Up from slavery, Booker t Washington, Tuskegee Alabama

Dyed in The Wool

A Very Tuskegee Story

It's a surreal experience sitting in a classroom that could be the very same room that you were born in. There are Tuskegee alumni, there are Tuskegee natives, and there are a rare few that were born on its campus. That is my story, a proud member of those rare few. I was born in John Andrews Memorial Hospital. Founded as the first black hospital in Alabama at a time when medical services were inaccessible for African Americans in the state, it served as a critical training ground for black nurses serving the local and surrounding community's healthcare needs. It closed its doors 1987, a year after I was born, and was the last black hospital in Alabama.

If the rural South is no stranger to tough times and economic downturns, then the City of Tuskegee is tough times' next door neighbor. John Andrew Hospital shuttered due to financial woes, and later reopened as the National Center for Bioethics in Research and Healthcare in 1999. It is in this building where I attended a majority of my classes, walking the halls wondering, "is this the room where I entered the world?"

Life Comes Full Circle

Tuskegee Crimson and Old Gold runs through my veins. I was raised in my grandparent's house built by Tuskegee University Students. I attended head start at Russell Nursery, the on campus pre-school. My parents, uncles, aunts, sisters and a large host of cousins, teachers, pastors, and friends are among its graduates and faculty. Some of my earliest memories are sitting on the side of West Montgomery Road catching candy at the homecoming parades on chilly fall mornings. I attended summer camps, acted in plays at the small campus theater, and explored the dusty, dark library stacks after school while my mother finished her workday. I fell in love with the books, and the images in them of days of Tuskegee's past, knowing even as a child that this would be where I attended college. And I did, and I failed out, and after a 5 year stint in the Army, resumed my college career at Tuskegee, remembering my promise to my mother that one day I would finish school, my life came full circle.



These early experiences greatly shaped in my inner life, imprinting my mind with the images from the books I fell in love with in those countless hours spent at the campus library. I've always carried a lifelong passion for art, design, and clothing. My mother studied fashion merchandising at Tuskegee University and I have memories of finding her fashion illustrations in portfolios as a young child. Now as I reflect, I must have inherited some of my passions through the genes. 


Dyed in the Wool

While I've managed to keep the spark alive throughout my life, I never saw an avenue for all of these varied, divergent and entangled interests to coalesce. But, what a blessing it is to have lifelong friends who share the same passions. Taliaferro Union is the brainchild of three friends, Tuskegee natives and graduates, who founded a brand to stand as a tribute to the city we call home and the University we call mother. We have meticulously and painstakingly combed over the details of the pieces in our launch collection. Days and nights spent pouring over, and collecting archival images of the early Tuskegee University student body and other historical style references from the nation's HBCU's. Curating heritage styles and fabrics to resurrect classic articles of clothing that will become future family heirlooms. All of the founders of Taliaferro Union are "dyed in the wool" Tuskegee, and every piece we produce is dyed in a deep care and passion we have for our story.

- David A. Banks, co-founder/designer

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