We Already Know How to Build the Future: The Civic Work of Regeneration Through Fiber and Textiles

“It was on the back of cotton, and thus on the backs of slaves, that the U.S. economy ascended in the world.”

—Sven Beckert, Empire of Cotton: A Global History

Fiber and textiles are more than clothing, though clothing is central to our daily lives. Fiber is embedded in rugs, towels, sheets, tampons, baby wipes, home goods, and more and most of what we use each day is made of textile materials. However, how we produce these materials has changed and shifted drastically throughout the  history of our country.

In 1960, about 95 percent of all US clothing and bedding was manufactured in the United States; today it is closer to 2%. Likewise, clothing was once predominantly made from natural fibers such as cotton, linen, hemp, and wool, whereas today roughly two-thirds of garments are made from petroleum-based fibers like polyester, nylon, and acrylic. These are fossil fuel-derived fibers contributing to pollution, climate change, and environmental injustice, in communities predominantly populated by Black and Brown people. The erosion of US domestic production, natural fiber use, and our environment has occurred alongside broader shifts in international geopolitics, democratic participation, and civic life.

Civic engagement, as a cornerstone of democracy, is more than voting and policy advocacy—it can also be a daily practice embedded in how we produce, consume, and relate to the material world. These practices shape our communities, regional economies, and collective futures. Using natural materials sourced from US farmers can be understood as civic practices. As such, rebuilding regenerative material systems becomes a form of democratic practice because it requires collective coordination, shared resources, and intentional design.

Preserving and Resurfacing Fiber and Textiles Traditions Today

The erosion of domestic production, our environment, and natural fiber use has occurred alongside broader shifts in international geopolitics, democratic participation, and civic life.

The Black Fiber & Textile Network (bftn) is a collective of entrepreneurs and producers who grow, process, and work with natural fibers, plant dyes, and regenerative textiles. Through our work in natural fibers, textile circularity, and community-rooted production, we understand civic engagement as a lifestyle—one rooted in caring for the land, making what we need and desire, and sustaining one another in the process.

We have over 80 members, most of whom are based in the United States. Their needs, desires, challenges, and visions shape how we allocate funding and what we prioritize. Through regular meet-ups and conversations, we collectively identify the structural barriers to producing textiles and dyes more sustainably. Our ecosystem approach is the structure of our network itself: members in the United States and across the globe work at different and interconnected stages of natural fiber, textile, and dye production—from growing and processing raw materials to dyeing, design, fabrication, and finished products. Rather than operating as a single entity, bftn connects independent businesses, entrepreneurs, producers, and practitioners whose work collectively forms a regenerative fiber and textile ecosystem.

The textile infrastructure of the United States was outsourced between the end of the 1970s to 1990s, leaving a gap in physical infrastructure, knowledge, and skills on how to produce our own textiles. To fill in some of these gaps and overcome barriers, bftn builds relationships by facilitating  collaboration across members and funding community programs that support regenerative choices.

One of our main initiatives is supporting members to provide free and low-cost community workshops on natural fiber production, plant-based dyes, and agricultural skill-building. This contribution to surrounding communities reflects our core value of regeneration. Our definition of regeneration includes practices that improve environmental conditions over time by creating net positive impacts on ecosystems and communities.

This approach of civic participation as practice redistributes power, resources, and possibility at local and regional levels among our members. Thus bftn offers a lens into how material systems also function as governance systems—shaping access, agency, and collective futures.

The Textiles and Fibers of Our History

By looking at the past, we can understand that our civic future includes Black communities building regenerative material systems as acts of reclaiming democracy.

A quarter of a millennium ago, during the American Revolutionary War, the country rallied to produce uniforms to fight for independence. Military uniforms were produced through a decentralized network of local tailors, seamstresses, textile workers, and enslaved labor rather than large factories. Enslaved Black people played a significant but often overlooked role in this production through the cultivation and harvesting of flax and hemp, spinning and weaving cloth, sewing garments, laundering and repairing military clothing. Their skilled labor helped supply both colonial households and the Continental Army, making Black textile workers an essential part of the material infrastructure that sustained the fight for US independence; even when independence would not liberate them from slavery.

