On July 19th, 2009, while her 1st black president was in office, Aisha Cousins began wearing African president fabrics every day for one year. The fabrics were printed in Nigeria, Ghana, Mali, South Africa, and Tanzania shortly after Obama’s election. Wearing black presidents on fabric has been popular in many African nations since the 1960′s when they gained independence and started electing black leaders. Aisha asked designers in her neighborhood, many of whom were African immigrants, to turn these fabrics into dresses. She then wore the Obama fabrics here in the US, until her friends and neighbors began to see them as normal. She did this as a metaphor for how people in the US would begin to see having a black president as normal over the year as well.
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