White Washed

White Washed calls attention to the Trail of Tears, which was the forced removal and ethnic cleansing of 60,000 Native peoples from the American South. The audacity of using a crying, Italian-American actor, coupled with the phrases “Keep America Beautiful” and the “Great American Cleanup,” was an immediate gut punch when I received this shirt in the year 2000. The fact that this was an ad campaign in use from 1971 until 2023 blows my mind. The flying geese point to the northwest journey from Florida, and the playful cowboy bandana fabric represents the spaghetti western, white washed version of horrific events in American history.