Through the forced labor of enslaved Africans cultivating “the fiber of our lives”—cotton—one of the world’s largest economies was built. Before the nation’s founding, enslaved Black people were already cultivating and transforming fiber and dye. While cotton is the most well-known fiber crop, indigo was an essential cash crop cultivated in the South during Plantation Slavery—which eventually became the basis for denim blue. Hemp and wool were also cultivated through enslaved labor. Notable abolitionist and women’s rights advocate Sojourner Truth was forcibly employed to spin wool at the young age of 13, after being purchased by John J. Dumont of New Paltz.

Truth was promised her freedom in accordance with New York State legislation that sought to abolish slavery on July 4, 1827—about half a century after US independence—but that promise was (unsurprisingly) not honored. In response, Truth committed to continuing her labor while also pursuing her own self-manumission. She spun roughly one hundred yards of wool into homespun yarn over the course of the summer of 1826 to secure her own freedom. This is why one of the most well-known images of Truth shows her holding knitting needles—her freedom was literally tied to the production of yarn that became US textiles.

By looking at the past, we can understand that our civic future includes Black communities building regenerative material systems as acts of reclaiming democracy.

After securing her freedom, Truth worked alongside abolitionists, as well as recruited Black soldiers from the Union Army to advocate for land, economic opportunity, and civil rights for Black people. She is perhaps best known for her 1851 speech, often referred to as “Ain’t I a Woman?”, in which she argued that if this country was to function as a true democracy, Black people in general—and Black women in particular—deserved full rights of participation. Her abolitionist work was rooted not only in ending slavery but also in securing dignity, justice, and economic freedom as foundational to the United States itself.

While dominant narratives often celebrate US innovation, industry, and progress, these stories are frequently disconnected from the communities that made—and continue to make—them possible. Uplifting these histories expands our understanding of civic life to include the everyday practices of stewardship, labor, and collective care that have always sustained communities and shaped this nation.

Fiber production and textile practices as a claim to freedom have continued throughout our history. Many of these stories are gaining renewed attention today, such as in the case of the Gee’s Bend Quilters, a collective of Black women of modern art quilters from the rural community of Gee’s Bend in Boykin, AL. The community follow a legacy established by formerly enslaved Africans and their descendants who worked on a plantation owned by Joseph Gee in the 19th century.

Due to geographic isolation and slavery-induced poverty, Gee’s Bend became a self-sufficient and resourceful community. Women began creating quilts from recycled clothing, denim, workwear, and fabric scraps to warm their homes and their families. In the 20th century, quilting remained both a practical necessity and a cultural and artistic practice. During the 1960s, many women from Gee’s Bend also participated in the Civil Rights Movement. Some formed a cooperative, the Freedom Quilting Bee (founded in 1966), which helped generate income for Black families in the region who were active in the ongoing struggles for political and economic rights within US democracy.

Black agricultural and textile communities have long been creators, users, and stewards of this country’s civic infrastructure. And through those same peoples’ labor, resistance, and visions of better possibilities—democracy itself was continuously fought for and expanded. Thus, our material systems are deeply intertwined with governance systems—shaping access, agency, and collective futures, though full democracy 250 years later has not been yet realized.Fiber and textiles offer an entry point to democracy and civic engagement because they are present in nearly every aspect of our lives. Their production and consumption intersect with economics, climate change, environmental and labor justice, political subsidies, and public health. Thus, regenerative textile and dye systems create more sustainable ways to engage with democracy. Regeneration strengthens our ability to make, repair, and restore together—not only materials, but relationships: how we relate to each other, to the bioregions we inhabit and to the political possibilities we are capable of imagining. Natural fibers, textiles, and plant dyes alone are not the solution to a thriving US democracy, but the regenerative processes they represent can serve as a catalyst for imagining and building a more inclusive democracy.