Episode 16 | Are Any of Your T-Shirts Made by Black Cotton Farmers? Tameka Peoples on Building Global Black Cotton to Textile Ecosystems

Welcome to the Compost Cotton and Cornrows podcast. I'm your host, Dominique Drakeford. Thanks for joining the space where Black and Afro-Indigenous vanguards are redefining sustainability through storytelling. Let's get into it. Tameka Peoples was born in Los Angeles and raised in Sacramento, California to a dope ass black woman single mother. Her words, she served in the military nearly 10 years and through her experiences was reminded to remember who we are as descendants of African people. After being called to be a solutionist, she founded Seed to Shirt, the first black woman owned vertically integrated apparel manufacturing and print on demand company in the US. Their products are ethically and sustainably manufactured from cotton material from African and African-American cotton farmers produced at their small batch production centers in the US and Africa. Tameka girl, this is a long time coming. Yes, sis. I agree. I agree. I'm so excited to be chatting with you. Really appreciate just even that you asked me to be in this space with you. I love the work that you do. I love that you really advocate for us in the sustainability space, which we taught the world and, you know, how you just stand on business all the time. So thank you, Dominique. And it's a pleasure to be here with you, sis. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Look, we both be standing on business. With that being said, oh, I was like, I want to dive right into this conversation because you are such a critical phenom to the fashion industry and to all of our cultural spaces. But but let's ground this session and asking you how you define sustainability. Tap it into the ancestral knowings of living with what we need, not overdoing it in in the sense of like, I don't need all these different things. I need what the earth can give me. And and just being resilient, which is such the nature of who Black people are, period. You know, I can just remember going back to my mom making me clothes and us coming up with different designs, you know, that to me is that sustainability, you know, being in what is absolutely necessary and not overconsuming, not overdoing it in any way, because we only need what we can we can actually fulfill in this lifetime, you know, being OK, see to shirt, to me, creates one of the foundational footprints to reimagining our relationship with cotton. What is your ancestral, historical, cultural, personal relationship with cotton and how you got into the space of creating circular, sustainable, circular supply chain and manufacturing and printing on demand for the cotton industry? OK, so my personal relationship with cotton goes back to, I would say, my my mother's side, her grandfather owned a farm in Louisiana. Now, I just learned about this history, but let me just tell you the way that she described his land. He had over 100 acres of cotton. They did pigs. They did hogs. They did everything right in red summer. Right. Like most of her family, they left Louisiana and essentially never came back. Right. Except for the summers, you know. And so when she grew up in L.A. and was living her life that way, my mom took us up to Modesto and we lived on another side of her family's farm and he had all kind of livestock and a couple of rows of cotton. And that was my first introduction to to agriculture in any way. And I just I was just so I loved it. I was grounded in that space and that work. And then, you know, we moved up to Sacramento and I I didn't really touch farm life at all. The next experience for me with cotton was was when I was in Mississippi, in Biloxi, Mississippi, serving in the military. And we went out and just was out in ag and doing some stuff. And there was cotton fields in Mississippi. Obviously, that's the Delta. That's the Black Belt area. And I had such a visceral reaction to touching the raw cotton. I just I had chills and I couldn't place. Why do I have these chills? Obviously, that was a DNA ancestral reaction to cotton. And I didn't want to I didn't want to be around it like that. And I couldn't explain that. Right. So that's my connection to cotton and in that space and its raw form in my life. But fast forward to why I'm you know, why we're doing this work or why I'm doing this work is because I was just seeing a lot of people out here rocking T-shirts. And I'm like, wait a minute, like none of these T-shirts with all these Bob as revolutionary sayings are made from and by companies that give two cents about our community, let alone three cents about our farmers. Right. And so I just start to question the entire relationship between our clothing and the raw material and why I didn't see us making a lot of this anymore. Right. And so the more you started to unpack, the more you learn about this deep rooted history of us in textiles here in the U.S., of course, us in cotton, which built the empire. And so I was like, no, there is no way that at the bare minimum, we can't create a shirt from from this cotton and to go beyond that to connect the diaspora around what we taught the world to cultivate at scale. Right. And so that's how I would answer that question. That's my connection personally and why I kind of dove into we need to do more. We need to create what we want to see and break down these barriers with respect to production. Hell yeah. Hell yeah. I just had a thought when you were speaking just about the visceral reaction you had energetically when you were around cotton, an intimate