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Sources & Credits

How we know what we know

Methodology

Threading America is a synthesis. Its narrative draws on published scholarship, government records, and digitized primary sources. Each chapter, story, and regional history lists the works it relies on, and the classroom kits quote primary documents word for word with citations so students can check them against the original.

Where historians disagree, for example on death tolls, strike sizes, or the attribution of famous quotations, the text gives the documented figure or names the disagreement rather than repeating the most dramatic version. Numbers come from contemporary official reports where they exist.

Archival images are reproduced from public collections. Most are in the public domain; those under Creative Commons licenses are credited with author and license below, as those licenses require.

Bibliography (283 works)

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  207. ScholarshipShein adds thousands of new styles a day (Stat of the Day). Rest of World.
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  213. ScholarshipSlavery and Justice: Report of the Brown University Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice. Brown University, 2006.
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  215. Primary sourceSolomon Northup. Twelve Years a Slave: Narrative of Solomon Northup. Documenting the American South, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1853.
  216. ScholarshipSource Set: Amoskeag Manufacturing Company. New Hampshire Historical Society (Moose).
  217. Government recordSouthern Ties, Northern Gospels. National Park Service, Lowell National Historical Park.
  218. ScholarshipSpiro Mounds. Oklahoma Historical Society, The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture.
  219. ScholarshipStella McCartney-backed leather alternative Mylo halts production. Vogue, 2023.
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  235. Government recordThe 1824 Strike. National Park Service, Blackstone River Valley National Historical Park.
  236. ScholarshipThe 1913 Paterson Silk Strike. PBS American Experience.
  237. ScholarshipThe 1934 general textile strike in Georgia. Southern Changes (Emory University).
  238. Primary sourceThe Articles of Association; October 20, 1774. The Avalon Project, Yale Law School, 1774.
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  240. ScholarshipThe Civil War to 1880 (A History of Government Contracting). George Washington University Law School.
  241. ScholarshipThe Great Textile Strike of 1934. Woonsocket Historical Society.
  242. ScholarshipThe History of LYCRA Fiber. The LYCRA Company.
  243. ScholarshipThe Jewel Mill and Stone Arch Bridge. Historic Ipswich, 2023.
  244. Primary sourceThe Kitchen Debate. Teaching American History, Ashbrook Center, 1959.
  245. ScholarshipThe Long Walk. National Museum of the American Indian.
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  247. ScholarshipThe Pemberton Mill Disaster. New England Historical Society.
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  253. ScholarshipThe Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire. Historical Society of the New York Courts.
  254. ScholarshipThe True Story Behind the Banned Air Jordan. Complex.
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  263. Government recordTitle VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, 1964.
  264. Primary sourceTommy Hilfiger with Peter Knobler. American Dreamer: My Life in Fashion and Business. Ballantine Books, 2016.
  265. ScholarshipTradition & Trade: 19th-Century Navajo Weaving. Arizona State Museum, University of Arizona.
  266. ScholarshipTroubles with Sheep. Historic Ipswich, 2021.
  267. Primary sourceUnited States v. Darby, 312 U.S. 100 (1941). Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center.
  268. Government recordUnited States v. Schautz. CourtListener, Free Law Project, 1946.
  269. ScholarshipUnited Textile Workers of America. South Carolina Encyclopedia.
  270. ScholarshipUsing Cross-Media Approaches to Understand an Invisible Industry: How Cotton Production Influenced Pottery Designs and Kiva Murals in Cedar Mesa. Kiva, 2016.
  271. Government recordWallace H. Carothers. US2130948A: Synthetic fiber. United States Patent Office (via Google Patents), 1938.
  272. ScholarshipWallace Hume Carothers. Science History Institute.
  273. Primary sourceWampum. Haudenosaunee Confederacy.
  274. Primary sourceWashington Matthews. Navajo Weavers (Third Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, 1881–82). Smithsonian Institution (via Project Gutenberg), 1884.
  275. ScholarshipWashington's Inauguration in New York. George Washington's Mount Vernon.
  276. Primary sourceWestPoint Stevens sale to American Real Estate Partners completed. U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, EDGAR, 2005.
  277. ScholarshipWiggins, Ella May. NCpedia (Dictionary of North Carolina Biography).
  278. Primary sourceWilliam Cooper. Nylon Mob, 40,000 Strong, Shrieks and Sways for Mile. The Pittsburgh Press, 1946.
  279. Archive / museumWilliam G. Shepherd. Eyewitness at the Triangle, by William Shepherd (from Leon Stein, ed., Out of the Sweatshop, 1977). Kheel Center, Cornell University ILR School, 1911.
  280. Government recordWilliam J. Clinton. Remarks Announcing the Apparel Industry Partnership Report (Public Papers of the Presidents, 1997, Book I). U.S. Government Publishing Office (govinfo), 1997.
  281. Government recordWilliam J. Clinton. Remarks on Signing the North American Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act. The American Presidency Project, UC Santa Barbara, 1993.
  282. Government recordWood Worsted Mill, National Register of Historic Places nomination. National Park Service.
  283. Primary sourceWool Act 1698 (10 Will. III c. 16), section XIX. legislation.gov.uk (The National Archives, UK).

