Conscious Chatter With Kestrel Jenkins

In episode 311, Kestrel welcomes Julius Tillery, founder of BlackCotton, to the show.  A 5th-generation cotton farmer from North Carolina, Julius founded BlackCotton to help center and uplift the Black community closest to the cotton fields in Northampton County, North Carolina. “There’s so many demons and like bad spirits and bad tropes around cotton and the industry in general, and you know, just coming from the South, and people having these perspectives of cotton production relating to slavery — I felt like people was making these notions about cotton and not really knowing anything about cotton. And I wanted to start educating people about the cotton business, and even myself and how people like myself — how we end up in cotton. Families that work in cotton like, what was their value-in working in this type of production? And I wanted to change that outlook to make it look more stronger and prestigious than what was assumed.” -Julius About 6 episodes back, we had a chat with the brilliant leader and self