relationship. I wonder just from a psychology point of view, do you feel like. And you know, sometimes it gets challenging, clumping the diaspora. We obviously have expansive experiences and understandings, but do you feel like the majority of us go straight to trauma and trigger when we're around cotton? Or do you feel like it's more empowering and legacy building? You know, that's really that's that's a loaded question because I think you almost have to you have to you take you have to take those in the North American continent in particular in order to answer that question. Right. So when I encounter our folks as it relates to cotton, they are, whoa, there's a little bit of this distance. And I believe it's because of the trauma that is that is or they have a familial history where most of their most of their moms and dads were telling them, hey, don't come back to this farm. I want you out here doing what I'm doing. Go educate. Do this. Do that and get off these fields. Right. There's always this dichotomy between, oh, what my parents experience, what I don't want to experience and this fiber. And then, of course, the history of enslavement here just gives it a different people here in the U.S. Black folks are here in the U.S. There's a different reaction. We have to often break down that barrier and say, hey, but babe, when you're wearing that shirt, you're not thinking that. Right. Like, let's let's talk about this. I feel you. But let's unpack that a little bit more now. When I'm in the diaspora, when I'm when I when I'm dealing with my brothers and sisters on the continent, you know, for them, it's it's it's agriculture like it's a part of their entire ecosystem. It's just one other plant. There's not this associated trauma with it or this maybe familial trauma with it. Now, there's other traumas. Don't get me wrong. Right. Absolutely. Absolutely. But the cotton piece, not so much. So there's so much to delve into here. Can you walk us through how you physically got started? Because I imagine that there are not a lot of black cotton farmers you inherently connect with and to create an ecosystem with. So I'm curious to know, even if it's on the research side, in the relationship building side, I'd love to know sort of the intricacies and how you even got started on creating a vertically integrated organic cotton supply chain. Hmm. Well, you're right. There's not a lot of black cotton farmers. And this is a dual. This is a parallel and dual story. The getting started was twofold on identifying like, yo, this is what we're going to need to do. But how do one how do I find the farmers? So someone and one of the first things I did, right, let's do it right. You have to do the research. Right. So I was already naturally doing work within outreach spaces, bringing together folks around collectives to build grocery stores and stuff like that in my community, certainly down and in between L.A. and connecting them with with farmers who were growing food across the Midwest. And so the first thing I started to do was just lean into that network. And then you'll start to realize, hey, farmers who grow like let's call them specialty crops, you know, like the tomatoes, the herbs, those are smaller, what we would call non row crop farmers. So those farmers might have known somebody they could introduce me to that was a cotton farmer because a cotton farmer, they use much bigger equipment. They're considered row crop growers. And those two communities, they know each other, but they're not intrinsically connected. So they'll know of each other. But so folks would connect me to black cotton farmers that they knew. And then I just started to dive in and do research with respect to USDA. They count, but they don't give you names, you know, you got to know somebody, know somebody, know somebody, you know. So there's that connecting with cooperatives and other folks who were who could introduce me. Right. And the second piece of that was, OK, well, how if I had the cotton, like where I'm going to take it, like what are all the steps in this process? So there is this educating myself around the textile chain. And then once you do that, you're like, whoa. So everything after ginning this cotton, which ginning is the cleaning of it, there's a huge gap. And every time I step up in this gap, they're going to require a lot, lot more of just the raw commodity for us to turn it into yarn, for us to turn it into material. So I was like, OK, that's that's a challenge. And in this challenge, they're going to probably have, I was encountering this, these hurdles, what we would call brick ceilings. And so I was like, well, I got it. Maybe there's not a lot of those brick ceilings in production and connection and streamlining these processes. Plus, I want to connect with the diaspora anyway, because there's been doing a lot of work in West Africa. What does that look like? So I was taking these parallel approaches to how I created this production ecosystem. Right. And I started to connect with farmers on West Africa and realizing that, OK, if I wanted to source from cotton farmers in the South, there's not even a Southern organic certified gin. So even if I wanted to, the barrier to do that was I would have to ship it all the way to Texas or beyond. I was like, OK, this is getting crazy. Right. So I put a little bit of thumbtack in the building out of the U.S. side and started to continue to grow that on the African side. And when I did that, it was such a different experience. There were mills and gins and farmers who who were like, let's let's work together, sister. Welcome