Image credits

  • A Diné (Navajo) weaver at an upright loom set up outdoors beneath a tree, photographed by Edward S. Curtis. The upright loom came to the Diné from Pueblo weavers, whose cotton weaving in the Southwest reaches back more than a thousand years.

    Edward S. Curtis, "Blanket weaver-Navaho," c. 1904, published in The North American Indian, vol. 1 (1907). Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. Public domain.

    License: Public domain · Source and license details

    Used in: Chapter: Before the Loom

  • A Hopi weaver at a vertical loom hung against a stone house wall, Moenkopi, Arizona. The Hopi are among the Pueblo nations descended from the Ancestral Pueblo communities that wove cotton on the Colorado Plateau.

    George Wharton James, "Male Hopi weaver at Moenkopi, Arizona," c. 1898. California Historical Society Collection, USC Digital Library (CHS-4619). Public domain.

    License: Public domain · Source and license details

    Used in: Story: Cotton on the Mesa

  • A Diné (Navajo) woman weaving a blanket on an upright loom, a bold stepped design taking shape at the base of the warp.

    George Wharton James, "Navajo woman at her loom weaving a blanket," c. 1900. California Historical Society Collection, USC Digital Library (CHS-4728). Public domain.

    License: Public domain · Source and license details

    Used in: Story: The Diné Loom

  • Craig Mound at the Spiro Mounds site in eastern Oklahoma, whose sealed burial chamber preserved the richest prehistoric textile collection in the Southeast before commercial diggers looted it in the 1930s.

    Herb Roe, "Spiro Craig Mound" (2011). Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.

    License: CC BY-SA 3.0 · Source and license details

    Used in: Story: Bark, Nettle, Feather, and Shell

  • Diné (Navajo) captives under armed guard at Fort Sumner, New Mexico, during the internment at Bosque Redondo that followed the Long Walk.

    U.S. Army Signal Corps, "Navajo Indian captives under guard, Fort Sumner, New Mexico," c. 1864-1868. Palace of the Governors Photo Archives (NMHM/DCA 028534); U.S. National Archives (NAID 148727588). Public domain.

    License: Public domain · Source and license details

    Used in: Story: The Long Walk and the Trading Post

  • Spinning in the colonial American kitchen, where nearly all household cloth began.

    Engraving from Joel Dorman Steele and Esther Baker Steele, "A Brief History of the United States" (1885). Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

    License: Public domain · Source and license details

    Used in: Chapter: The Colonial Hearth; Story: Sheep, Statutes, and Survival

  • Breaking and scutching flax, from William Hincks's series on the Irish linen industry. Colonial American households did the same work by hand with brakes and swingling knives.

    William Hincks, "A Perspective View of a Scutch Mill, with the Method of Breaking the Flax with Grooved Rollers," Plate V of his Irish linen industry series, 1791. Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection (B1978.43.251). CC0.

    License: CC0 1.0 · Source and license details

    Used in: Story: The Agony of Flax

  • A great wheel (walking wheel) for spinning wool, in the 18th-century Herkimer Home, Danube, New York.

    Wknight94, "Herkimer House spinning wheel 2" (2009). Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.

    License: CC BY-SA 3.0 · Source and license details

    Used in: Story: Two Wheels, Two Worlds

  • "A Society of Patriotic Ladies, at Edenton in North Carolina"-a London satirist's mocking view of the fifty-one women who pledged on October 25, 1774 to refuse British tea and "any Manufacture from England." The caricature is itself evidence of how seriously Britain took the colonial boycott of its cloth.

    Attributed to Philip Dawe, "A Society of Patriotic Ladies, at Edenton in North Carolina," mezzotint published by R. Sayer and J. Bennett, London, March 25, 1775. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. Public domain.

    License: Public domain · Source and license details

    Used in: Chapter: The Revolutionary Loom; Story: The Daughters of Liberty

  • George Washington takes the oath of office on the balcony of Federal Hall, April 30, 1789, wearing brown broadcloth woven at the Hartford Woolen Manufactory.

    Amos Doolittle, "Federal Hall, N.Y. 1789-First Capitol of the United States," hand-colored engraving, 1790. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division (ppmsca.15703). Public domain.

    License: Public domain · Source and license details

    Used in: Story: The Hartford Broadcloth

  • The Slater Mill, Pawtucket, Rhode Island-the founding site of American industrial textile manufacturing.

