If you've ever left a bag of clothes outside the Salvation Army or given to a local church drive, chances are that you've dressed an African. All over Africa, people are wearing what Americans once wore and no longer want. Visit the continent and you'll find faded remnants of secondhand clothing in the strangest of places. The 'Let's Help Make Philadelphia the Fashion Capital of the World' T-shirt on a Malawian laborer. The white bathrobe on a Liberian rebel boy with his wig and automatic rifle. And the muddy orange sweatshirt on the skeleton of a small child, lying on its side in a Rwandan classroom that has become a genocide memorial. A long chain of charity and commerce binds the world's richest and poorest people in accidental intimacy. It's a curious feature of the global age that hardly anyone on either end knows it.
a) George Packer's article about the travels of second hand clothes and making it to Africa.
b) Florence Kelley's Aims and Principles of the National Consumers League
c) George Packer's article about the travels of second hand clothes and making it to Africa.
d) Jewish Immigrant Abraham Kohn Laments His Wanderings as a Peddler
