A Note from Our Founder, Shaun King
I built this company for social justice. We are not a fashion company that dabbles in confronting inequity. We are a freedom fighting company that does fashion. It took me nearly 2 years to figure out how to design, sell, package, and ship beautifully crafted clothing with Black owned providers from the seed to the shipping. Together, we can change the entire supply chain.
Thank you for your love and support.
Your Friend and Brother,
Shaun King
And who is benefitting up and down the supply chain?
A REAL ONE was created to interrupt the white supremacist supply chains of the fashion industry by working with Black farmers, Black designers, Black printers, Black sewers, and Black partners and banks at every single level of production. Our products are even shipped by the only full-service fulfillment center owned by Black women in the country.
Embracing Farming and Supporting Black Farmers Worldwide
Nearly 150 years after the end of chattel slavery in America, the sheer sight of cotton fields can still be a painful, triggering experience for African Americans. The deep trauma of plantations did not end with the Emancipation Proclamation. It remains today.
Tens of thousands of African Americans throughout the South remained there after slavery to manage and even own farms of their own, but the violence and white supremacy of Jim Crow eventually made land ownership and cultivation damn near impossible for Black people.
In 1910, African American farmers made up at least 14% of all American farms - owning and controlling over 19 million acres of land. 100 years later, in 2010, after a century of violent oppression, that number was decimated to just 1.6% of all American farms and Black land ownership dropped to 3.6 million acres. Another study found a 98% drop in Black farmers during that same period. Of course, white land ownership and white owned farms exploded during this time. Similar oppressive trends can be seen all over the African Diaspora.
THIS IS NOT PROGRESS!
Cotton is just one type of crop, but it is an essential one in the fashion industry where over 2 billion t-shirts alone are purchased every year. Our company has developed a 20 year plan to partner with Black farmers around the world to develop sustainable, organic, environmentally sound crops, including cotton, that are used every day in the fashion industry. Our long term dream is to help the few remaining Black cotton farmers in the United States lead in this space. Until then, every single product we sell will be planted, cultivated, designed, sewn, and printed by Black people up and down the supply chain.