    Kenneth C. Zirkel, "Slater Mill Historic Site, Pawtucket, Rhode Island" (2018). Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

    License: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source and license details

    Used in: Chapter: The Industrial Spy; Region: Rhode Island

  • Samuel Slater (1768-1835), who memorized Arkwright's spinning system and rebuilt it in Pawtucket.

    Engraved portrait of Samuel Slater from "The Biographical Cyclopedia of Representative Men of Rhode Island" (Providence: National Biographical Publishing Co., 1881). Internet Archive, via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

    License: Public domain · Source and license details

    Used in: Story: Slater the Memoryman

  • Moses Brown (1738-1836), the Quaker merchant who financed Slater's first mill.

    Martin Johnson Heade, "Moses Brown," oil on canvas, 1857 (posthumous). Brown University Portrait Collection. Public domain.

    License: Public domain · Source and license details

    Used in: Story: Moses Brown: The Quaker Capitalist

  • Boys who worked in the Quidwick Company mill at Anthony, Rhode Island-child labor that persisted a century after the Rhode Island System began.

    Lewis Wickes Hine, "All these boys (and more) worked in the Quidwick Co. Mill. They went in when the signal was given. Anthony, R.I.," April 16, 1909. U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NAID 523181). Public domain.

    License: Public domain · Source and license details

    Used in: Story: The Rhode Island System

  • African American laborers picking cotton under a white overseer on horseback-a system of field labor carried over almost unchanged from slavery.

    Unidentified photographer, cotton pickers and a mounted overseer, southern United States, c. 1880 (date uncertain). Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

    License: Public domain · Source and license details

    Used in: Chapter: The Cotton Kingdom

  • A coffle of enslaved people marched past the U.S. Capitol-the domestic slave trade that forcibly moved about a million people into the Cotton Kingdom.

    "A slave-coffle passing the Capitol," wood engraving, 1876. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division (LCCN 98510280). Public domain.

    License: Public domain · Source and license details

    Used in: Story: The Second Middle Passage

  • Abbott Lawrence, Boston textile magnate and namesake of Lawrence, Massachusetts-a leading "Cotton Whig" allied with Southern planters.

    Charles Fenderich, "Abbott Lawrence," lithograph, 1844. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution (NPG.66.88). CC0.

    License: CC0 1.0 · Source and license details

    Used in: Story: Lords of the Loom, Lords of the Lash

  • Eli Whitney's patent drawing for the cotton gin, granted March 14, 1794.

    Eli Whitney, patent drawing for the cotton gin, March 14, 1794. Records of the Patent and Trademark Office (Record Group 241), U.S. National Archives. Public domain.

    License: Public domain · Source and license details

    Used in: Story: Eli Whitney's Patent Trap

  • Enslaved men, women, and children picking cotton and carrying it in baskets on a Georgia plantation.

    "Picking cotton on a Georgia plantation," wood engraving, 1858. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division (LCCN 2002698525). Public domain.

    License: Public domain · Source and license details

    Used in: Story: The Hands That Picked

  • A young woman winding shuttle bobbins in a New England weave room.

    After Winslow Homer, "The Bobbin Girl," wood engraving, c. 1871. National Park Service (NPGallery). Public domain.

    License: Public domain · Source and license details

    Used in: Chapter: The Lowell Mill Girls

  • Two Lowell mill workers photographed in their best clothes.

    Unidentified photographer, two Lowell mill women, tintype, c. 1870. Center for Lowell History, University of Massachusetts Lowell Libraries. Public domain.

    License: Public domain · Source and license details

    Used in: Story: Boarding House Life

  • The first issue of The Lowell Offering, a magazine written by women mill workers.

    Front page of The Lowell Offering, No. 1, 1840. Merrimack Valley Textile Museum. Public domain.

    License: Public domain · Source and license details

    Used in: Story: The Lowell Offering

  • IWW poster for the Paterson Silk Strike pageant at Madison Square Garden, June 7, 1913.

    Robert Edmond Jones, poster for the Paterson Strike Pageant, Madison Square Garden, June 7, 1913. Public domain (published 1913).

    License: Public domain · Source and license details

    Used in: Chapter: The Silk City; Story: The Paterson Pageant

  • A Paterson silk weaver tending four looms at once-the work assignment that triggered the 1913 strike.

    Lewis Wickes Hine, "Paterson, New Jersey-Textiles. Weaver operating four-loom system," 1936-1937. Works Progress Administration National Research Project, U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NAID 518541). Public domain.

    License: Public domain · Source and license details

    Used in: Story: The Multiple-Loom System; Story: The Stretch-Out

  • Elizabeth Gurley Flynn with striking silk workers and their children in Paterson, spring 1913.

    Unidentified photographer, "Paterson Strike, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, etc.," 1913. Internet Archive (mms_kerr_bx_2_fl_29_05). Public domain.