home. We've been waiting on you. Let's get started. And there was this, OK, there's a gin that's certified organic. There's these these these farmers I can work with. And understanding that education, I didn't want to be extractive. So I I sat still again, peace be still. And I said, listen, the normal nature of these relationships is people come by this stuff. They do all this promote. No, you are my brother. You are my sister. We need to be communal in the natural way. We know how to be with each other in whatever it is to see to shirt is building. So yes, I need cotton and yes, I need materials. What do you need? What is it that outside of me buying this cotton are the challenges and the hurdles because we need to build a system family. OK, and so we talked. I learned what was needed. I was like, OK, well, that's the same thing I'm seeing here in the US, like let's talk less than I sat still even for longer. And I built out that farmer enrichment program and yada yada. So it was a real tactical, know the people, know the need, be human in the relationship, be human in the connection and whatever you do, do not be what this system has been to our people for centuries. And so it was a lot of learning about the textile sector, a lot of learning about production and then coming back to a space and saying, OK, here's where we're going to start because this is where we have to start. Right. And then this is what we're going to build on both sides of this fence so that it can truly be circular and connected. I think it's it's so beautiful to to hear the genesis of the hard work that got you to this place of legacy building in this space. I think you just described one of the purest starting points of reclamation and restoring consciousness as it relates to how we how we truly, you know, heal, but also how we flip it and reverse it and and take ownership and not in a colonial sense, but taking ownership of not only a physical medium, not only an industry, but the holistic heartbeat and pulse of how America was made. Now, I don't know if there's trade secrets, sis, but I want you to do some vocal infographing for us. Can you give us the quick and dirty, extra easy to understand steps of making an organic T-shirt? So it starts in the field, right? And organic is, you know, that's that's these are market verticals, understand that people create and manage. So so let's back up. Right. It starts in the field. When you want anything organic, you have to you have to one, know that the field is producing at that level. In other words, cutting out pesticides, you know, maybe they have a certification model. Boom. You say, OK, great. You're doing that and it's certified. I'm going to source it. Right. The next step would be to be able to process the material into cleaning it and cleaning it. That gin also has to be organic, organically certified because, you know, they don't want to cross contaminate anything. Right. So it has to maintain the certification process throughout the entire production chain. So that's from the cleaning of the cotton, the growing, the cleaning, the spinning and the making it of the material. And then, of course, there's the putting everything together, which they call that cut, make and trim. So the gin has to be organic. The spinner and the mill has to be organic. So the spinning happens first, turning it into yarn. After it becomes yarn, it goes into material. So that's a mill that then gets spun and you get the material that's finalized. Oftentimes those two mills and spinners will then need to take your product and send it somewhere, you know, because they're not going to put it all together or do all that stuff. So you then need to get that material to your cut, make and trim facility. Right. So for us, it was this ecosystem like, oh, OK, we can do this. We'll have to do it mostly at 100. I want to do 100 percent in Africa then at this point. And then if that happens, where do I, where in the continent do I need to send it? So there are two types of locations that we had to take it to in order, really three, for it to be finalized and processed in that way. And then our cut, make and trim facility would then put our T-shirt together. You know, you put the ribbon on it, sew it and it's all ready to go. Right. And then we shipped it from a sustainability model. We use green. When you do shipping, you can choose like the green, not really an offset. You can say, hey, just only barge it. And I want it. And so they did it that way and got it here to us in our facility in Georgia, in California. Right. In Georgia is, you know, we work with the Black Woman Fulfillment Team and they do all of our print design. Of course you do. So it was one of those things like, OK, well, that was that was building out the initial shirt and initial release. And for our yarn, we did the same thing, but we sourced our cotton from a black cotton farmer in the U.S. and in South Carolina. We sent it up to an eco-friendly gin. They didn't really gin it eco-friendly because it's not, there's no certified organic gins in the South. Right. But for us, the challenge of having that yarn that people can create and do the crafters, we weren't really worried about it being a certified gin. At this point, we're at, it doesn't matter, we're day zero. We need to make sure we create with our black farmers in the U.S. Here's what we're going to drop and create first. And so we sourced all that cotton out of South Carolina. We went down, picked it up, drove it to our facility in North Carolina, got it spun, really small batch, and then had it milled into like a 10-4-4 so that