Quilts of the Underground Railroad

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Quilts of the Underground Railroad describes a controversial belief that quilts were used to communicate information to African slaves about how to escape to freedom via the Underground Railroad. It has been disputed by a number of historians.

Contents

Books that emphasize quilt use

In Stitched from the Soul (1990), Gladys-Marie Fry asserted that quilts were used to communicate safe houses and other information about the Underground Railroad, which was a network through the United States and into Canada of "conductors", meeting places, and safe houses for the passage of African Americans out of slavery. The theory that quilts and songs were used to communicate information about the Underground Railroad, though is disputed among historians. Even so, escaping slavery was generally an act of "complex, sophisticated and covert systems of planning". [1]

The 1999 book Hidden in Plain View, by Raymond Dobard, Jr., an art historian, and Jacqueline Tobin, a college instructor in Colorado, explores how quilts were used to communicate information about the Underground Railroad. [2] The idea for the book came from Ozella McDaniel Williams who told Tobin that her family had passed down a story for generations about how patterns like wagon wheels, log cabins, and wrenches were used in quilts to navigate the Underground Railroad. [3] Williams stated that the quilts had ten squares, each with a message about how to successfully escape. It started with a monkey wrench, that meant to gather up necessary supplies and tools, and ended with a star, which meant to head north. [4] The book claims that there was a quilt code that conveyed messages in counted knots and quilt block shapes, colors and names. [5] In a 2007 Time magazine article, Tobin stated: "It's frustrating to be attacked and not allowed to celebrate this amazing oral story of one family's experience. Whether or not it's completely valid, I have no idea, but it makes sense with the amount of research we did." [3] Dobard said, "I would say there has been a great deal of misunderstanding about the code. In the book Jackie and I set out to say it was a set of directives. It was a beginning, not an end-all, to stir people to think and share those stories." [4] He called the book "informed conjecture, as opposed to a well-documented book with a "wealth of evidence". [6]

Even though the book tells the story from the perspective of one family, folk art expert Maud Wahlman believes that it is possible that the hypothesis is true. "There’s a tradition in Africa where coding things is controlled by secret societies. If you want to learn the deeper meaning of symbols, then you need to show worthiness of knowing these deeper meanings by not telling anyone," she said. Wahlman wrote the foreword for Hidden in Plain View. [7]

Response

Giles Wright, an Underground Railroad expert, asserts that the book is based upon folklore that is unsubstantiated by other sources. [3] He also said that there are no memoirs, diaries, or Works Progress Administration interviews conducted in the 1930s of ex-slaves that mention quilting codes. [4] Quilt historians Kris Driessen, Barbara Brackman, and Kimberly Wulfert do not believe the theory that quilts were used to communicate messages about the Underground Railroad. [7] [8] [9]

Controversy in the hypothesis became more intense in 2007 when plans for a sculpture of Frederick Douglass at a corner of Central Park called for a huge quilt in granite to be placed in the ground to symbolize the manner in which slaves were aided along the Underground Railroad. [4] Noted historians did not believe that the hypothesis was true and saw no connection between Douglass and this belief. [4] [7] [10] [11] Civil War historian David W. Blight, said "At some point the real stories of fugitive slave escape, as well as the much larger story of those slaves who never could escape, must take over as a teaching priority. It ought to be rooted in real and important aspects of his life and thought, not a piece of folklore largely invented in the 1990s which only reinforces a soft, happier version of the history of slavery that distracts us from facing harsher truths and a more compelling past." [7] Fergus Bordewich, the author of Bound for Canaan: The Underground Railroad and the War for the Soul of America, calls it "fake history", based upon the mistaken premise that the Underground Railroad activities "were so secret that the truth is essentially unknowable". He says that most of the people who successfully escaped slavery were "enterprising and well informed." [10]

Even so, there are museums, schools, and others who believe the story to be true. John Reddick, who worked on the Douglass sculpture project for Central Park, states that it is paradoxical that historians require written evidence of slaves who were not allowed to read and write. He likens the coding of the quilts to the language in "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot", in which slaves meant escaping but their masters thought was about dying. [4]

See also

Related Research Articles

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History of quilting

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David William Blight is the Sterling Professor of History, of African American Studies, and of American Studies and Director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale University. Previously, Blight was a professor of History at Amherst College, where he taught for 13 years. He has won several awards, including the Bancroft Prize and Frederick Douglass Prize for Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory, and the Pulitzer Prize and Lincoln Prize for Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom. In 2021 he was elected to the American Philosophical Society.

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Songs of the Underground Railroad

Songs of the Underground Railroad were spiritual and work songs used during the early-to-mid 19th century in the United States to encourage and convey coded information to escaping slaves as they moved along the various Underground Railroad routes. As it was illegal in most slave states to teach slaves to read or write, songs were used to communicate messages and directions about when, where, and how to escape, and warned of dangers and obstacles along the route.