    License: Public domain · Source and license details

    Used in: Story: Hannah Silverman, Strike Captain

  • Isaac Singer's 1854 patent model (U.S. Patent 10,975) for improvements to his sewing machine.

    takomabibelot, "Isaac Singer's 1854 Patent Model For Improvements To His Sewing Machine," photographed at the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution (2007). Flickr, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

    License: CC BY 2.0 · Source and license details

    Used in: Chapter: The Sewing Revolution; Story: Singer's Installment Plan

  • Elias Howe's 1846 patent model-the lockstitch patent at the center of the "Sewing Machine War."

    Elias Howe Jr., sewing machine patent model, 1846 (U.S. Patent 4,750). National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution. Public domain.

    License: Public domain · Source and license details

    Used in: Story: The Sewing Machine Combination

  • Nine-year-old Jennie Rizzandi helping her parents finish garments at home in a New York tenement.

    Lewis Wickes Hine for the National Child Labor Committee, "11:30 A.M. Jennie Rizzandi, 9 year old girl, helping mother and father finish garments in a dilapidated tenement," New York City, January 1913. Public domain.

    License: Public domain · Source and license details

    Used in: Story: The Seamstress and the Machine

  • Union soldiers in standardized uniform during the occupation of Baton Rouge.

    Andrew D. Lytle, Union soldiers in formation, Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Andrew D. Lytle Collection, Louisiana State University Libraries Special Collections. Public domain.

    License: Public domain · Source and license details

    Used in: Chapter: Uniforms of Conflict; Story: Measuring the Union Army

  • A Union volunteer uniform made at the Schuylkill Arsenal in Philadelphia, the Army's principal clothing depot during the Civil War.

    Uniform of the Keystone Zouaves, manufactured at the Schuylkill Arsenal, Philadelphia, 1863-1866. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Open Access. CC0.

    License: CC0 1.0 · Source and license details

    Used in: Story: The Spread of 'Shoddy'

  • Company E, 4th U.S. Colored Infantry, in full Union uniform at Fort Lincoln, Washington, D.C.

    William Morris Smith, "District of Columbia. Company E, 4th U.S. Colored Infantry, at Fort Lincoln." Library of Congress, Civil War Glass Negatives (cwpb.04294). Public domain.

    License: Public domain · Source and license details

    Used in: Story: Uniforms and the Black Soldier

  • "Knee Pants at Forty-Five Cents a Dozen"-a Ludlow Street sweatshop photographed by Jacob Riis.

    Jacob A. Riis, "Knee Pants at Forty-Five Cents a Dozen-A Ludlow Street Sweater's Shop," from "How the Other Half Lives" (1890). Public domain.

    License: Public domain · Source and license details

    Used in: Chapter: The Garment District; Story: The Sweatshop System

  • Addie Card, a twelve-year-old spinner in North Pownal, Vermont-one of Lewis Hine's most widely reproduced photographs.

    Lewis Wickes Hine, "Addie Card, 12 years old. Spinner in cotton mill, North Pownal, Vermont," 1910. National Gallery of Art, Washington, Open Access (165230). CC0.

    License: CC0 1.0 · Source and license details

    Used in: Story: Lewis Hine and the Camera as Indictment

  • Striking shirtwaist makers in New York during the Uprising of the 20,000.

    Bain News Service, "Group of mainly female shirtwaist workers on strike, in a room, New York," January 1910. Library of Congress, George Grantham Bain Collection (cph.3a51055). Public domain.

    License: Public domain · Source and license details

    Used in: Story: The Uprising of the 20,000

  • Striking mill workers crowd a Lawrence street during the 1912 Bread and Roses strike.

    Bain News Service, "Crowd of strikers menacing strike-breakers, Lawrence," 1912. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, George Grantham Bain Collection (LCCN 2014690134). Public domain.

    License: Public domain · Source and license details

    Used in: Chapter: The Gilded Age of Wool

  • Children of Lawrence strikers sent to stay with supporters in New York during the 1912 strike.

    Bain News Service, children of Lawrence strikers sent to sympathizers in New York City, 1912. Library of Congress, George Grantham Bain Collection. Public domain.

    License: Public domain · Source and license details

    Used in: Story: Bread and Roses

  • The American Woolen Company's Wood Worsted Mill in Lawrence, at its opening the largest mill building in the world.

    Emw, "Wood Worsted Mills; west and south sides; Lawrence, MA" (2011). Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.

    License: CC BY-SA 3.0 · Source and license details

    Used in: Story: The Wood Worsted Behemoth

  • The company-owned mill village of the Highland Yarn Mills, High Point, North Carolina.

    Lewis Wickes Hine, "High Point, North Carolina-Housing. General view of company-owned mill village-Highland Yarn Mills," 1936-1937. Works Progress Administration National Research Project, U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NAID 518534). Public domain.

    License: Public domain · Source and license details

    Used in: Story: The Piedmont Mill Village

  • The ruins of the Pemberton Mill the morning after its collapse on January 10, 1860. Estimates of the dead range from roughly 90 to 145 workers.

