work on a book manuscript on the same topic, tentatively titled Negro Cloth: How Slavery Birthed the Global Fashion Industry.
This event is made possible by funding from the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities. Funding for 2021 Rebirth grants has been administered by the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities (LEH) and provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) as part of the American Rescue Plan (ARP) and the NEH Sustaining the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan (SHARP) initiative.
Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this program do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.