David Ruggles American abolitionist

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Jerry Rescue

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Anna Murray Douglass American abolitionist

Anna Murray Douglass was an American abolitionist, member of the Underground Railroad, and the first wife of American social reformer and statesman Frederick Douglass, from 1838 to her death.

Treatment of slaves in the United States Treatment endured by enslaved people in the US

The treatment of slaves in the United States varied by time and place, but was generally brutal, especially on plantations. Whipping and rape were routine, but usually not in front of white outsiders, or even the plantation owner's family. An enslaved person could not be a witness against a white; enslaved people were sometimes required to whip other enslaved people, even family members. There were also businesses to which a slave owner could turn over the whipping. Families were often split up by the sale of one or more members, usually never to see or hear of each other again. There were some relatively enlightened slave owners—Nat Turner said his master was kind—but not on large plantations. Only a small minority of enslaved people received anything resembling decent treatment; one contemporary estimate was 10%, not without noting that the ones well treated desired freedom just as much as those poorly treated. Good treatment could vanish upon the death of an owner. As put by William T. Allan, a slaveowner's abolitionist son who could not safely return to Alabama, "cruelty was the rule, and kindness the exception".

Fergus Bordewich

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Hetty Reckless

Amy Hester "Hetty" Reckless was a runaway slave who became part of the American abolitionist movement. She campaigned against slavery and was part of the Underground Railroad, operating a Philadelphia safe house. She fought against prostitution and vice, working toward improving education and skills for the black community. Through efforts including operating a women's shelter, supporting Sunday Schools and attending conferences, she became a leader in the abolitionist community. After her former master's death, she returned to New Jersey and continued working to assist escaping slaves throughout the Civil War.

George DeBaptiste was a prominent African-American conductor on the Underground Railroad in southern Indiana and Detroit, Michigan. Born free in Virginia, he moved as a young man to the free state of Indiana. In 1840, he served as valet and then White House steward for US President William Henry Harrison, who was from that state. In the 1830s and 1840s DeBaptiste was an active conductor in Madison, Indiana. Located along the Ohio River across from Kentucky, a slave state, this town was a destination for refugee slaves seeking escape from slavery.

Cecelia Tapplette Pedescleaux, also known as Cely, is an African-American quilter of traditional and art quilts, inspired by historians, other African-American quilters, and quilt designs used during the Underground Railroad to communicate messages to slaves seeking freedom. Her quilts have been shown in China, France, Washington, D.C., New Orleans, and in other locations in the United States. A solo show of 75 of her quilts were shown at the Le Musée de Free People of Color in New Orleans (2013–2014).

References

  1. ↑ Celeste-Marie Bernier; Hannah Durkin (2016). Visualising Slavery: Art Across the African Diaspora. Oxford University Press. pp. 76–77. ISBN   978-1-78138-267-7.
  2. ↑ Jacqueline L. Tobin; Raymond G. Dobard (1999). Hidden in plain view: the secret story of quilts and the underground railroad . New York, N.Y.: Doubleday. ISBN   0-385-49137-9.
  3. 1 2 3 Stacie Stukin (2007-04-03). "Unravelling the Myth of Quilts and the Underground Railroad". TIME . Archived from the original on April 29, 2007. Retrieved 2013-01-23.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Noam Cohen (January 23, 2007). "In Douglass Tribute, Slave Folklore and Fact Collide". The New York Times . ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 30 April 2012.
  5. ↑ Donna Lagoy; Laura Seldman (September 5, 2016). The Underground Railroad in the Adirondack Town of Chester. Arcadia Publishing Incorporated. p. 128. ISBN   978-1-62585-701-9.
  6. ↑ Reynolds, Glenn (2007). "quilts". In Junius P. Rodriguez (ed.). Encyclopedia of Slave Resistance and Rebellion. Greenwood Publishing Group. pp. 407–409. ISBN   978-0-313-33273-9.
  7. 1 2 3 4 Andrew Bartholomew (February 1, 2007). "Prof. debunks Douglass myth". Yale Daily News. Retrieved March 19, 2017.
  8. ↑ Donna Lagoy; Laura Seldman (September 5, 2016). The Underground Railroad in the Adirondack Town of Chester. Arcadia Publishing Incorporated. p. 127. ISBN   978-1-62585-701-9.
  9. ↑ Barbara Brackman (November 5, 2010). Facts & Fabrications-Unraveling the History of Quilts & Slavery: 8 Projects - 20 Blocks - First-Person Accounts. C&T Publishing Inc. p. 7. ISBN   978-1-60705-386-6.
  10. 1 2 Fergus M. Bordewich (February 2, 2007). "History's Tangled Threads". The New York Times . ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 30 April 2012.
  11. ↑ Diane Cole (2012). "Were Quilts Used as Underground Railroad Maps? – US News and World Report". usnews.com. Retrieved 30 April 2012.

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