    "Ruins of the Pemberton Mills, Lawrence, Massachusetts, the morning after the fall," wood engraving from a photograph by Whipple, Boston. Harper's Weekly, January 21, 1860. Internet Archive Book Images, via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

    License: Public domain · Source and license details

    Used in: Story: The Pemberton Mill Collapse

  • Workers entering the Amoskeag Manufacturing Company mills at 6 a.m., Manchester, New Hampshire.

    Lewis Wickes Hine, "6 A.M. Going to work in Amoskeag Mfg. Co., Manchester, N.H.," May 21, 1909. U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NAID 523200). Public domain.

    License: Public domain · Source and license details

    Used in: Story: 'The Chinese of the Eastern States'

  • Children on the night shift at Highland Park Mill No. 3 in Charlotte, North Carolina, at 10:30 at night. Hine noted that one boy had worked in the mill for nine years, half of it at night.

    Lewis Wickes Hine, "A few of the hands on the night shift in Highland Park Mill No. 3, Charlotte, N.C. 10:30 P.M. January 7/09," 1909. Library of Congress, National Child Labor Committee Collection (LC-DIG-nclc-01577). Public domain.

    License: Public domain · Source and license details

    Used in: Story: The Dagenhart Boys and the Law

  • Firefighters pour water onto the burning Asch Building, March 25, 1911. Their ladders reached only the sixth floor; 146 garment workers died.

    Unidentified photographer, "Firefighters spray water on the Asch Building trying to put out the Triangle factory fire blaze, March 25, 1911." Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation and Archives, Cornell University (ILGWU Archives). Flickr, CC BY 2.0.

    License: CC BY 2.0 · Source and license details

    Used in: Chapter: The Ashes of New York

  • Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, the "Shirtwaist Kings" who owned the Triangle Waist Company.

    Brown Brothers, "Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, owners of the Triangle Waist Company." Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation and Archives, Cornell University (ILGWU Archives). Flickr, CC BY 2.0.

    License: CC BY 2.0 · Source and license details

    Used in: Story: The Acquittal of Blanck and Harris

  • Frances Perkins, who witnessed the Triangle fire and became the first woman to serve in a U.S. cabinet.

    Bain News Service, "Frances Perkins." Library of Congress, George Grantham Bain Collection (LCCN 2014708218). Public domain.

    License: Public domain · Source and license details

    Used in: Story: Frances Perkins: The Witness Who Built the New Deal

  • Clara Lemlich, whose call for a general strike in November 1909 launched the Uprising of the 20,000.

    Portrait of Clara Lemlich, c. 1910. ILGWU Archives, Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation and Archives, Cornell University. Public domain.

    License: Public domain · Source and license details

    Used in: Story: Clara Lemlich, Two Years Earlier

  • The power house and Columbia Duck Mill on the Columbia Canal. Opened in 1894, Columbia Mills was the first textile mill in the world driven entirely by electric motors.

    A. C. Bosselman & Co. (publisher), "Electric Power House and Columbia Duck Mill, Columbia, S.C.," postcard, c. 1910. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

    License: Public domain · Source and license details

    Used in: Chapter: The Electric Loom; Story: The Death of the Shaft

  • The American Viscose Company plant at Marcus Hook, Pennsylvania, the first commercial rayon plant in the United States.

    Nyttend, "American Viscose Plant from Ninth Street bridge," Marcus Hook, Pennsylvania (2019). Released into the public domain by the photographer, via Wikimedia Commons.

    License: Public domain · Source and license details

    Used in: Story: Rayon: The First Manufactured Fiber

  • Workers leaving the Loray Mill in Gastonia, North Carolina, at closing time.

    Lewis Wickes Hine, "Closing hour Loray Mill, Gastonia, N.C. November 7, 1908." Library of Congress, National Child Labor Committee Collection (nclc.01352). Public domain.

    License: Public domain · Source and license details

    Used in: Story: The Great Piedmont Migration; Region: North Carolina

  • Ella May Wiggins, songwriter and Loray Mill strike organizer, killed September 14, 1929.

    Unidentified photographer, Ella May Wiggins. Public domain in the United States, via English Wikipedia.

    License: Public domain (US) · Source and license details

    Used in: Story: Ella May Wiggins: The Singer of Gastonia

  • National Guardsmen lay down tear gas against pickets at the Woodside Mill, Greenville, South Carolina, during the General Textile Strike of September 1934.

    Unidentified press photographers, "Troops Attack Textile Strikers with Bullets, Bayonets and Tear Gas," Daily Worker (New York), September 22, 1934. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

    License: Public domain · Source and license details

    Used in: Chapter: The Great Textile Strike

  • Arrested pickets marched into Georgia's military internment camp under armed guard (left), and a guardsman behind a steel barricade at Kannapolis, North Carolina (right).