more crocheters and creators can get their hands on our cotton and our yarn to do their own creation. The beautiful thing about that is we can confirm and know that our grower use all sustainable practices, you know, does cover crops, strip till, and, you know, we worked and intentionally bought his cotton at a higher price than commodity because, you know, it's value for value. We uplift his story in our work as well. So it's just this matter of cleaning, spinning, cut and make trim, material making for actual physical product. And then when we come forward with the crafter's yarn, it's a smaller abbreviated, but we focus on making sure the grower was sustainable in his practices and scaling it from there. Hmm. Thank you for that. I think it's important for everyday folks to be able to understand how it's made and the time, energy, labor, resources, and skills and knowledge that it takes to create a garment. Let me ask you something, and you might not have the answer. What would happen to the economy if 80% of the farmers were Black in America? Okay, so I think there's the challenge with saying I need 80% of farmers being Black is that we need 90% then of the value added chain to support those 80% farmers. Okay, explain that. Explain that. So folks know. Okay. Yes. So the condition is like, okay, if I'm going to grow something, I got to have somebody to sell it to. Right? Right. And the challenge is, is the difference in the wealth gap at a farm level between Black and White farmers are, it's pretty high, right? When you think about it, there's a lot of Black farmers, but the most that they make a year on average is $250,000, right? Or less. And their White counterparts are in the millions, right? And so increasing by 80%, increasing by 80% to be at the same scale, or increasing 80% to be at counterpart scale, or a third of their counterpart scale, right? And in order to do that, we need to have ecosystems or an economy that's buying from them to grow their scale. To me, it's almost not about more Black cotton farmer or Black farmers, period. It's more, how do we get more value systems that are able to buy value-added products from them at scale so that we're not hand to foot in it? Because that is the reality mostly of our Black cotton farmers. We want them to be value addition scaled as well as increasing scale. In other words, we want more of them. We need to be able to scale our Black farmers in a way that they're not living in the small farmer dichotomy, which can be limiting. And you can go find those numbers out there, of course, on the USDA, they do all the stats every year. So you get a chance to see how much they're making or not making on average in comparison to their counterparts. And then we have, let's say, of the ones that are in the commodity crops, in commodity crops are the wheat, the soy, the cotton, the peanuts, okay? Just in data alone, for cotton farmers, there's only 154 Black cotton farmers in the US. Most of those cotton farmers are growing the commodity crops, right? The wheat, the soy, the sorghum, they're rotating with wheat and cotton, they're rotating their cotton with peanuts, 154 of them. So when you see the USDA say, we're going to give you $10 billion in commodity emergency relief funds, how many of our Black farmers do you think are going to get that money? That's why you see that there's a difference. If all 154 Black cotton farmers apply, I pray all of them get it, but that's a drop in the bucket. The rest of that $10 billion is going to their counterparts in this space, got to understand the commodity, the USDA is about the commodity game and the growth game, it's a mess, right? So what do we have? That's the only thing is, I believe, on community, on community chains and ecosystems to say, okay, we get it, but we can't rely on these institutions to be that for us. So we're going to build Black grocery stores and stores from Black farmers at scale and do that 10 times over for every community where there's a food desert. And then the transportation in between those systems are going to be truckers that we know and are communal to our spaces. And then the packing of that and making sure it gets stored and it's frozen, because most of our farmers are growing food crops, specialty crops. So that's my thought around it, it's like, we got to build up that value addition space and be able to scale with our farmers. Yeah. And it becomes an important conversation about how we build infrastructure, right? Where every step of the supply chain, we have a level of ownership and power as we are circulating, creating, nurturing and circulating goods intercommunally and globally. And so quick question before I pivot, does land acquisition play into that at all? Girl, yes. So you try to unpack all the questions, right? Okay, so we lost billions of acres of land. We know that, everyone knows the facts, right? So yes, land acquisition and I would say resources for land cultivation, because I am finding that we have a lot of Black land owners. In other words, they might be sitting on 200, 300 acres, but they're not necessarily cultivating it because some are elder. Most folks have not come back to the farm. If they do, okay, what are they going to do? Now they're in this new and beginning status, right? The land hasn't been used or touched for years, right? Because grandpa, pa or auntie ain't using it, but here's 20 acres, you know? So I would say land cultivation and acquisition, and then being able to maintain that land is kind of a thing too, but I would say those two things, right? We need to have... Tamika, who's going around