I been sitting with this thing… letting it roll around in my head like a slow blues on a scratched record.
My mama… she was just a young girl when she made up her mind about something that most folks back then didn’t even question much.
She wasn’t picking no damn cotton.
See, I don’t even know if I was born yet when she told me about it, or maybe I was just too young to understand—but I hear her voice clear now. She said she heard about some work out at Redstone Arsenal over in Huntsville Al. Didn’t know much about it. Just knew it wasn’t the fields.
And that was enough.
She caught a ride with one of them neighborhood men already working out there. Didn’t have no car. Didn’t have no safety net. Just had a decision sitting strong in her chest.
Anything but that cotton.
She started off in a cafeteria, cleaning up behind folks. Wiping tables. Doing whatever needed doing. And I mean whatever. Ain’t no pride when you trying to change your life—just work.
But I’ll tell you what—every plate she cleaned was one less row she had to walk.
Every shift she worked was one more step away from that field.
And she did that… for me. For us.
Now I remember that first car. Lord, I can still see it like it’s parked outside right now. Brown. Early ‘50s. Had that humpback look to it. Ugly to some folks—but not me? Brakes was bad on it !
Man, that was freedom sitting on four tires.
I remember when she sold it to my step-granddaddy, Matthew Smith. And then later… she pulled up with something else.
Red and white. Clean.
’59 Chevrolet.
Now that right there? That wasn’t just a car. That was her saying, “I made it out.”
I was born in 1958. So I came into this world right when she was shifting gears—literally and in life.
And looking back now… it hit me harder than it used to.
Cotton wasn’t just work.
Cotton was a trap.
That white stuff made a whole lotta money for a whole lotta people—but it damn sure wasn’t the ones out there breaking their backs in it. History try to dress it up sometimes, but I ain’t buying that version.
You don’t build that kind of wealth without breaking somebody along the way.
My mama knew that without needing no history lesson.
That’s why she ran.
And she wasn’t alone either. Plenty folks got the hell up outta there. Headed north, west—anywhere but stuck in them rows. Looking for something better. Something freer.
Then the machines came.
Ain’t even need hands like hers no more. Fields got quiet in a different kind of way.
But here’s the part that’ll twist your head a little…
Now here I am.
Using cotton.
Yeah… that same damn cotton.
But I ain’t picking it.
I’m printing on it.
Building something with it. Pressing my message into it. Making it carry my story instead of trying to bury it.
That’s a cold kind of full circle if you really sit with it.
My mama ran from cotton so I could stand on top of it.
That ain’t just business.
That’s bloodline.
That’s legacy with a little grit under its fingernails.
Yeah, cotton still out here doing what it do. Still tied up in money and labor and all kinds of complicated bullshit.
But in my hands?
It ain’t control.
It’s canvas.
So every shirt I press… every piece I put out…
That’s me talking back to history in my own way.
And I mean that shit.
So when you see me working with cotton, just know—
I ain’t forgot where it came from.
I just flipped what it means.
Now tell me this…
If you had a chance to turn something painful into something powerful…
would you take it, or let it keep owning you?