Rare and Manuscript Collections
Social Fabric: Land, Labor, and the World the Textile Industry Created
October 27, 2022 – September 1, 2023
Social Fabric: Land, Labor, and World the Textile Industry Created tells the story of the communities affected by the textile and garment industries in the United States and around the world. Spanning nearly 400 years, it includes indigenous communities that lived along the river valleys in New England where those industries first arose, enslaved people and sharecroppers in the South that grew the cotton that fed the mills, women and immigrants that worked in the mills and factories who fought for worker’s rights through unions, incarcerated people that make clothing and textiles in American prisons, and the workers in the Global South that make much of what we use and wear today.
Social Fabric connects existing material from the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections and the Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation and Archives to selections from the newly acquired library and archives of the former American Textile History Museum as a way to highlight the rich resources related to textiles at Cornell and broaden our understanding of the historical and current impact of textiles and clothing on the US and global economies and social and environmental sustainability.