helping us develop this land, for real, for real? We not just sitting on land, and I understand we got elders, there's disability, there's lack of knowledge. I understand the layers as to why the land is sitting, but what organization, what initiative, what movement is helping us build this land that's just sitting? Come on. Who's Thessalonic? You know, I don't know. I don't know. Okay, so the Southern Cooperative of Farmers, let's go ahead and give some organizational shout outs, right? So there's been folks, the Southern Cooperative of Farmers, Kansas Black Farmers Association, Legacy Taster Garden, which is up in the Midwest, and then there's Black Oak Center that does some things across Michigan and six of the states across Michigan, Illinois, Indiana. I see that there are collective groups, Black Farmers Fund, there's a Kentucky, or I'm going to mess up that sister's organization name, but there are collective groups that are moving forward in this space. And then where are they going? Okay. And I know Black Farmers Index. So, if you're active in that way. Yes, ma'am. So identifying like who's who in the zoo of black farming, right? And then there are some folks who've come back to the land and say, okay, uncle, we got a hundred acres in our family. I'm a little bit younger. I might have some visions around what we can do with this hundred acres. Like I'm even speaking with a sister down in Georgia, and I know she has family land in Mississippi that she's helping her uncle or some elders think about what they can do with it. Right? So I would say for folks who have land in their family, and potentially that land is not either being used or connected to the community in scale space, maybe they should think about as a family, what are we thinking about doing with this land? And then leaning into some of these organizations that might help them explore what that looks like. And then maybe turn it a step further. I would almost say we need to go to our youth who are in 4-H's or manners and yes, go get the degrees in the, you know, soil science and biology and do that. But hey, we want to have a bring it back to the land initiative. So these young folks are coming to maybe they're going to work side by side as interns on some of these farmers sites that might need that help or want to cultivate 30 more acres, but they don't have the support system that they need to do that. do that, right? So maybe have a Black Farmers 4-H Youth Initiative that helps bring more youth back to the land to help to go to that next level in those acreages that they may be interested in. Bringing back to the land initiative. I am here for that. That is honestly a prerequisite for becoming an adult, becoming specifically a Black adult. In my mind, I do these things where I'm like, there are prerequisites to justice seeking. I think that is one of them, bringing it back to the land initiative. This also has me thinking, Seed to Shirt is literally one of the most, in my opinion, culturally relevant business models that I've seen in the sustainability space. What does the future of Seed to Shirt look like for you? Because I want what you've created collaboratively to be a rubric for everyone in the sustainability space across the Black diaspora. This is an important blueprint that needs to be cemented not only in our psyche, but in how we are building regenerative industry. So I'm curious to know, how do you envision the future of this incredible organization? You better say it. So one, a hundred years. I worked a hundred years and let's go back. So for our future, we envision owning the middle ground of this ecosystem for textile to cotton and having that connection to collective designers and to our farm spaces. So for us, that means a milling facility in the Southeast, which we are actively working on now in North Carolina. That milling facility would do spinning and material making, and we're already connected with great partners like the Black Fiber Textile Network, who you know is already global connecting Black textile artists. And we're connected with The Mill, with Gordon Holiday and his team, which are a boutique production and designers out of North Carolina. So we want to be able to be that Black material maker, bringing in all Black cotton farmers from not only from Africa, but across the Southeast. The other piece of that is growing the enterprise of the work. In other words, being able to scale in a way that we can continually grow and support the farmers who are part of our network. So we have several farming initiatives that help with that. Being able to sell our cotton, be able to sell our services about technical implementation on the ground, and getting more Black farmers who are already doing most of the sustainable practices, but not getting recognized for that, getting them certified because that marketplace will help them earn more per pound on their dollar. And bringing in brands connected to that, so that we can give out more grants, which we are already doing, so we can equip them with more and better equipment, and so that we can scale that space of the, you know, really wraparound support in how we communally grow sustainable practices here and abroad. The other piece is modeling how this gets done from landscape. So Seed to Shirt has a People's Freedom Farm, which big shout out to my team, you know, Makayla and D'Andra, who are really cultivating what we can do and grow at small scale. Is that named after Fannie? Fannie Lou Freedom Farm? Listen, she was my inspiration. Okay, me too. Okay, okay. Love it, love it, love it. Okay. So People's Freedom Farm is a 10-acre farm. It used to be a 100-acre cotton plantation in and near Rocky Mountain, North Carolina. We are land stewards, so we are stewarding that land with a Black woman family-owned land, and we grow cotton there. We are also doing some pilot work with North Carolina State, where we're doing industrial-grade hemp, and we'll be doing some blends and doing more material development from that space. So being able to model how it gets done at a maybe more boutique and smaller scale, which is quite honestly most of our farmers' reality. 