    Unidentified press photographers, "Imprisoned for Striking Under N.R.A.; Cold Steel Against Unarmed Workers," Daily Worker (New York), September 22, 1934. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

    License: Public domain · Source and license details

    Used in: Story: The Flying Squadrons

  • Armed strikebreakers at the Chiquola Mill in Honea Path on September 6, 1934, the day seven strikers were shot dead at the mill gate.

    Unidentified photographer, armed men at the Chiquola Mill, Honea Path, South Carolina, September 6, 1934. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

    License: Public domain · Source and license details

    Used in: Story: The Honea Path Massacre

  • The historic marker for the Saylesville mill village in Lincoln, Rhode Island.

    Shadowe, "Saylesville Historic District," Lincoln, Rhode Island (2014). Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.

    License: CC BY-SA 3.0 · Source and license details

    Used in: Story: Saylesville and Woonsocket

  • Nylon stockings. DuPont put nylon hosiery on national sale on May 15, 1940-"N-Day."

    Antique Rose, "Nylon stockings" (2006). English Wikipedia, CC BY 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons.

    License: CC BY 2.5 · Source and license details

    Used in: Chapter: Synthetic Warfare

  • Women lined up for nylon stockings at Miller's Department Store in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, during the postwar nylon shortage.

    Ed Westcott, U.S. Department of Energy, "Standing in line for nylon stockings at Miller's Department Store, Oak Ridge, Tennessee," January 4, 1946. Public domain (U.S. government work).

    License: Public domain · Source and license details

    Used in: Story: The Nylon Riots

  • Technicians casting polymer at DuPont's Experimental Station during the early nylon research program led by Wallace Carothers.

    DuPont technicians casting polymer from a 250-pound autoclave, DuPont Experimental Station, Wilmington, Delaware. Science History Institute, via Wikimedia Commons. No known copyright restrictions.

    License: No known copyright restrictions · Source and license details

    Used in: Story: Wallace Carothers, Inventor of Nylon

  • A DuPont trade booklet of dyed Dacron polyester and Antron nylon swatches-the synthetic palette sold to American mills and garment makers.

    E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Company, "Dacron & Antron Colour Story," fabric sample booklet. Science History Institute, via Wikimedia Commons. No known copyright restrictions.

    License: No known copyright restrictions · Source and license details

    Used in: Chapter: The Polyester Dream

  • A DuPont advertisement selling Orlon acrylic clothing on the promise of easy washing.

    E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Company, "ORLON teaches new fall fashions to keep their figure in the wash!" magazine advertisement, 1950s. Science History Institute, via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

    License: Public domain · Source and license details

    Used in: Story: The Wash-and-Wear Revolution

  • A man in a leisure suit in a Chicago parking lot, 1978.

    Downtowngal, "Man in leisure suit in parking lot, Chicago" (November 7, 1978). Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

    License: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source and license details

    Used in: Story: The Leisure Suit Phenomenon

  • A cotton mill at Darlington, South Carolina, about 1905. In 1956 the Darlington Manufacturing Company closed days after its workers voted for a union-the case behind the Supreme Court's 1965 Darlington decision.

    Illustrated Post Card Co., "Darlington, S.C. Cotton Mill," tinted halftone postcard, c. 1905. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

    License: Public domain · Source and license details

    Used in: Chapter: The Long Integration; Story: Remember Darlington

  • Fifteen-year-old Bertha Bonneau tending a jack speeder in the card room of the King Philip Mill. Card rooms, where cotton was opened and combed into roving, carried the heaviest loads of the dust that causes byssinosis.

    Lewis Wickes Hine, "King Philip Mill-Card Room. Doffer on Jack Speeder. Bertha Bonneau, 15 years," Fall River, Massachusetts, 1916. Library of Congress, National Child Labor Committee Collection (cph.3b33420). Public domain.

    License: Public domain · Source and license details

    Used in: Story: Brown Lung

  • An American indoor shopping mall in the 1980s-the retail stage on which apparel brands built national empires.

    Carol M. Highsmith, "Indoor shopping mall," between 1980 and 1990. Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division (LCCN 2011635987). Public domain.

    License: Public domain · Source and license details

    Used in: Chapter: The Branded Empire

  • A 2020 retro release of the Air Jordan 1 in its 1985 black-and-red "Banned" colorway.

    HI 622, "Air Jordan 1 Banned" (2021). Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

    License: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source and license details

    Used in: Story: Air Jordan and the Sneaker Economy

  • Run-DMC's Adidas sneakers on display at the Bata Shoe Museum. The group's 1986 deal with Adidas was the first endorsement contract between a hip-hop act and an athletic brand.

    rrafson, "Run DMC Adidas," Bata Shoe Museum, Toronto (2013). Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.

