It's not uncommon to see middle-class black people in the U.S. wearing items of this vibrantly colorful fabric made of interwoven silk strips (though these days you can also find machine-woven versions in cotton and synthetics). But kente remains a symbol of Ghanian culture, traceable back to the Ashanti tribes of the 18th century. The various colors have a meaning, of course, representing different elements and values of life. Here we see chiefs wrapped in the fabric during the Kente Festival in Agortime Kpetoe in the Volta region, in Ghana's southeast corner bordering Togo and the Atlantic Ocean.

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