50 acres, 100 acres, 30 acres of cotton. Okay, who would buy this with a good price premium? How do you get it and connect it to market? One, most of our growers are already part of our Black collective member base. So, you know, growing that member base, but then modeling that from our land base. And connecting, I would say, more with boutique producers through the Black Fiber Textile Network. Just, hey, we have these materials. How do we do creations and lines together? What can we grow and naturally dye together? And we've done a little bit of that already with Adeye and Teju and a few others, but we want to continue to grow and scale that and show folks how to do it at a smaller scale and how to still be in-market and survivable. Oh, I'm sorry. I forgot to mention the Africa side. So, you know, I envision that we could have more of our, we have a lot of technicians and a lot of agriculturalists that we already work with in West Africa, Mali, Senegal, Burkina Faso. Shout out to Burkina Faso and all the greatness they're doing in their land space. And having a level of exchange. We go there, they come here and we grow together. So we've been doing this in parallel, but I'd like to see the bridges. And those bridges would be about the exchange of us coming back home to infuse inside of these communities and grow together. We're doing a small pilot project in Tamale, Ghana, that is looking to revitalize local production of cotton in local textile spaces because Ghana, beautiful textile hub, but they don't grow their own cotton in-country. And we want to, wherever we are, we want to see ourselves thriving in those ecosystems. So the vision is global takeover. That part, that part. Tamika, honestly, you literally are one of the most important vanguards in the agricultural space. And the vision that you just laid out for an elevated black cotton and fiber industry is beyond powerful. It's beyond necessary. It's revolutionary. And it feels like the epitome of Sankofa, which is where our minds, it's where our minds need to be at this point in the here and now in 2025. And so I'm, I'm just so honored to share a space with you and just being able to listen to your vocal cords, seeing these songs of for real liberation in this space. So I thank you so much for all this work that you're doing and doing it in a, an intentional and collaborative way, like genuinely across the diaspora. So Tamika, thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. You are an incredible, incredible change agent for real, for real. Thank you. Thank you, Dominique. I just, I don't, I don't like the accolades. I think that we are all change agents. I appreciate you always holding space for us and uplifting the important work that everyone is doing. And I'm honored to be in space with you, sis. And I look forward to more spaces of us together. And I'll definitely look forward to exploring that. Oh, this won't be it. This new iteration of Dom, after having two kids, we coming out, we hitting it different. You feel me? We, we're doing this different because we have to ecosystem build in a, in a way more intentional way than, than we've done in the past. So I'm here for this. Tell the people how they can find you and stay connected with you and support everything that you are doing. I love it. Well, you can find everything that we're doing on seed2shirt.com. That's S-E-E-D, the number two in shirt.com. And that's on all the socials as well. We are a social enterprise. So we are structured so that folks can donate if they want to. You can see where the impact is going. You can donate or you can buy a product because, you know, 20 to 30 percent of everything we sell, we circulate back into everything that we're doing with the farmers and growing this enterprise. So find us out there on them streets. And we do have events. We're going to have some events coming up in August, a Black Farm Tour in North Carolina. You can come by and see People's Freedom Farm. And there's a cyclist tour. But, you know, it's, it's about using sport and agriculture and connecting those two things together. So we do that every year and we are looking forward to our third iteration of that. And you can find that information on our website too. We'll start to drop those out in the social spheres as well. So, yeah, hop onto the website. You guys can check out all the ways you can support. And connect with us. Thank you, Tameka. And that is a wrap. Thank you all for tapping into this episode. Please subscribe and tune in next time. And remember that from doulas to scientists and farmers to fashion designers, Black folks from all over the diaspora have always created the rubrics for sustainability. Compost and cotton and corn rows. We've turned nothing to gold since the birth of our soul. It's ingrained in our room. Black is more than flesh and bone. Planted deep in our cold and we bear the fruit. Yeah, they wonder how our strides so bold and our pride stone cold. After all we've been through. Rich as the texture of our crown, crown, crown. We pass it on to the youth.