    License: CC BY-SA 3.0 · Source and license details

    Used in: Story: Hip-Hop and the Logo

  • An abandoned, partly demolished Dan River mill in Danville, Virginia-emblem of American de-industrialization.

    Acroterion, "Dan River mill VA1" (2016). Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

    License: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source and license details

    Used in: Chapter: The Great De-Industrialization

  • Cannon Mills at Kannapolis, North Carolina, once the world's largest towel producer. Its successor Pillowtex closed the plant on July 30, 2003.

    Tichnor Bros. for Dixie News Company, "Cannon Mills, Kannapolis, N.C.," postcard, c. 1930-1945. Boston Public Library, Tichnor Brothers Collection. Flickr, CC BY 2.0.

    License: CC BY 2.0 · Source and license details

    Used in: Story: The Kannapolis Collapse

  • A container ship at the Port of Los Angeles. After Multi-Fibre Arrangement quotas expired on January 1, 2005, apparel imports surged.

    Downtowngal, "Container ship NYK Themis at the Port of Los Angeles" (2021). Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

    License: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source and license details

    Used in: Story: The End of the Quotas

  • The Loray Mill in Gastonia in 2013, during its conversion from a shuttered mill into apartments and shops.

    Upstateherd, "Loray Mill, Gastonia, NC" (2013). Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.

    License: CC BY-SA 3.0 · Source and license details

    Used in: Story: Ghosts of the Mill Town

  • A computerized flat-bed knitting machine. Automated knitting of this kind underpins the small, highly automated mills of the reshoring era.

    Elkágyé, "Contemporary flat knitting machine" (2018). Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

    License: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source and license details

    Used in: Chapter: The Reshoring Frontier; Story: The Automated Factory

  • The N95 respirator production line Honeywell set up in Phoenix, Arizona, in spring 2020.

    Shealah Craighead, Official White House Photo, Honeywell International Inc. mask production line, Phoenix, Arizona, May 5, 2020. Public domain (U.S. government work).

    License: Public domain · Source and license details

    Used in: Story: The PPE Pivot of 2020

  • A textile-recycling bin beside ordinary waste containers. Most discarded clothing worldwide is still landfilled or incinerated.

    Daniel Capilla, "Textile Recycling Container and Waste Containers," Málaga, Spain (2022). Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

    License: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source and license details

    Used in: Chapter: The Circular Reckoning; Story: The Shein Reckoning

  • A worker pushes a cart of fabric bolts between delivery trucks in Manhattan's Garment District, April 1973.

    Dan McCoy, "A frequent sight in midtown Manhattan's famous Garment District (between Broadway and Eighth Avenue)," April 1973. U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NAID 549867). Public domain.

    License: Public domain · Source and license details

    Used in: Story: The New York Fashion Act; Region: New York

  • A sample of leather-like material grown from fungal mycelium.

    ThamaraGroenleer, "Mushroom leather" (2022). Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.

    License: CC BY-SA 3.0 · Source and license details

    Used in: Story: Mycelium, Brewed Protein, and the Next Fiber

  • Rescue workers search the wreckage of Rana Plaza in Savar, Bangladesh, three days after the eight-story garment-factory building collapsed on April 24, 2013.

    Sharat Chowdhury, "2013 Savar building collapse," April 27, 2013. Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.5.

    License: CC BY 2.5 · Source and license details

    Used in: Story: Rana Plaza

  • The spinning room of the Cornell Mill, Fall River, then America's leading center of cotton cloth production.

    Lewis Wickes Hine, "General view of spinning room, Cornell Mill, Fall River, Mass.," January 11, 1912. U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NAID 523509). Public domain.

    License: Public domain · Source and license details

    Used in: Region: Massachusetts

  • The Amoskeag Manufacturing Company along the Merrimack at Manchester-once the largest cotton mill complex in the world.

    Alphonso H. Sanborn (publisher), Amoskeag Manufacturing Company looking down the Merrimack River, Manchester, postcard, c. 1911. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

    License: Public domain · Source and license details

    Used in: Region: New Hampshire

  • Leaders of the Paterson silk strike: Quinlan, Tresca, Flynn, Lessig, and Haywood.

    Unidentified photographer, Patrick Quinlan, Carlo Tresca, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Adolph Lessig and Bill Haywood in Paterson, 1913. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

    License: Public domain · Source and license details

    Used in: Region: New Jersey

  • The 1864 Willimantic Linen Company mill, later the American Thread Company, in "Thread City," Willimantic, Connecticut.

    B. Michael Zuckerman, "Willimantic Linen Company Mill, Willimantic, CT" (photographed 1977). Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

    License: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source and license details

    Used in: Region: Connecticut

  • Joseph Ripka's cotton mills at Manayunk on the Schuylkill, Philadelphia's "Manchester of America."

    "Joseph Ripka's mills. Manayunk 21st Ward, Philadelphia," lithograph (associated name: W. H. Rease). Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Popular Graphic Arts (LCCN 2003677678). Public domain.

