How to Honor Black Leaders With … a Sweatshirt?
The “School of Thought” collection. | Image via Philadelphia Printworks Lookbook.
You’ve probably heard of Washington and Lee University, James Madison University and Franklin & Marshall College. But what about Tubman University? How about Lorde University? Welcome to a new world of academia, one imagined by Maryam Pugh, co-founder of local screen-printing company Philadelphia Printworks, and designer Donte Neal of Mars Five.
The duo recently teamed up for a six-piece collection of collegiate crewneck sweatshirts. Each sweatshirt bears the name of a prominent black leader and, according to the Printworks site, “imagines a different world where colleges and institutions have been established based on the philosophies of Marcus Garvey, Audre Lorde, Ida B. Wells, Harriet Tubman, George Washington Carver and James Baldwin.”
“These are some of the leaders, the thinkers who have done things that we can use as a blueprint to our own liberation,” Pugh said in this interview for The Temple News. A description of each social justice leader can be found on the Philadelphia Printworks website.
Pieces from the collection in action. | Images via Philadelphia Printworks Lookbook.
The sweatshirts are $37.50; buy them here. Look out for the collections’s second wave this spring, where you can expect to find more “School of Thought” merchandise like t-shirts and hats. Talk about school pride.
