A USA Today fact check ruled that the kente cloth sashes Democratic lawmakers wore to honor George Floyd “were historically worn by [the] empire involved in West African slave trade.”
A group of Democrats, including Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, knelt in the Capitol building last week for nearly nine minutes, the amount of time then-Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin held his knee to Floyd’s neck before he died. At the time, the Democratic lawmakers wore kente cloths, a move that was panned by critics as “virtue-signaling.”
USA Today issued a fact check Tuesday on a Facebook post that claimed, “The Democrats wore kente scarfs and knelt down for their photo op. So check this out, Kente cloth was worn by the Ashanti. It’s made of silk so the affluent wore it. The Ashanti were also known as slave owners and traders. Huh? … This makes me wonder why they chose to wear this particular tribe’s garb.”
The outlet labeled the claim that the “kente scarves worn by Democrats were historically worn by rich African slave owners and traders” as true. The report noted that kente cloth has a rich history beyond the slave trade, but the cloth from Ghana and Togo was also worn and named by the Asante kingdom’s first leader, Asantehene Osei Tutu.
“Tutu, who lived from 1660 to 1712 or 1717, unified several small Asante kingdoms to create the Asante empire. He is credited with expanding the Asante throughout most of Ghana and introducing his subjects to the gold and slave trades along the West African coast,” read the article from USA Today.
In modern times, kente cloth is well known as an African fabric that has evolved into “a symbol of pride.”
“When Africans were kidnapped and brought to this country, they were told they didn’t have a history, they didn’t have a tradition,” cultural specialist and senior curator at the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage Diana Baird N’Diyea said. “During the 1970s through at least the early 2000s, kente cloth [became] regarded as a symbol of pride in African American identity and heritage.”
A Politifact fact check also found that Ashanti royalty wore kente cloth at the time of the slave trade but that “art historians say that the brilliant colors and patterns of the modern version came after the British banned the slave trade.” The publication noted that the cloth “is not a symbol of slavery.”
