Julius Tillery & Black Cotton

“Agvocating” for more Black cotton farmers

Published in

The 2017 Black Creators and Tastemakers

6 min readMar 23, 2017

When we go out to eat or visit our local grocery store, select people don’t think twice about where their produce or meat comes from. More and more people are starting to care if their fruits and veggies are locally grown by farmers or if they are fresh and never frozen, but for the most part, we throw items in our shopping cart, eat it, and don’t think twice.

The same is true when it comes to our clothing. No one sits back and thinks where the cotton in their shirt from Zara comes from or who even grows it. Most of us assume that the shirt was probably made overseas even though there are still thousands of cotton farms in the United States.

But even with thousands of cotton farms, there aren’t many Black farmers growing the crop even though 20% of the world’s cotton comes from America. Julius Tillery saw this as a problem and hopes to bring more Black farmers into the cotton club.

✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦

First & Last Name

Julius Tillery

Why did you decide to start Black Cotton?

I grew up farming and raising cotton as one of the primary crops on my family farm. Living deep in rural North Carolina, I knew there were many other black cotton farmers in my home area, and I took for granted that many black farmers raised cotton across the nation also.

Through the years, I have seen the number of black cotton farmers dwindle by the year. I’d go to different workshops and conferences across NC and would ask crowds of farmers if they grew cotton. All I received was silence. I created a Twitter video challenge asking black cotton growers to show me their cotton crops. More silence. These experiences have led me to a scary truth: I may be the youngest black cotton farmer existing right now. Even scarier, I know that if I don’t succeed in business with growing cotton, I may be the last and only black cotton farmer left to exist. Knowing this has made me want to be creative and find new ways of profiting off the crop of cotton. This has led me to develop my business, Black Cotton.

What does Black Cotton mean to you?

Black Cotton is meant to bring awareness to the plight of black landownership that black farmers are going through now. Cotton is known as the fabric of our lives. It is literally everywhere, in our clothes, covering our windows, and on our beds.

It is complicated to describe why the number of black farmers producing cotton has decreased so dramatically. No matter what those reasons are, I also question why black people do not profit more off cotton, especially with in the fashion industry. Black people are so influential, but why are there not black cotton farmers becoming moguls with this product’s production?

Outside of the reasons of the past, I want to change the dynamics of the industry and make cotton farming profitable enough that it will be cool and strategic for farmers like myself to be in the business. Essentially, this business I’m creating is hope, opportunity, and education all at the same time. This is pro-black economic development and sustainability, supporting the manufacturing of such basic and important needs that we barely give any emphasis to on a daily basis.

What have you had to overcome in order to achieve success?

One big obstacle I’ve had to overcome was my fear of using social media to connect with people. Before 2016, I was a technology adverse person. I had a flip phone and didn’t have a Facebook account. I didn’t understand social media etiquette that was developed in the 2000s. I didn’t understand how and why people tweeted all day. I didn’t understand how to attract followers and how social media could be used as a development tool. However I now understand how important it is to have people know who you are, and how to represent yourself confidently online to development business awareness and accessibility.

What does it mean to be a black business owner?

I believe it is important to be a black owned business owner as business is the catalyst to development and growth in many of our communities. The black communities with more thriving businesses are typically the healthiest black communities. I come from a majority populated black community with very few businesses operating successfully. I want to change that dynamic and hopefully give new hope and optimism to our black communities through developing my black business and using it as a model that others like me can follow to help all of our black communities.

What advice do you have for people who are ready to follow their dreams but are hesitating?

Nothing wrong with being pragmatic. Don’t be quick to jump into starting businesses. At the same time, if you don’t pursue what you believe in and where you see opportunity, no business progress will ever be made. Trial and error is progress too. You do not know what you are good at or how to be good at something, until you’ve given your best effort to a business endeavor. Make your decision to move, plan your moves, implement your plan, and work it until the end of the year. Take your results, evaluate your results, and decide to move forward if you know what you have to do next to have a better result. That is what I’ve seen in the cycle of business development.

Bragging Rights

Black Cotton is a business I created to bring value to people I care about in a vulnerable community. My home community has struggled for the last few economic downturns and many people don’t believe we can have nice things like other regions of our state. I don’t believe this at all. In time, I know this business will prove its worth to not only my struggling community, but also to others just like it. I’m hoping some of the social justice warriors who want to bring about change can connect with me and my cause because it will be the convergence of energy that our black businesses and black culture needs. We need to our products to be produced and controlled by us, and profit people who look like us first. That way we can set a model that we can create and then own (more) wealth.

Want to contact Julius for more information?

Black Cotton’s website is blackcotton.us and its Instagram is @blackcotton.us. He’s also started a GoFundMe page for the business. Support if you can!

Julius’ personal Twitter is @ch_illmo and he’s on Facebook. He’s also very active on LinkedIn and likes to post blogs there that reflect on issues he sees while working as an agriculturalist / agvocate.