Harriet Jacobs was an African-American abolitionist and writer whose autobiography, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, published in 1861 under the pseudonym Linda Brent, is now considered an "American classic".
How to Make an American Quilt is a 1995 American drama film based on the 1991 novel of the same name by Whitney Otto. Directed by Jocelyn Moorhouse, the film features Winona Ryder, Anne Bancroft, Ellen Burstyn, Kate Nelligan and Alfre Woodard. It is notable as being Jared Leto's film debut. Amblin Entertainment optioned Otto's novel in 1991, and were able to persuade Steven Spielberg to finance the screenplay's development. How to Make an American Quilt received mixed reviews from critics. It was a box-office success, grossing $41 million against a $10 million budget. The film was nominated for the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture.
Samantha Mathis is an American actress and trade union leader who served as the Vice President, Actors/Performers of SAG-AFTRA from 2015 to 2019. The daughter of actress Bibi Besch, Mathis made her film debut in Pump Up the Volume (1990), and later co-starred or appeared in such films as FernGully: The Last Rainforest (1992), Super Mario Bros. (1993), The Thing Called Love (1993), Little Women (1994), The American President (1995), Jack and Sarah (1995), Broken Arrow (1996), American Psycho (2000), The Punisher (2004), and Atlas Shrugged: Part II (2012). She has recently had recurring roles on The Strain as New York City Councilwoman Justine Feraldo, and on Billions as Taylor Mason Capital COO Sara Hammon.
"Everyday Use" is a short story by Alice Walker. It was first published in the April 1973 issue of Harper's Magazine and is part of Walker's short story collection In Love and Trouble.
Lewis Woodson was an educator, minister, writer, and abolitionist. He was an early leader in the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME) in Ohio and Pennsylvania. Woodson started and helped to build other institutions within the free African-American communities in Ohio and western Pennsylvania prior to the American Civil War.
Nancy L. Zieman was an American author and designer widely known as the host of the television show Sewing with Nancy.
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.
Harriet Powers was an American folk artist and quilter born into slavery in rural northeast Georgia. Powers used traditional appliqué techniques to make quilts that expressed local legends, Bible stories, and astronomical events. Powers married young and had a large family. After the American Civil War and emancipation, she and her husband became landowners by the 1880s, but lost their land due to financial problems.
Jacqueline Woodson is an American writer of books for children and adolescents. She is best known for Miracle's Boys, and her Newbery Honor-winning titles Brown Girl Dreaming, After Tupac and D Foster, Feathers, and Show Way. After serving as the Young People's Poet Laureate from 2015 to 2017, she was named the National Ambassador for Young People's Literature, by the Library of Congress, for 2018 to 2019. Her novel Another Brooklyn was shortlisted for the 2016 National Book Award for Fiction. She won the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award in 2018. She was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2020.
Eliza Caroline "Lida" Obenchain, was an American author, women's rights advocate, and suffragist from Bowling Green, Kentucky. Lida Obenchain, writing under the pen name Eliza Calvert Hall, was widely known early in the twentieth century for her short stories featuring an elderly widowed woman, "Aunt Jane", who plainly spoke her mind about the people she knew and her experiences in the rural south.
Young Lucretia and Other Stories is a collection of thirteen short stories by Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman. The stories were originally published individually in literary magazines such as Harper's Young People and St. Nicholas Magazine between 1887 and 1892. They were later collected and reprinted by Harper & Brothers in 1892. These stories primarily feature children who learn moral lessons after misbehaving.
Linda MacDonald was born in 1946, in Berkeley, California. She is a multimedia artist who was at the forefront of the studio quilt art movements. She has been called a "fine artist [who works] with quilting techniques."
Brown Girl Dreaming is a 2014 adolescent verse memoir written by Jacqueline Woodson. It tells the story of the author’s early childhood life growing up as an African American girl in the 1960’s and depicts the events that led her to become a writer. The book has been considered one of the exemplary pieces of modern children’s literature by critics who have analyzed the book and has gained positive reception. It has won multiple awards, including a Newbery Honor.
Tatiana Celia Kennedy Schlossberg is an American environmental journalist and author. She was a science and climate reporter for The New York Times, and has also written for several publications and outlets including The Atlantic, The Washington Post,Vanity Fair, and Bloomberg. She is the author of the book Inconspicuous Consumption: The Environmental Impact You Don't Know You Have published by Grand Central Publishing in 2019.
The Freedom Quilting Bee was a quilting cooperative based in Wilcox County, Alabama that operated from 1966 until 2012. Originally begun by African American women to generate income, some of the Bee's quilts were displayed in the Smithsonian Institution.
Loretta Pettway is an American artist and quilt maker of the Gee's Bend Collective from Boykin, Alabama. Her quilts are known for their bold and improvisational style.
Mensie Lee Pettway is an American artist associated with the Gee's Bend group of quilters.
Magalene Wilson (1898–2001), also known as Magdalene Wilson, was an American artist. She is associated with the Gee's Bend quilting collective. Her work has been exhibited at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and is included in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Red at the Bone is an coming-of-age novel by Jacqueline Woodson, originally published by Riverhead Books in 2019.
Viola Canady was an African American quiltmaker. Canady discovered her passion for quilting through exposure to its processes as a child. She was the co-founder of the Daughters of Dorcas and Sons Quilting Guild of Washington, D.C. Canady created a wall hanging for the Charles Sumner school and it is exhibited at the Sumner museum. One of Canady's most notable pieces is the Cathedral Window Quilt.