    License: Public domain · Source and license details

    Used in: Region: Pennsylvania

  • Sadie Pfeifer, 48 inches high, a spinner at the Lancaster Cotton Mills, South Carolina.

    Lewis Wickes Hine, "Sadie Pfeifer, 48 inches high, has worked half a year. One of the many small children at work in Lancaster Cotton Mills. Nov. 30, 1908." Library of Congress, National Child Labor Committee Collection (cph.3a13674). Public domain.

    License: Public domain · Source and license details

    Used in: Region: South Carolina

  • The Sibley Mill on the Augusta Canal, with the Confederate Powder Works chimney behind it.

    Detroit Publishing Co., Sibley Mill and Confederate Powder Works chimney, Augusta, Georgia. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division (det.4a10911). Public domain.

    License: Public domain · Source and license details

    Used in: Region: Georgia

  • The Dan River Mills White Mill, Danville, Virginia-listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

    Acroterion, "White Mill Danville VA1" (2016). Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

    License: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source and license details

    Used in: Region: Virginia

  • The textile mills and power canal of Lewiston, Maine, home of the Bates Manufacturing Company and a large Franco-American workforce.

    "Birds-eye View of Mills & Canal, Lewiston, ME," postcard, early 20th century. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

    License: Public domain · Source and license details

    Used in: Region: Maine

  • Boys and men who worked at Avondale Mills in Birmingham, photographed by Lewis Hine.

    Lewis Wickes Hine, "Workers in Avondale Mills," Birmingham, Alabama, 1910. Library of Congress, National Child Labor Committee Collection (nclc.01944). Public domain.

    License: Public domain · Source and license details

    Used in: Region: Alabama

  • Boys employed at Brookside Mills in Knoxville, lined up beside the rail siding outside the mill.

    Lewis Wickes Hine, "Some of the boys (not the youngest working) in Brookside Cotton Mills. Many youngsters work here," Knoxville, Tennessee, December 1910. Library of Congress, National Child Labor Committee Collection (nclc.02029). Public domain.

    License: Public domain · Source and license details

    Used in: Region: Tennessee

  • "General view of weave room, Cornell Mill. Immediately after the photo was taken, the looms started up with deafening clatter."-Lewis Hine's caption, Fall River, Massachusetts.

    Lewis Wickes Hine, "General view of weave room, Cornell Mill," Fall River, Massachusetts, 1912. Library of Congress, National Child Labor Committee Collection (nclc.02496). Public domain.

    License: Public domain · Source and license details

    Used in: Exhibit opening

  • Paterson's mills along the Passaic River, seen from Water Works Park-the "Silk City" at the height of its production.

    Detroit Publishing Co., view of Paterson, New Jersey, from Water Works Park, c. 1906. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division (LCCN 2016794525). Public domain.

    License: Public domain · Source and license details

    Used in: Archive entryway

  • Black farmworkers picking cotton by hand. The atlas that published the photograph places it "in the South" but records neither the photographer nor the exact location.

    "Negroes picking cotton on a plantation in the South," halftone in George Wharton James and Alan H. Burgoyne, New Pictorial Atlas of the World (1921). Photographer not recorded. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

    License: Public domain · Source and license details

    Used in: Archive entryway

  • Mrs. James Watson at her great wheel in her mountain cabin near Gatlinburg, Tennessee-hand spinning that persisted in Appalachian homes long after the mills took over.

    Lewis Wickes Hine, "Another view of Mrs. James Watson at her spinning wheel in her mountain cabin near Gatlinburg, Tennessee," November 14, 1933. U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NAID 532768). Public domain.

    License: Public domain · Source and license details

    Used in: Archive entryway

  • Rows of historic power looms preserved in the weave room of the Boott Cotton Mills Museum, Lowell, Massachusetts.

    Jlpapple, "Boott cotton mill looms," Boott Cotton Mills Museum, Lowell, Massachusetts. Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0.

    License: CC BY 3.0 · Source and license details

    Used in: Archive entryway

  • African American men, women, and children posed with baskets of picked cotton outside Savannah, Georgia, about 1880-a generation after emancipation. The image has long circulated under the incorrect title "Family of slaves in Georgia, circa 1850."

    O. Pierre Havens, group posed in a cotton field outside Savannah, Georgia, c. 1880. J. Paul Getty Museum. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

    License: Public domain · Source and license details

    Used in: Archive entryway

  • A bald eagle carrying the flag on a spear above the clouds, engraved as a banknote and certificate vignette by the federal Bureau of Engraving and Printing. Its linework is inlaid in gold across the entryway vault doors and serves as the exhibit's seal.

    Bureau of Engraving and Printing, engraver unknown, "Eagle" (with flag), vignette proof. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

    License: Public domain · Source and license details

    Used in: Archive entryway; Site footer seal; Pre-launch page